After the Fall

We had beautiful weather here today: 72 degrees and hazy sunshine. This is not usual. Average temps are roughly 20 degrees less than that this time of year. Since I'm fighting off a cold, I decided to take it easy and sit on the deck and bask in the healing warmth of sunshine. Except the deck was covered with leaves. Again. Here is a picture of some of the trees responsible for this surfeit of leaves.

Can you tell I was a wee bit bored? Sitting there taking pictures of the trees with my cell phone? So I decided to sweep the deck. Sounds simple, right? Well, not when Quincy the Wonder Dog morphs into Quincy the Helper Dog.

Quincy seemed to be Very Concerned that I was attempting any activity at all. He stood in the leaves I was trying to sweep. The only way to clear a section of deck was by sweeping around and between his legs as he stood guard. As soon as I finished one leaf-covered section, he'd move to the next one. At one point I yelled at him and made him go sit down.

Good dog. Stay.

I turned to sweep more leaves and there he was. Standing right in the middle of the pile.

When I was done, he pouted. Refused to look at me. So I took this picture of him, mourning the loss of his leaves. Or chagrined he was unable to protect me from all that dangerous physical activity. Not sure which.

Here he is later, inside, sitting with the cat. He's still sad about those leaves -- has his back turned to the windows that look out over the deck. The cat is sitting in a fading ray of sunshine, content to have no opinion whatsoever about leaves. I'm not sure you can tell from this picture, but neither one of them like it when I try to vacuum either.

That's my excuse, anyway.