Fall flowers

September, and now October, are the months when our Jerusalem artichokes bloom. At least, we call them Jerusalem artichokes. They do not produce edible tubers as real topinambours (Jerusalem artichokes) do. But they're some form or other of sunflower and closely resemble the edible kind.

The back sides of the flowers glow in the morning sunlight.

I spent a good hour and a half cleaning my little chainsaw on Thursday. The big chainsaw is kaput. I can start it but it won't stay running. It's an old machine that I bought used about six years ago. It's been great, but it's done its time. Since then, I bought a smaller saw for little jobs. I didn't clean the little saw last year before putting it away and now I'm paying the price. I couldn't start it yesterday, and then I noticed that the chain was stuck. All the sawdust and muck from last year's cutting had turned into glue over winter, seizing up the external moving parts. Duh.

So, I took the saw apart and cleaned it well (with turpentine, yuck!) and reassembled it. I finally got it started (after having flooded the engine during my first attempts) and it seems to be running fine now. So today I plan to do a little cutting; there are some dead tree limbs and other small trees that need to be cut down along one of the fences. Then I've got a pile of kindling that needs cutting up. I don't need to cut firewood this year since we found a supplier that delivers the wood already cut to size.