Last evening I was siting on the screened porch that we made six years after our home was built. In the large picture above, the porch sits to the left side. The screens are home made and can be taken off if desired. The doors were made at a company in Carlisle, PA. They are wooded, lots of screen, but with the old time handles.

Anyway, as I sat there reading I looked up occasionally to see what might be walking around the woods. Sure enough, five deer were moving around the feeding stations looking for food. Two bucks, plus mommy and her twins. The spots are gone now from the twins, and the bucks have a nice rack of antlers already. An antler grows about a quarter inch a day inside a soft coating filled with arterial blood, a nourishing tissue known as velvet. Antlers are bone--the calcium to make them comes from the deer's own body. By September, antler growth is complete, and the velvet that nourished the bone falls off in strips. It seems the deer know that Labor Day just passed. Every year it's the same.

I'm thinking that I need to go to the feed store to get some cracked corn. Right now I only put a small amount out every three or four days. Just a little bit to let them know they will always have food at my feeding stations as winter and colder weather approaches. The deer don't need me in their life, but I love being a part of theirs. Who knows, maybe we both need each other. Nature provides strange bedfellows at times!