Fall Sunset

With sunset an hour earlier, I was still out walking as the sun went down yesterday. Coming south on Clayton Road, I happened to look eastward towards the cell phone tower (which is itself east of Venus Road and just north of our house), and the moon was perfectly behind it, as though the top of the tower had a halo.
When I got back, I grabbed my camera and walked back up the road but by then the moon had moved quite a bit higher. Nevertheless, I found a spot which pretty well illustrates what I saw had the moon been just a tad lower.


At the bottom of the picture, the rusty-red glow of a still-to-be-harvested field of soybeans stands there in the orange sunset, highlighting the deep shade even more.
Then, as I approached home I turned westward and shot our property silhouetted by the sunset itself. You can't see it in the picture but the sky over head was a brilliant clear blue as the air cooled into the upper 40's.



This looks like a good shot to put summer to rest. The deciduous trees, now bare, ready themselves for the bitter days ahead. They cannot be far away.

Happy Halloween

It's Halloween so Mom's brought out her terra cotta pumpkin and fired it up with a candle inside. It's a tradition here. It's just not Halloween without the pumpkin on the back porch until well after sunset. The flickering flame can be pretty eerie, I'll tell you.
That's not half of the weirdness around here this year. Have a look below:

What is the world, you may ask? For some reason Mom got the urge to make masks and the only supplies she had were paper plates. Then, how to hold them on? I suggested a couple of properly-placed holes that we could slide the earpieces of our glasses through might work (all three of us are nearly blind). It worked. You don't suppose we spent too much on costumes this year, do you?

It's odd that Mom gave me my moustache back.

OK, I admit it: the people at Pinehaven can be a little strange.

Me, Myself & the Moustache

Back in the early 1970's - probably 1972 - I began growing a moustache that I've had ever since. It was in style then. Remember the 60's?
Well, I've been tiring of it of late and needed a change. On Sunday, 10/18 I reached the point where I just said, Enough!", grabbed Dad's electric shaver with sideburn trimmer, and mowed away!
Here, then, is the "new" me:


While very few people who see me on a daily basis even mentioned it (including my brother), it sure felt different. Being covered with hair for almost four decades, I found my upper lip very sensitive to touch. Though I got rid of the moustache for the extra work is caused (constant trimming), I find that daily shaving of that real estate is not exactly a fair trade. I probably spend more time now.

Nevertheless, it is gone and I am happy about it. Unfortunately the same old face resides underneath, now even more exposed. My mouth seems too small! I have the option of growing it again someday if I decide I like myself better with fuzz. But for now, this is how it's going to be.

Katydid

A few days ago I saw a katydid on the bricks at the back of our house but I didn't have a camera with me. Later I happened to see one perched on the south window of the porch and I walked out to take a shot.

This is truly nature's living leaf. I have always loved lying in bed and listening to the late-summer sounds of the katydid. The drone is enough to quickly put me to sleep.

Particularly I used to find the insects most interesting when I was camping. I noticed that the sound fades throughout the night and ends before first light. Have you listened to the drone of a katydid (not to mention their mixture with the common cricket) until you could no longer hear them? It's like starting at a color until you can no longer see it.

Watching a katydid is fascinating to me for their perfect camouflage. What excellence nature provides the dress of this insect! With cold weather, the windows are again closed and the sound has already disappeared.

Leaf Fall

Each fall there is one day when the trees lose most of their leaves. It was the night on 10/23 this year. We had a late night rain (it began at about 5:30 a.m.) and the leaves began falling en masse in the cold, wet air. I almost had to shovel a path to the garage. Here's what the north side of our house looked like yesterday morning.


A similar view from the south shows the back porch nearly buried in gold. How I do not look forward to all that raking!



The kitchen roof is buried deeply in leaves. Next weekend, my brother will stop by and help me clean the rain gutters. I can reach the ones that are low but I can't handle the long aluminum ladder to get to the second floor. The ladder is simply too heavy for me. Each year Bob stops by and helps me set up and move the ladder around three sides of the house as I fish fistfulls of leaves from the gutters. It has to be done before freezing weather.



I thought this maple leaf (below) was particularly pretty as it floats in rainwater collected in the lid of our burn barrel. You can see the pines reflected in the water so you are looking down and up at the same time. In fact, copy this picture to your own computer (right-click; save picture as) and flip it upside down. You'll find the view enchanting (and completely reasonable) in that configuration, too.

So fall is coming to a close (even though it runs until 12/21). I consider November to be the start on winter regardless of the calendar. The days of going out without a jacket are nearly over. The golds of fall are soon to be replaced with winter whites.

Fall Mushrooms

I can positively identify only one mushroom enough to have it for lunch (the common morel) and this, I'm afraid, isn't it. But every day as we've walked at the Farmersville-Jackson Twp. Park,. we've watched hosts of mushrooms spring up.

First it was a rather flat massive mushroom with the color of old butter and with healthy porous gills galore. After a rain, they came up in various masses, pressed together so closely that they pushed the edges of their neighbors up at odd angles.

Now these pure white mushrooms have taken over and they seem particularly well suited to life beneath the great White Pines. These push the pine needles up - even before the mushrooms are visible - so that you know where the next is about to pop.

These white mushrooms are so perfectly formed and so pristine and clean that I think I must bring them home for a meal. But, no! I know nothing of them and don't relish the thought of death at so early an age.

Better to wait for spring when the sponges again hide from me in the leaf litter of a nearby woods. They are unmistakable, they are delicious and they await me on the other side of winter like buried treasure.

Yet all mushrooms intrigue me. If not food for the body, they are all food for the soul.

First Freezing Night

Sunday morning (10/18) and we've dipped to 26 degrees and ended our growing season. The grass isn't just spotty with frost but fully white in places. I'm glad I got the back and side yards mowed. We're down to the raking of leaves and then the fall season's work will be officially ended for us.


This picture (above) is a close-up of the edge of our burn barrel, a 55 gallon metal drum which resides at the perimeter of our garden. It was feathery with frost before the sun rose and melted it in a sudden blast of light (though hardly, it seems, heat). Why does the frost form thicker crystals on the edge?


Here, then, is a wider look at the top of the barrel. The flat rusty top, which one would expect to collect the most frost, is barely white, while the curled lip of the lid is festooned with feathers of ice. There's a scientific principle at work here but I don't know what it is. It is enough to enjoy the effect, I suppose.

In the back yard, not fifteen feet away from the barrel, are red and orange maple leaves from the tree by the barn. They are also edged in frost and so the principal carries across materials. Look at the grass - and a few henbit leaves - on the ground beside the leaf, also coated in white.

This is a gorgeous season even if we've had to have the furnace early this year. Our goal is to wait until November, or as close as we can come, before adding heat to the house. But not so this year! We've added heat for the last week and a half.

What does this say about the coming winter?

My electric throw has been added to the bed and I've been content with the the lowest setting for the first week. But Saturday night I moved the dial up a notch and it felt wonderful.

So winter - almost - is upon us. Indian Summer first, of course, and we'll enjoy the warmer days ahead as we would enjoy a break during a race. The sprint has begun.