October

Trees and Sky

We're finally starting to see a little bit of fall color but first, some lovely sky pictures that I took on October 9th (the first one) and 14th. (pics 2 and 3)

In past years we have had peak fall color by October 10th but, as you can see, all the leaves were still completely green as late as the 14th. This is pretty much the same as last year.

Finally, this week the leaves are beginning to turn. This one was the 21st. Still mostly green but you can see a little bit of gold and brown.

October Sky

This was yesterday afternoon. Yes, everything's still green here.

Just Some Wildflowers

Another One

I am fascinated by this particular mushroom. (more than I am usually fascinated by them) It is growing on a stump beside our driveway. Most individual mushrooms I see on our place are only around for a day or two before they shrivel up and die or whatever happens to them. Other than growing very slowly in size, this one has remained unchanged for over a week. And the brown part of it is shiny, which is also unusual.

Fungi Appreciation

We got more than the normal amount of rain last month so we've been seeing a lot of these.

It's like some creepy horror movie stuff when you spot them as they're first emerging from the ground.

Here are a couple more nice ones.

The Other Side of Spring

As I commented on Twitter last week, everyone expects the spring of painters and poets. More often spring kind of sucks. Dark cloudy days, rain, storms. There have been years when we didn't see the sun at all for weeks at a time. This year though, we have had many very nice days, truly the spring of painters and poets. So I guess I shouldn't complain too much that this week is going to be the more typical spring of rain and storms.

This was Saturday, looking up from under a tree in my front yard. It doesn't get much better than this.

Trees Are Always Beautiful

This morning the sun came out for the first time in five days? I can't even remember when I last saw it. I hate when we have a long string of cold gray days. I'm a summer person. I like warm or even hot days and green leaves and flowers. But even in weather like we've been having lately I find that it lifts my spirits to get outside for just a little bit. I took these pictures yesterday.

Do you ever stop and take time to really look at bare trees?

I do miss the leaves in winter and oak trees leaf out so late. By March I am extremely impatient to see some green.

But for now, I'm satisfied to enjoy nature's winter art show.

And here's one of our neighbor's pond.

Cat Update

We have confirmed that the cat (see previous post) belongs to our neighbors. He came back Friday and followed me around demanding pets and cuddles and after a while found a nice cardboard box to nap in.

Later we saw the kids next door playing with him. His name is Flash, which disappoints me because it doesn't fit him at all. He needs a name that is both sweeter and more dignified. Oh well.

I have to admit, for a while I was still feeling a little possessive and worrying that they might not take good care of him. Will they get him neutered and vaccinated? Probably not. Do they feed him a good quality grain-free cat food? Probably not. But I'm mostly over it now. And I expect he will still come to visit once in a while. I can deal with that.

Sky

This was a few days ago. It's representative of what our skies have been looking like recently.

Just Another Tree

I was outside this weekend and for some reason I noticed that the pattern of the limbs of this tree, which I've seen every day for more than 20 years, looked especially pleasing. That's what I love about where I live. Somehow there's always something new to notice, even if it's always been there.

Good Morning

Just one of my favorite trees...

Summer Sky

Clouds

This is a really old picture. For a while I was really into taking pictures of clouds so I have a couple of hundred of them at least and I thought I would start posting some of them here once in a while.

Morning Walk

I was walking through the woods behind my house a few days ago and saw this little "guy".

And a little farther on...

They were both small, about three inches across, I think.

Stuff Seen on Twitter

Beautiful, colorful art by Iris Scott.

I love these rain photos. They almost look like paintings.

This 1920's hair dryer:

I sort of want it. Not to use but just to have people walk into my house and say, "What the hell is that thing?!"

This must read article about "cultural appropriation". This subject ("cultural appropriation" but involving a different culture) came up a few months ago on one of the sewing blogs I read and a lovely woman of color said pretty much the same thing. We often make the mistake of forgetting that people of other cultures have differing opinions within their culture just as much as we do. Just be respectful. That's all you need to do.

Umbrella street, Portugal:

A disturbing short story about smart homes. I'm not a big fan of most "smart home" technology. I find all of it unnecessary and some of it just a little creepy. This story is also anti-GMO which I am not so that part of the story annoys me a little. I suppose bad things could happen but I think the potential for disaster is exaggerated.

And another artist, Tomasz Alen Kopera.

A Brief Spring Complaint

Yesterday was the most dreary and cold Easter I can remember. We went to my brother-in-law's house (a long, long drive) but because of the weather few of the family showed up. It didn't really feel like an Easter gathering at all; it just felt like an ordinary weekend day but it was still nice to get out and see a few of the relatives.

I shouldn't complain about the weather overall though. We have had some very nice early spring days. It just so happens that yesterday and today look and feel more like February.

This is a picture I took in 2016, just because. It's not foggy this morning, just gloomy.

This 'n' That

Okay, let's get this one out of the way first. Does It Fart? Haven't you always wanted to know which animals fart? Well, actually, I never gave it much thought. I just always assumed that everything that has a digestive system occasionally expels gas. But that's not always the case? Some of the Notes are, as you might expect, hilarious.

[ahem] How about something pretty to clear the air before we move on:

Cheese on apple pie? Yes, of course! Always. And only cheddar. (or maybe gouda)

The Concealed Revealed looks interesting. A blog but set up kind of weird. "Home" instead of being the most recent posts is a "About the Project" page then you have to go to the archives and recent posts links on the sidebar.

Dumpster Honey - the problems of urban bees

Owl Cabins - tiny, minimalist inside, so cute outside

86 percent of Americans draw circles in the counterclockwise direction. 80 percent of people in Japan draw them in the clockwise direction.

Insects, snails, flowers and more - Beautiful photography by Vyacheslav Mishchenko

Autochromes - Early color photographs. Here's one to finish up this post:

Books Books Books!

So I have been putting off blogging about my reading for months! It's not an obligation, of course. Nobody is obligated to blog daily, but see, I want to share this. I just haven't. So anyway, I've mostly forgotten what I wanted to say about all but the most recently read of these so I'm just going to put them all in one post and just to do something different I'm going to stick some completely unrelated photos in here as dividers. (These are not all of the books I've read this year, just some highlights.)

Earlier this year, thanks to Amazon's recommendations for me, I read two books with similar subject matter. Both are set during the Civil War era, including the pre- and post- Civil War years. Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim is about a young plantation owner's daughter's warm, loving relationship with her nurse, a slave woman named Mattie who is separated from her own son in order to nurse the white infant.

In the other book, Sister of Mine by Sabra Waldfogel, Adelaide is given a slave girl named Rachel to be her personal maid when they are both still children. The two get along well and soon discover that they are actually half-sisters. The story follows them through adolescence to young adulthood.

I highly recommend both of these books. The stories are interesting and the characters are fully developed and realistic. Both books manage to illustrate the tragedy and injustice of slavery without beating the reader over the head with brutality at the expense of the story. I don't want to give away the endings but I will say that both are satisfying though the ending of Yellow Crocus seems the more plausible of the two.

Of course one of the highlights of my reading year was Amongst the Stars, the third book in Kelly Sedinger's Song of Forgotten Stars series. This is the kind of fun and exciting adventure story that got me hooked on reading science fiction in the first place. While I now love a great variety of science fiction it's great that someone is still writing this kind of purely fun story.

I am a huge fan of fantasy writer China Mieville. His novella This Census-Taker is quite different from the other books of his that I have read. In it a young boy witnesses his father killing his mother. The authorities (and most other adults) choose to believe his father's version of events, that his mother abandoned them, but there are other hints that Dad is "not right." There are elements of fantasy in the story but they are so subtle they almost don't matter. This Census-Taker reads almost like a mainstream novella.

I have started reading Three Moments of an Explosion, a book of short stories by Mieville. They are also very different from the Mieville that I'm used to and I like some better than others. I have taken a break from it to read some other books though. The nice thing about a book of short stories is that you can spread them out, reading them one at a time between other books.

For some reason a lot of authors follow me on Twitter. I figure they're just trying to get attention, which is fine, but mostly I haven't paid much attention to them. I'm not sure what was different about S.E. Smith. Maybe the titles, maybe the cover art. Whatever it was, I followed her and followed her links to her books on Amazon and discovered A FREE KINDLE BOOK! A Warrior's Heart. Free. So I didn't even bother to read any reviews; I just downloaded it.

I am so glad it was free. Oh! My! Gawd! As I have already said on Twitter, it's pornographic. But dammit it's still science fiction and there was actually a bit of a story and I really hate to not finish a book; I mean like a Sheldon level have to finish so, quickly skipping over certain scenes, I kept reading. Turns out there were really only a couple of explicit (very explicit) scenes near the beginning and a couple more near the end.

Aside from that there was a lot in the book that just seemed silly to me. Two brothers who were kidnapped from Earth and enslaved as children grow up and fall madly in lust with two sisters from an alien warrior race. (Think Klingon but even meaner and cuter and purple) Anyway, in spite of the fact that these sisters are perfectly capable of kicking anyone's butt and feeding it to them, and the brothers really are not, the brothers constantly feel the need to "protect" their alien girlfriends.

Overall the story is pretty simplistic. The only real action (other than the aforementioned [ahem] "action") is a pretty standard escape. That's really unfortunate because the races and civilizations mentioned in the story seem like they could be interesting if the author would concentrate more on those and less on the "romance" and interpersonal [ahem] activities. But, you know, I guess some people are into that sort of thing. I won't judge. Or at least I'm trying not to judge.

Photos taken by me over 10 years ago.

Morning Walk

I spotted this beauty this morning in the woods behind my house. I don't remember ever seeing one exactly like it before. The photo is not as sharp as I would like. The little guy (or gal?) was shy and wouldn't let me get close so I had to zoom in from several feet away.