Freckles

This pumpkin looks freckled to me...I'm passing on handing out candy tonight.  Past experience is that I don't get many visitors and am stuck with the candy.  I am thinking I'll take the dogs out about the time that little trick or treaters make their rounds to see costumes.

Magic

Today we were challenged to capture a bit of magic or fantasy...I am going the non-costume/halloween route.  I think the light in October and early November is magic.  

And when I saw this through the viewfinder, I thought it was a little otherworldly. A bit like some magical being is glowing just to the left and lighting up the leaf caught in the branch.

Great Pumpkin

This is the photo I wanted to put up in my photo class.  It's a little off beat, a little fun and not so deadly serious.

But I chickened out and went this route.

Here's hoping you have a great pumpkin!

Abandoned 2

This house was on the side of the road headed up to Signe's mountain place.  The shingle patterns and gaping windows were so compelling to me.  Again, I wondered what led to this house on the side of a mountain, with a creek just behind it, to be left empty.  The mountain was doing its best to reclaim the house.

That combination of shingles says that someone loved this place once, enough to use what they could afford to create a pleasing pattern.

A clothesline once wrapped the side and front of the back porch - clothespins still held fast to the line.

The front of the house had a deep porch, and a tin roof.  I was intrigued by the back corner of this house - see the high sides of the back corner?  I think this may have been a place for livestock.

Fairy Caps

Acorn caps just look like fairy caps, don't they?

Abandoned House

Just for a minute, I stood on the road, looking through the viewfinder, imaging that I rescued this old house.  The tin roof, the deep front porch, the shake siding, the stone fireplace, the paint colors...they are all perfect.  Yet it sits empty, waiting.  Alone.

birds on a wire

Color

Seems like a good day to share this.  It's a shrub growing by my friend's house in Murphy.  Kind of looks like a butterfly bush, but isn't.

Canoe

Ranger Flea Market, Murphy, NC

I walked out of the first building and looked up.  I had the strangest sense of deja vu and later in the day it hit me: I had seen a photo like this in a Martha Stewart and loved it.  Then I thought "when will I ever see canoes hanging from the ceiling like this?"

Now I know.

NC Mountains

I was able to spend the weekend with two good friends in the NC mountains...I think this photo sums up the weekend perfectly.  I've got lots more to share, I took around 200 photos.

On Fire

Tomorrow all 33 miners will be looking at the same sky, sun and moon that we do.

Way to go, Chile!

Distracted

I'd planned to read some tonight, in the quiet.  But I'm captivated by the drama unfolding as the miners in Chile are so close to returning to Earth.  I imagine this is something like the Apollo 13 drama in the 70s.  I was alive then, too, just not old enough to really understand. 

But this - so many have pitched in.  Our very own NASA provided a liquid diet meant to combat all the ills of their entrapment as well as the drastic temperature change; a paramedic is descending to triage the returning miners (very brave, yes?); the capsule has been engineered to avoid friction, the shaft is not perfectly vertical...really mind-blowing stuff.

And have you seen the tent city? It's the dryest desert in the middle of Chile's nowhere and there is a tent city which is unbelieveable.



Back to my post on the edge of my seat.

P.S.  Yes, I got a Kindle.  Working on the assumption that I could continue to get new things to read that won't fill up my house, about 5-6 hardback books will pay for it.  And now I read the Sunday paper - I had given them up in disgust because I couldn't get them read in one day and then they cluttered up the joint.

Measuring Up

Sunday Bullets

• Don't tell nature that orange/red and pink don't go together.
• After two weeks of watching my suet feeder, my friends the woodpeckers are back.
• I've had an idea of how to use my photos to create something that can go out into the world. I've made one prototype am working on more.
• The birdseed is getting shaken out of the feeder somehow.  I know the squirrels must be behind it.
• The seed that is falling on the ground courtesy of the mystery shaker is sprouting better than the seed that was put out 2 weeks ago to rejuvenate my front yard.
• The tea olives have burst into bloom all over - the first time since they were planted two years ago. Until this fall, blooms were sparse.
• I keep forgetting to bring in the Coke Zero in the back of my car.
• My dogs have a full page spread in a calendar that will be sold to benefit the neighborhood park - we are raising matching funds for a grant the park received.  I gave them 6 photos to pick from, and don't really care which it will be.  I realized yesterday it's fun to speculate which they'll use. 
• The graphic artist emailed me to say that my photos were beautiful and she was looking forward to working them into the calendar.  Hello, validation!
• Why is it easier to accept compliments from strangers than friends or family?
• Anyone know what the name of the plant featured in the photo is called?
• There are huge, unusual mushrooms around this fall, and several are in my backyard.
• I feel the need to pare down, and am going to start with my closet.

Fall Light

This captures some of what I love about the light in October.  It's softer because the sun's angle to the earth has changed - or is it the earth's angle in it's rotation around the sun?  No matter. Whatever the reason, it's my favorite.

Shot in the Dark

Literally.

I had no notions for today's photo prompt that I didn't think were original.  So I came home, walked the dogs and pondered.

And noticed that it was good and dark outside.

Did I mention that a nearby school was put on lockdown today because an armored car chase ended and one of the suspects fled on foot, was spotted on school grounds but hasn't been found that I know of.

Yes.

So, I took my camera and my dogs and repaired to the [dark] backyard.  I thought I'd shoot across the deck with the back porch light on, jack up the ISO and catch some of the leaves that lay in drifts on the deck. 

It wasn't working for me.

So I stood up and walked to the other side to call the dogs from the deep, dark, dark at the bottom of the yard and noticed the light from my bedroom falling on the bench.

Click.

And remembered the as yet un-captured armored car suspect and made my dogs come in with me.

The End.

Circles

Taken for my class...here's the funny part.  When I glanced out of my window I caught a glimpse of dried out hydrangea blossoms and thought I'd go photography those.

The funny part?

There were no dried hydrangea blossoms lying on the ground.

There were several eruptions of mushrooms from a tree root that has risen above the ground (and I think the tree it belonged to is long gone).

Morning Light

This is my effort towards today's assignment.  I'm feeling a bit out of step this go around, though. I submitted the second one, and now think it should have been the first one.

Take a Look Around

I'm participating in the Picture Fall class.  Today we had to find some beauty...I was not convinced I'd find anything since there'd been a recent fall clean up in my yard AND my neighbors workers decimated one of my hydrangeas (but that's ANOTHER story).  Like always, when you really look, you really see.

Cozy

Thought for the Day

Life is not a journey to the grave

with the intention of arriving safely

 in a pretty and well-preserved body,

but rather to skid in broadside,

thoroughly used up,

totally worn out and

loudly proclaiming

 "Wow....What a ride!"

I saw this years ago, laughed and thought not a bad sentiment.  When I saw it again today, it had much more resonance.  Because I'm older? it's fall? I've just finished a grueling 5 days of drastic diet?  Probably the last.