The farm fields have been busy with activity the last few weeks with harvest but the harvest method varied greatly from the super huge combines, to older smaller combines and corn pickers, and even cut by hand and shocked into bundles to let the corn dry down like my grandparents did.
The yellow and green of the Poplar (or Popple) tree are often overlooked but add a splash of fall colors too even though I am finding more green than yellow leaves on the ground this year with the strong winds.
This oak leaf is trying to hang on to summer as it knows fall is always too short with winter around the corner. I just want to hang on to some sunshine with the grey days of November in full force.
Today is All Hallow’s Eve, of course better known as Halloween, a night filled with children trick or treating and witches, ghosts, pumpkins, and other scary things are often seen. Black cats are also associated with Halloween but these kittens might be the ones getting scared if they should read what is painted on the door they are hanging around.
Most counties in Wisconsin are now listed as past color peak and only a hand full of counties are at peak color so you have to enjoy the color when you can as it disappears quick.
Congress appropriated funds for a lighthouse on Long Island in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior near Bayfield, Wisconsin but when workmen arrived to build it in 1853, a local representative of the Lighthouse Board, directed them to Michigan Island.
The light on Michigan Island entered service in the spring of 1857, but was closed after only one year of operation. Evidence suggests that higher authorities in the Lighthouse Service repudiated the rash decision of their field representative, and ordered the hapless contractors to go back and erect a new lighthouse at the planned Long Island location.
In 1869, however, authorities decided that a lighthouse on Michigan Island might actually be useful, so was $6000 requested to renovate and relight the abandoned station on Michigan Island.
Fifty years later, an effort began to place the Michigan Island light in a higher tower. When the Lighthouse Service discontinued operation of the Schooner’s Ledge light on Pennsylvania’s Delaware River near Philadelphia, the cylindrical steel tower was disassembled and brought to Wisconsin. Originally built in 1880, the tower was transported to Michigan Island in 1919, where it sat on the beach, awaiting assembly, for another ten years.
On October 29, 1929, the Fresnel lens was transferred from the old lighthouse to the new tower. “Started up new tower at sunset,” wrote Keeper Lane. “Everything in good shape but station looked odd, the old tower being dark for the first time in navigation in 72 years. NEW TOWER IN COMMISSION TONIGHT.”
The old Michigan Island Lighthouse is currently under repairs and Michigan Island is unique in that the old lighthouse was supposed to be built somewhere else and the newer lighthouse was originally built elsewhere.
When the leaves on the ground start to outnumber the leaves remaining on the trees, you know winter is around the corner, especially when forecasting a snowy morning commute.
Apparently one of the sea gulls heard about the snow that is coming and is as disgusted as I am. The older two are probably like the people who can’t wait to get their snowmobiles out on trails. I prefer some more fall days first.
Like people, trees are different and even the same variety of tree will display a range of color development and timing and multiple those factors with different varieties of trees and it paints a rainbow hillside.