With the temperature getting down to 16 last night, I think the last lonely hollyhock blossom got rather stiff since the pail of water outside had two inches of ice in it. I rather be seeing the first blossom of the year and not the last one.
End of the Blossoms
Today is Halloween so the streets will be filled with children dressed up in costumes collecting candy this evening. Pumpkins, ghosts, witches and even black cats are often a symbol of Halloween.
Black cats have served as objects of superstition for years, with Medieval Germany, France and Spain associating bad luck with them. Although in some cultures black cats were worshipped like in Ancient Egypt.
But in the United States, the Puritan Pilgrims distrusted anything associated with witches and sorcery including black cats and they would burn black cats on Shrove Tuesday to protect the home from fire and so black cats have been associated with the Halloween witches.
The bad superstition of black cats have caused them to be the least likely to be adopted (so I guess no one will want the two little black kittens at the farm). But some animal shelters will not allow adoption of black cats near Halloween as some ‘owners’ use them for living decorations and then abandon them.
Course you can’t believe this cute face on this black kitten, as moments before I had to peel it off my head where it was having fun racing around my back and head and it was living up to the Halloween tradition of being a monster.
Halloween Monster
This rake might have to come out of retirement since there is a lot of leaves on the ground to clean up after a windy week. The rake will be ‘re-tired’, as well as person using it, after this fall’s leaf cleanup.
Re-tired Rake
The winds yesterday left stripped almost all leaves off the trees except for a very few oaks, when normally the oaks hang on much longer into the winter, so I think winter will be a very long, tough road and a long time before there are leaves on the trees again.
Faded Fall Road
Other than the dark, gray skies, this scene nothing looks like it did last month as the trees are mostly bare and the corn is being harvested.
Colorful to Barren
This 98 year old school hasn’t had children passing through its doors for an education in a long time, even though inside the school, the blackboards still exist with a piano in one corner and a big pot bellied stove in another corner. I wonder why the school closed after only 32 years as it seemed like such a nice looking school.
Retired King School
Last Sunday a rainbow appeared but I was too slow getting to a nice scenic area to photograph it, partly because I was also watching and taking pictures the cloud formation which was bringing the rain for the rainbow.
Colorful Evening Sky Over a Lake
One of the waterfalls in the Amnicon Falls State Park is called Snake Pit Falls and I can see why it was named that as it snakes and winds around the rock walls. I couldn’t get all the twists in the picture – apparently it is a long snake!
Snake Pit Falls
In the northern states, we often refer to birds as winter birds or summer birds, even though the winter birds are actually year-round birds. The summer birds arrive in the spring and leave in the fall and most of the ‘summer’ birds are gone now although I still heard a bluebird singing on Saturday.
But then there are the traveling birds who only stop briefly on their way to and back to farther distances like the High Arctic tundra. And when they are passing by, they often are changing their plumage so it makes it difficult for me to identify these visitors.
On the shore of Lake Superior this fall, I encountered one of the visiting feathered friends and at first, I thought it was a Semipalmated Sandpiper. When trying to determine which bird it was, they often state it is larger or smaller than another bird but when I don’t have the other bird in the same picture or a ruler as they run by, that doesn’t help me much.
One site stated that “If it’s on sand but really actively chasing the waves back and forth, up and down the beach slope with each wave, with legs moving so rapidly they’re blurs, it’s a Sanderling.” Well the birds I was watching was doing just that as I have a lot of blurry legs pictures and the few which aren’t blurry or not standing in water, shows the lack of hind toe that a Semipalmated Sandpiper has. It is also lacking the fine tipped bill so it appears my piper is actually a Sandlering juvenile or a Sandlering adult in transition from breeding to non-breeding plumage.
Whatever they were, they sure were fun to watch as they chased the waves in and out and once in a while, they got wet like I did when a rogue wave rolled in.
Speedy Peeping Bird
A month ago, the sunflowers had smiling yellow faces and the leaves were green but after the wind yesterday, a lot of the trees are now barren and the sunflowers heads are hanging down weary of the approaching winter.
Former Smiley Faces
