yard art

I didn't get nearly enough good shots of this amazing collection.

But I knew I had to cross the street.

Do enlarge at least this one to see the detail.

we haven't changed a bit

My fortieth high school reunion was this weekend, and I managed to go to several small gatherings. The people I spent the most time with in high school have all led interesting lives and seem intent on continuing to do so. I recognized people I haven't seen for twenty years instantly.

On the last day we had brunch at a nice café,

and after more than an hour, we spilled out to block the sidewalk for another hour or more.

The balloons had nothing to do with us, actually.

It was well worth a trip to the city.

last fall flowers

The last fall flowers I can bring indoors. There's plenty of goldenrod still, but I'm allergic to it. There may be more Queen Anne's lace, but it isn't colorful. So I'm celebrating the start of fall with these that I cut down by the pond.

From the yellow of daffodils to these is half a year.

deer event

I hit a deer this morning. All the time I've driven country roads I never have before. I was amazed to be unharmed. The Jeep, however, was not doing so well. Neither was the deer. The woman who came out to see if I was all right called her husband out to shoot it; both rear legs were broken and it kept trying to get out of the ditch and cause another accident. (It was rush hour; although I took the picture when the road was empty, there was a steady stream of cars coming along.)

This is when I am so thankful to have two cars. You can't see in the picture, but the radiator is leaning back against the engine, and the power steering was non-functional, so I have not yet even had an estimate of how long the work will take.

predator and prey

I went for a walk down to the creek Sunday afternoon. As I got back up near the clearing south of the house, I started two deer, a buck and a doe, who crossed the "road" from east to west, and I thought a third deer was following, but the creature turned and ran the other way, and I think it was a coyote, not a dog. It was reddish brown and had prick ears and a bushy tail, and was about the size of a coyote, but it was moving awfully fast. Did I startle the deer into moving before he could creep up on them? Or was he lying in wait for them to move, and then when they did he saw me? I didn't have the camera, of course, but it happened too fast for me to have it ready if I'd had it with me.

rodent sighting

This is an antidote to Wordless Wednesday--Wordy Wednesday? Thesaurus Thursday?--because there was no time to reach for the camera, even UNsafely.

I was driving to work, and I was almost thirty miles from home, stopped at a traffic light, when something brown moving across the windshield drew my eye down from the red light. Leaves don't move like that, I thought, a split second before recognizing it as something very like a field mouse. It scrambled across the windshield from one side to the other, and climbed around on the windshield wipers, just as the light turned green before I could grab the iPod out of my purse on the seat beside me. As soon as the car moved, it darted back into the engine compartment.

Where, I have no doubt, it had been engaged in storing acorns inside the hollow spaces in the hood, and elsewhere, when I left the house. (I hear them rattling and rolling when I turn corners sharply.) I hope it left the car in the parking lot at work. I hope it didn't chew on anything during its terrifying journey. Two years ago something larger than a mouse chewed a hole in the air-intake hose in this very engine. That, at least, was not dangerous.

foolish deer

These two were young and foolish. Older deer pay no attention to the barking dog, trapped behind glass, but when I open a door and step outside, they leave. Not these.

No zoom. That's about thirty feet from the corner of the balcony.

That's about thirty feet in the other direction.

They finally both looked up at me, but they didn't leave until I spoke to them and told them to go away.