Eye Sage

 All but the last of these pictures were taken just after our recent ice storm. The last was after the following snow storm.

Standing in the street you can glimpse our house through the trees.

A closer view from our driveway.

Everything got coated in ice.

A very thick coating of ice.

These tracks prove neither ice nor snow will keep the squirrels away from the bird feeders.

click on any ice cube to enlarge the photo

We The Peepers

Almost overnight it became Fall here. Trees have started to change color quite dramatically this past week. We decided to spend a little time today just driving around the area and admiring them. We swung by Hooper Pond and Lake Auburn as well as just tooling about.

Of course we stopped at some yard sales too. We also found a cemetery that had some Keiths as occupants. I'll be changing my Facebook pic soon.

click on a leaf to enlarge the pic

    

Snow Shoots

Three shots of the back yard and one showing the front of our house.


To enlarge any picture, click on your favorite snowflake in it.

The Leaves They Are A Changing

Back in August when we had the cold snap, a few trees got fooled into thinking autumn had started. Most notably those early changers, the sumacs. But then we had the heat wave. (90 degree weather in Maine is a heat wave.) In our yard, one branch of one maple tree turned a lovely red. It still is, but a few other trees are now starting their color show as well. Nothing in our yard is as spectacular as that one maple branch yet, but yesterday we took a walk down the street and I took a few pictures. The new header is one of them. Nice time of year to be in Maine, eh?

Fire Pit Stop

We're planning on a visit to Home Depot today to buy a lawn mower. While the 3.67 acres we own isn't all lawn, enough of it is that we want to get a riding lawn mower. It may cut down on some of the work, but it's still going to be a lot more than we had to do with the yard in Arizona. We'll be doing a lot of picking up of debris first. Pine trees, of which we have quite a few, shed a lot. Not just pine needles, which we'll want to move to keep both the grass and mossy areas alive, but pine cones, twigs, and branches. Pines are very brittle creatures with pieces constantly breaking off from temperature changes or just high winds. I've tried to do a little bit of picking up almost every day when I walk Pandora around the yard, but in spite of the accumualtion you see in the pic above, there is a lot more to gather. Like the fallen trees. And pine doesn't do well as home heating wood as it burns too hot and fast. We'll have plenty of other fallen trees to use for that once we have the wood stove set. We'll need to get a burn permit (good for one day or one weekend) to use that fire pit though. And we'll undoubtedly need to do it several times.

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Also at Home Depot, we want to get some hardware to mount wall shelves in the studio. We still have a lot of stuff yet to be put out. And after helping Kemmer with her spring cleaning, we ended up with more books that need to be put somewhere.

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And while we're looking around the store, maybe some adhesive to try putting the floor tiles back down in Ross's room in the basement now that the repair work is done.

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Creative things have not been a high priority, but I've done some envelope painting for the upcoming Sunday Funnies postage stamps, but I've already mentioned that. I'm also working on a mini-comic with somebody else's characters. I hope I'll have more to report on that soon.

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And we're both working overtime at our jobs.

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Back to the Land

Just a couple of photos of our back property.

After the Fall

We had a very rainy autumn this year, so although the trees were showing lots of color, the leaves got knocked off rather quickly. No long vistas of beautiful foliage lingering on as it slowly turned. This tree at work was one of the slower changing ones.

Snowing Out On A Limb

It's snowed a bit up here in Maine recently. Not as much as some places, but certainly more than Carrie and I have ever had come down on us in Arizona. Today, Tuesday, we went out to Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park to look at snow. The top picture is right on the shore of Casco Bay. The photo on the left shows some of the shattered ice caused from the shifting tides.

Much of the park is covered with hiking trails, and in spite of the snow, you can see by the tracks in the snow going over this bridge, that people are still using them.

Pandora and I are in the last picture amidst the snow covered trees.

You can click on any picture to widen the horizons.

Leaves of Absence

Autumn has arrived and the summer rains have made the foliage spectacular.