Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I can't believe it has been nearly two months since I've posted any new pictures here. I've kept pretty busy all this beautiful fall, with my dollmaking and other crafts, a little yard work, and a whirlwind trip to visit family in October. We have had only a few frosty nights earlier this month, and though the pots of beans and tomatoes are gone, the allysum is still going strong and the impatiens, tender as they are, as still blooming under the bushes. I created a couple of bulb beds where I transplanted some iris to, and raked and mowed/mulched up a lot of leaves, and cut back the hostas, etc. A few more oak leaves have fallen and need raked up, and blown out of the shrubbery, but otherwise I guess I'm ready for winter. Here's the oak leaves I raked out of this one bed, and what was left of them after running the mower over them. The bag has twigs in it.

Some Bugs still hanging around on the marigolds and calendula.

I put up a seedbell in the front yard for the birds, and attracted several varieties, including a pair of titmouse (titmice?), sparrows, cardinals, and this rare bushytailed fur-bird.

Hey, we're getting a little soggy here!

Forecast is clearing off today and sunny all week. Very welcome after this week of mostly cloudy and intermittent rain. From Lexington south and eastward, they have gotten way more than this.

Occasional showers...

I didn't empty the gage yesterday, so this is a running total.

I think I'll turn the sprinkler system off, at least for this week, with rain predicted off and on all week. This is what we got between this morning. The sassafras trees in my front yard are trying to tell us it's fall, now. Starting about the first of Sept., random leaves quickly change to a deep red. They are not very big trees, 4 of them between my yard and Kathy's.

I have one lone sunflower bloom. Here it is in 'negative' colors.

Flash!

Views from the front door this morning.

After morning coffee in the front screen porch, watching the traffic go by in the rain, I got the camera, opened the screendoor, and took a shot...Oops, forgot to turn off the flash. It was darker than I realized, I guess. No, that is not hail. Interesting reflections in the in the individual raindrops. I'll have to try this at night sometime. Not the best picture, but here's the shot without flash. And the view from my front door to Kathy's, just after the shower was over. I like the reflection in the wet bricks.

More special gifts of summer

Lovely things in unexpected places. Seed pods are so often overlooked, but have their own unique beauty. These are pods on Kathy's Tree Peonies. They bloom earliest and have the biggest blooms and seedpods. I love the fuzzy pods and the highly polished seeds. Like glass beads on velvet.


Spot made his usual morning visit for a second course, after being fed at his own house.
More of the best of this morning's images. The ants are those really tiny ones, about an eighth inch in size. They are in a hosta flower cluster. These big hostas produce a flower head that just keeps on blooming. I counted 50 buds on one stem, in various stages of devopement, each flower only lasts a day, but they just keep on coming.

Visitors in my garden

My morning walk through the yards...a wonderful way to view the new day. This little allium, growing between a rock edging and the driveway, had only a couple flowerheads last year. The allyssum is so vigorous, it seemed the photos would capture the fragrance. Then I noticed the visitor on the allium....I think he's a Black and White Wasp. Not enough white on his head to be a Bald-Faced Hornet. At any rate, he was only interested in his breakfast of nectar. I'd never seen one like this before .





Other visitors in the garden this morning were the little pale spider on the clematis, which I didn't see until I began in to edit the photo. The bee almost hid in the center of the crepe myrtle. The fly on the magnolia pod was a surprise, too. That is a zoom telephoto shot, uncropped. Those fuzzy pods are interesting subjects to photograph. The little late-blooming clematis grows rampant in Kathy's back yard. Several of these photos were taken in her yard, some in mine.

At last. Some new pictures posted!

Here are a few from my August Folder. ( Click photo to enlarge) . The newer doll pictures are on the cloth dolls page. http://clothdollsbyvada.blogspot.com/