Fall Images

It's been good weather for taking pictures, lately. It seems the rain came for the express purpose of messing up my carefully laid plans and effects for Halloween, and then disappeared, mission accomplished.

This is the view of the full moon a few nights ago from my front yard. My neighbor came over to drop something off and pointed it out to me. I love how the fading light made the windows of the houses on the hill look slightly afire.

My husband kidnapped me the other day to get me out of the house. As it was a sunny, comfortable 75 degrees out, I went. He took me to a site his company is monitoring for a rare salamander (long story), and this oak tree is on the property. I would guess it's at least 150-200 years old.

What's special about this tree, is that it's become a storage unit for the woodpeckers to keep their acorn stash. I'd heard about this, but never seen one in person.

The woodpecker will peck a hole in the tree, and then cram an acorn into the hole. This tree had thousands of acorns stuffed into it. Some of them had been there so long, the bark had started to grow around them.

In fact, when we poked around the dead branches lying at the foot of the tree, we found that by peeling back the bark, we could see how many acorns had been swallowed up by the tree. One branch had at least 20 acorns inside it.

It was a lovely day. I'm glad I took a break from painting and organizing to go out and play. After all, there are always things to do around the house. They're not going anywhere. And when you're on your deathbed, are you going to say, "Gee, I wished I'd cleaned the house more."? Or will you regret all the things you could have gone out and enjoyed?

Jeez, I hope not!