Signs of autumn...

Wood stacked by the fireplace..

and the last of the garden.

It's October and that means the leafpeekers are in town.

They come of course for the fall color,

but also for the Apple Festival.

Where you can buy not just apples...

but baked goods, cider and maple syrup.

And of course every festival must have their crafters.

We have our own apple trees, which unlike last year are full of apples. The fruit flies and the deer are having a field day.

And if they are too tart for eating, just make pie!

Deer twins

We've been seeing these little guys and their momma for a couple weeks now. This time they showed up during dinner, when the camera was handy, and stuck around long enough for me to put the telephoto on and get a few shots. One was a little more adventurous than the other and wandered away from momma, the other kept close to her for awhile, but curiousity got the better of him and he soon followed his twin. Momma kept her eyes on me the whole time, then decided it was time to leave. Strangely, the twins didn't follow her, but went around the trees another way.

Lazy weekend

We spent a quiet, very lazy weekend at the lake with Mom. Reading, lazing on the boat, playing cribbage, visiting with the neighbors. My goal for the weekend was to rest my hand from working and catch up on my reading. I believe I succeeded quite nicely. We did manage to put Mom's hummingbird feeder up. A chain was found to hang it from as the old fish line was broken. We didn't see any birds at the feeder, but I'm sure they will find it soon.

I didn't even get my camera out until this swallowtail butterfly showed up for lunch. Of course he had disappeared by the time I got it out of the bag, but he was nice enough to return after a few minutes for his photo-op.










Enough pictures, there he goes.


These come up by the cottage every year, planted by Mom years ago from seed. We were guessing they were phlox, but google suggests they are Sweet William (dianthus). I will have to remember to tell Mom.

Motocross!

I love shooting sports and getting that perfect "capture". With the kids grown and out of high school now, there are less opportunities to get action shots. In the winter, there is snowmobile oval racing, now in the summer there is dirt bike racing. It's loud, dusty, fun to watch, and there are ample opportunities for stopping the action with a photo. The track is basically a series of jumps and turns. Instead of an oval, it twists and turns back on itself, so that you have racers going in all directions at the same time, but yet all going the same way. People of all ages, from little kids to middle age are participating.

Some young racers at the starting line.

Good Luck!!

They're off!

You definitely need goggles for this sport.

Keeping an eye on their racer.

Puppies are always good subjects for a photo.

Got some good air on that jump.

Four laps and it's done.

Lunch!

Lots of time to just hang out between races.

These little guys have their own track. There are jumps, but most of them aren't going fast enough to get off the ground very far.

Love this little girl's pink mohawk helmet.