i had planned on blogging my feet again. my nod to halloween was festive orange green and purple striped toe socks and black birkenstocks (any excuse to wear those!) but then i happened upon a friend who incredibly had more elaborately decorated feet than mine. so im blogging hers instead. 
of late things have happened so serendipitously that its eerie. earlier this week i was counting a large amount of money and counted $710 in bills and $7.10 in coins. wednesday morning there were two emails in my inbox that made reference to, of all things, thistle. and this most recent event: as i was placing a runner on the table trying to make a decision about thanksgiving napery i saw movement outside the window and looked up to see a lone turkey in the yard. in my disbelief i missed the shot of the turkey. so here's a picture of the runner instead.
a new car in the driveway tonight. the purchase finalizes months of shopping and pondering and procrastinating. it is not yet comfortable, not yet fun to drive but i am confident that this will come with time. it does smell good however! this picture taken at the onset of the maiden voyage home when a lucky ladybug landed on the windshield as i turned the key in the ingition.
chrysanthemums. autumns quintessential flower. one of the best things about the cooler weather. try as i might i cannot grow these. fortunately someone else can - so every year i buy three or four big beautiful plants. this white one is this years favorite.
more foliage photographed on a fine october saturday. hannah, this is right across the bridge behind your house. heavy rain last night has muted some of the color and taken down some leaves. this will probably be as good as it gets.
this one's for the readership in europe and central america and all points south. lest you forget, its the brilliant red of a typical fall afternoon in new england.
last summer i had a series of unfortunate vacuum cleaner events that began with buying a hoover wind tunnel online from amazon.com. on the day it was to be delivered i waited and waited and finally collected it from the ups guy who was broken down by the side of the road about five miles away. once unpacked i found the unit was faulty - no wind tunnel action. finally it took me about three hours to return the thing to its original packaging so i could ship it back to amazon and get my money back. so do i want to deal with vacuum cleaners any more? i think not. the happy ending is this yellow plastic eureka bagless tool. i bought it used at a yard sale. it works slick. and as testimony to the entire saga, i leave the price tag affixed to it and smile at my resourcefulness every time i use it.
lately hundreds of small birds have been foraging for seed in the tall grasses. they hide in the weeds and are visible only when the grass rustles as they hop from one blade to the next. walk by on your way to the compost pile and they suddenly fly en masse, more birds in one place than you would ever think possible.
and it looks like it too. splendid saturday sunshine with chilly winds and peak foliage color. a good day to go to breakfast, take some pictures, and test out the woodstove for the upcoming heating season.
a while ago i bought a tiny little frame for a few bucks in an antique store. the baby girls picture will look sweet in it. but this is the portrait that had been in it for years and i dont know why ive not thrown it away. who is this woman? is she someone's wife or mother? an aunt or grandmother? if so how could the photo end up on a dusty dark shelf in a musty old store? or could this be a stock photo, one routinely placed in every frame for purchase back in the old days? rather than discard the photo i ponder these questions and study this face. i wonder who she was and where she was and why she was being photographed. and mostly, i wonder if anyone remembers her.
the sitting spot at the edge of the yard as the sun rises and commences to burn off the fog on the first morning of this long columbus day weekend.
a quick shopping trip this afternoon yields pumpkin bread for snacks, pumpkin candles for color and scent, and pumpkins themselves to grace the front doorway. i passed on the pumpkin pie and the pumpkin potpourri. buying all that might have been pumpkin overkill.
grass in the midst of the now overgrown garden. look closely and you will see more webbing around the seed head. where do those webs come from, do you suppose? are they part of the plant? or put there by something else? either way its appearance surprised me on a misty fall morning.
