October Catch up: 4 : Wide Angle in Mill Creek.

October 5: Two weeks ago I was still experimenting with my rented wide angle lens.

Sunday I had gone to see what could be seen before returning the lens the next day.

Oh there were such wonderful things to see!

Leaves filling slow stretches of stream beds.

Fall colors framed every view; every view could be fully captured it the wide angle lens.

What a treat!

I was *shocked* to find that I had never, in five full years, followed the path past the colliding rivers at Porter Fork.

I was also shocked to find that even with a wide angle lens the colliding rivers couldn't be captured to my satisfaction.

(Consider visiting and seeing for yourself?)

The reds were particularly in glory that Sunday.

Snow still lingered on the wooden walkway.

The wide angle lens did it justice.

A photographer was at work just ahead.

She was Asian, and was photographing an Asian family in the fall colors.

I wondered if they were all just visiting or if they lived here.

The bushes with the white berries were splotching wildly into fall color.

Sometimes the sunlight was caught behind the leaves and mini stained glass windows were made.

God tries His hand at Modern Art?

How else could one explain the random colors on that leaf?

What moment inspired the crimson stems on white berries?

Or red speckles striped with purple shadows on a lime and yellow back ground?

Shadow play.

The coy berries are given away in silhouette.

Purple leaves shine red, dark veins turn white in the sunlight.

 

Oh I was reeling at the leaf by leaf creative colors here.

The bushes were filling the area next to a shaft toilet building.

 I decided to take a short potty break.

And was sucker punched to find this note attached to the door!

Hrumph.

A hiker passing by laughed.

"Do they think they can close the whole forest?  The forest is everyone's outhouse now."

Ewww.

Double insult:

The toilets are locked Nov. 1 for winter anyway.

The "forest" is part of a the Wasatch National Forest, but Mill Creek Canyon park is county owned.

We pay a county fee to enter it.

Hrumph.

Well, the toilets were opened to the humans again on Oct 18.

Whoopie.

Open for 13 more day!

 

Back to the fall color...

Crazy  how trees grow at an angle to grow on slopes.

I did note a bit of lens warp when I shot looking up.

Nice effect though.

The wide angle view did allow one to understand how big the trees are compared to the road.

See the road there at the bottom of the picture?

I had to laugh at how often a car with a sun roof would suddenly stop, and an upper body holding a camera would emerge, shoot a picture, then the car would drive on.

The bikers and the walkers really get the best views though.

The best smells and the best sounds of running Mill Creek and shuffling scuffling leaves.

I must be crazy...why do I ever leave this canyon in autumn?

Why do I do mundane things like laundry and grocery shopping and vacuuming inside?

Why do I not unfurl a blanket, place a pillow and lounge beneath trees like this all day?

Indeed...why is the forest not filled with people resting on their back instead of driving along missing the splendor over head?

If there was ever proof needed of foolishness, I think I may have found it!

(Final word on the wide angle lens buy vs rent question: It will be rented as needed. Unless of course the Fairy Lens Godmother leaves one under my pillow some night.

There IS a Fairy Lens Godmother for grown up photography addicts, right?)

October Catch up: 3 : The Vineyard

Grapes are ripening on our back fence, as well as on many other fences in our neighborhood.

No need to buy grapes around here!

When the sun hits them...I admire.

Some of the grapes are still ripening and still frosted looking.

 

As they ripen their skin takes on a shine.

The sun shining through does an x-ray on each grape, revealing the hidden seeds.

(The people behind us grow green seedless grapes and a black seeded grape. I keep meaning to ask to use my next door neighbor's gate to go pick some before the birds and the weather does them all in. The grape's owners never come near them all at!)

Cheerful Tate sniffs a stick near the grapevines.

A bit lower in the yard another neighbor's wormy apples ripen over our fence.

I enjoy seeing the apple tree go from bare snow covered branches to pink frothy flower, to tiny hard green apples and green leaves to red apples and finally yellow leaves.

It may be wormy but that tree can put on a show all year long!

Our vegetable/tomato garden has a few lingering bits of produce.

And a lone pumpkin is still ripening on its withered vine.

Seed pods are lovely overhead accents among the yellow leaves down there.

(I do not find the dart shaped seeds that rain down in buckets from our ash tree to be nearly as charming...)

 

Back to the grapes.

Three fairly large seeds are inside each large pea sized grape.

The variety was selected by our house's former owner and it is a variety used for wine making.

We certainly have a large grape crop now; should we consider trying our hand at wine making?

I say no.

Although I am willing to gather a pail full and pound them to make a sweet grape juice.

Some year I may try using the grape leaves in cooking too.

For now I am content with watching the leaves turn more golden with each passing day and savoring them visually instead.

October Catch up: 2: Japanese Maple Splendor

Staying home when the mountains and valleys and canyons are ablaze with color is nearly impossible for me.

But sometimes even viewing such places from afar is spectacular too.

Rain falls randomly upon autumn's hillside crazy quilt patchwork colors.

You should seriously wonder how I get anything done with views like this to enjoy.

(Believe me...I have been tearing through to-do lists lately but knock off around 4 to go outside and admire God's latest splendor.

When overhead the sky appears to have peek holes to heaven...it is fitting to be still and behold.

I really don't need to go far for a blast of fall color though.

Thanks to Bernie's passion for Japanese maples and his ever growing collection, autumn color can be viewed by just looking down into our garden.

Which usually causes me to decide that looking down isn't enough.

I grab my camera and go down from our deck and look at the Japanese maples up close.

Can you believe the color spectrum on each tiny leaf?

This variety is named "Sister Ghost".

(There is a whole Japanese maple "Ghost" family-Grandma Ghost, Purple Ghost...and all of them are simply splendid!)

Another view of Sister Ghost.

"Fairy Hair", with leaves nearly hair like thin, and the rest of the year it is spring green in color.

Then, one day, it magically Fairy Hair goes from being a green fairy to being a red fairy!

This one has a Japanese name that I can't spell or pronounce, but both Bernie and Jeff can rattle its name off with a perfect Japanese accent!

Autumn Moon.

The blotches will eventually join together to be make a solid colored leaf.

Hogyogo spring green leaves turn orange little by little.

While the spring green Coral Bark (with red bark!) turns yellow with crimson edges.

Each leaf is about the size of a quarter.

Such delicacy!

Not sure this one's name.

Japanese maples are so dear.

They leaf out in one color in the spring (pink, lime, burgundy, apricot) then go green for summer, then switch again for autumn.

Each tree is like having three trees in one!

Not to let the Japanese maples hog all the autumn garden glory:

The Autumn Anemone is blossoming wildly as well.

The pink color seemed seasonally out of place to me years ago.

Now I find that pink shows up in many autumnal scenes.

The double anemone is extravagantly dressed in her floppy layers.

The Baldsmith queens over the anemone.

Purple stems, hints of orange and pinky reds can be seen upon closer inspection.

Viewing leaves from inches away reveal hidden colors every time.

An autumn robin overhead?

It sat in the tree and gave its single note call over and over again.

It looked fat and downy and ready for winter's arrival.

As did the fluffy resident orange cat, who knows how to pose for best effect.

Another week and the green grass will be buried in yellow leaves.

For now, each leaf is hunt worthy for Tate the cheerful cat.

For now, each day brings more colors and reasons to enjoy being outside, whether outside is found far away or steps away in my own back yard.

(And these were just the some of the Japanese maples in our back yard! The front yard collection is knocking it out too!)

October Catch up: 1 : Luke Time and No October Ugly.

Oh my...October has been dishing up goodies so fast. 

My eyes and brain and camera are taking it all in; my blogging fingers are falling behind!

So...

I think I will just blog several posts back to back.

I don't want to miss a thing for my blog memory book, which I use for both happy returns to pleasant moments and for documentation as to when those moments happened, calendar wise.

Catch up time: Here we go!

 

Last Thursday, October 17th, I got to have Luke all to myself for the day.

 

I dished up some of his favorite yogurt and prepared to sit and spoon feed him.

A jingle went off in my mind.

I fished in the silverware drawer for the toddler spoon that came with his baby spoon set and handed it to him, wondering if I was courting a full-on yogurt mess.

Delightful!

He is spooning away rather neatly I'd say.

And apparently he is a right handed eater.

(He did later on do a full flat hand dip into the yogurt and then proceeded to suck the goop off, but he even did that neatly too.  Ah well. We will not be attending formal dinners for a while yet anyway.) 

He howled about being put into his crib for nap time, even though he had been rubbing his eyes and staring blankly earlier.

 After 20 minutes of sitting out on the deck to try to ignore his protests, I gave up and popped him into his car seat and drove him up Mill Creek Canyon instead.

He was fast asleep before we were half way up the canyon. 

Near the top of the canyon I pulled over, parked and watched the aspen leaves falling like rain all around me.

 

 

After a bit, I rolled down the car window and breathed in the snow fresh mountain air.

Then, with a grateful heart, I prayed.

It was wonderful to have no place else I needed to be and nothing else I needed to do.

That combination, plus shifting sunlight on golden aspen and the soft breathing of a sleeping baby made the time incomparable to me.

When Luke finally awoke, I drove down the canyon for a drive through hamburger to share with him, and then we visited a garden center.

Another wild pumpkin was admired.

A sweet black cat played "Catch me if you can" with Luke.

 

Then the black cat drifted away into the Halloween themed garden area.

 

I wish I could say that I was totally pleased with our Halloween garden visit.

Luke stared hard at some of the more alarming ghouls and monsters.

Such things I did not wish for him to consider.

Our October day's beauty felt besmirched by the ugliness.

I scooped him up and we retreated back to my house where we frolicked in my garden and finished up our day.

 

Our encounter with Halloween made me recall something I had read earlier in the month, in my absolute favorite magazine Southern Living.

It is the magazine whose arrival makes me drop whatever I am doing and settle in for a reading treat.

There is a page called "Editor's Welcome" at the beginning of the magazine; it is the page which I always read first.

October's Editor's Welcome had me cheering and thanking heaven that SOMEONE was willing to go on record about Ugly Halloween.

 

Editor M. Lindsay Bierman had this to say on the subject:

 

"When it comes to seasonal decorating, we're not known for our restrain-except around Halloween time. Year after year, as soon as October planning kicks into high gear here at SL HQ, all sorts of requests and proposals for ghoulish, spooky, and witchy ideas return from their editorial graves.

 

I've said it on this page before, and I'll keep saying it until my eyes bulge out of my head:

NO!

Serve me up some divine, crowd-pleasing Cinderella Cheesecake (page 130) any day over tombstone-shaped cookies iced with the letters "RIP" rising from the mock soil surface of dark chocolate sheet cake. (Google it, if the spirit moves you, but you may want to think twice before serving it to young children.)

 

All this month's glorification of death and dismemberment runs counter to the beauty of changing leaves, cool temperatures, and warm casseroles popping out of ovens (and our test kitchen) right now all across the South.

 

There's enough angst in the world these days, and folks seem plenty on edge without editors like me having to come up with new ways to frighten their friends and neighbors.

 

I figure I can shock mine by doing something that no one would ever expect: bake up one of the breads featured on page 111.

 

I know-I need to let it go.

 

But before I do, let me just say this issue is all about celebrating our magical change of season, not piling on more dark imagery to mourn it.

 

To me, autumn...should be hailed as a second spring-a blissful moment between extremes of temperature that allows us to stop and appreciate the cycles of nature and the promise, once again, of a new beginning.

 

Well said Mr. Bierman!!!

Happy Gentle Autumn to you!

And perhaps, someday, the idea of a Hallowed Evening and Hallowed Day of remembering the Saints who have passed onto heaven will once again come back into favor.

Perhaps all the splendid Fall colors are God's offering to celebrate them after all.