Post Halloween

The Halloween holiday always has a few memorable images. I spotted this beautiful old pickup on a country road not too far from Coleraine. The owner had the spirit of the holiday and found a reasonable use for his derelict truck. He came out of his driveway just as I took the photo and stopped for a short chat. He seemed pleased that I'd stop and take a picture of his handy work. We both smiled and went on our respective ways.

The price of pumpkins has crashed and the crash came just the day after Halloween. I suspect that even with the new price the vendor will have trouble selling his remaining stock.

I returned from my northern adventure in time for a return to the tennis court today. We were inside at Fort Snelling, but it was clear that the outdoor season has run its course for another year. Barring a miraculous return to warm weather, tennis in Minnesota has become an indoor sport again.

Theme Day

November first is a theme day - Santini says the theme is "fences." This photo has a wall and two fences, plus some leaves that have turned to reveal autumn colors.  And a bike path.  And some blue sky.  I think it will suffice. It's also blog every day month so I'm on track to comply, just like I did last year.

It's Tuesday and a day off from the tennis wars. I'm letting my sore ankles rest until tomorrow.

Leaves aplenty

It's a quandary. The anniversary of the blizzard of '91, when about two feet of snow fell on my backyard, is tomorrow. I have trees with leaves still attached left in my yard and in adjacent yards. Today, I decided to begin the process of gathering the leaves and bagging them up for the recycle site. I know I'll have to do it again, but the process passed for exercise, and I was able to squeeze off a couple of middling photos for the blog. There are still leaves on other trees, as I said before, including these colorful, but reluctant bits of foliage.

This is the main pile from the sugar maple in the back yard.

Halloween is tomorrow. Good haunting to all.

Paucity of Pumpkin Pics

Halloween is just three days away and I hadn't posted a pumpkin photo yet. Nor have any of my favorite blogs. I'm getting into the feel of the season with today's photo of a jack o'lantern (nee pumpkin) sitting in a window about a block from here. The neighborhood is working on decorating the porches and yards in anticipation of the yearly celebration of "boo." There may be more photos of good displays as the weekend moves on.

The weather was decent today, at least for sauntering around outside. Those of you who use velocipede's to get around probably needed to cover up any exposed skin or risk frostbite from the arrival of windchill.

There was tennis at Fort Snelling again this early afternoon. I'm starting to wear down for the week, but the competition was still entertaining and I was able to keep up with the other geezer guys. One more day of competition for the week and for the month tomorrow at Wooddale.

Mileposts

It seems like it's been a strange fall season. I was thinking about the range of colored leaves as I hiked around the neighborhood this afternoon in my warmup exercise for evening tennis. There are a lot of trees that haven't changed colors, yet there are some very bright reddish orange maples that are very noticeable in the area. And there are the ash trees that gave up their leaves weeks ago. Some of the trees that are still green are maples. And some oaks. In this photo from east of me on Fairmount there is a flaming reddish maple in front, but behind it is another maple which is very green. And another thing.  And it hasn't frozen yet in my neighborhood. My tomato plants are still exuding green fruit.

Here's a whole block of reticent changers. I don't know what they're waiting for unless it's perhaps a temperature in the 20's.

So here it is the 27th of October and after tonight's tennis action, I've played 31 complete sets of tennis this month. That beats the previous high of 30 set in January and again in March of this year. And I've got two more days of tennis scheduled. It's been a busy month.

Fort Snelling

I had a 2 o'clock appointment with some tennis players, but I got an early start and stopped by the fort at Fort Snelling to have a look at the river and to maybe take a picture or two. A lot of the trees up on the hill above the river have lost their leaves, but a few oaks are just now coming into their own. This one had lost some of its leaves but still retains some nice red color.

I walked to the chapel at Fort Snelling, too. It's one of the oldest religious buildings in the state. In the yard outside the chapel there is a lonely little grave of the first white child born in Minnesota - at least according to the head stone. She was Elizabeth Snelling, and she died in her infancy at age 13 months and is buried here. A little piece of Minnesota history.

After the walk, I made my way to Fred Wells Tennis Center at Fort Snelling for an hour and a half of tennis - nearly two complete sets - with the usual gang of geezers. The ages of the geezers today - 72, 70, 69, 66. A total of 277.

Still October

It was a drab sort of day today, but yesterday was bright and shiny. I took a picture of a maple about a block from home on my way to the drugstore to buy drugs ... I mean vitamins. There are still some trees that haven't decided to change to their brighter colors, even some varieties of maple. And the oaks. It's sill pretty around here.

I'm also posting some older photos, just because I scanned them in and find them entertaining. It's nice to look at photos of people from more than 50 years ago and still be able to recognize them. These two young looking people are still younger than me. You know who you are.

This is one of the few photos I have of the original Tag, our cocker spaniel - springer spaniel mix dog of our childhood. He was a golden color as I recall, but the photo comes from the era before I could afford color film. And the car is a classic, too. I think it's a Pontiac from the 1950's sometime.

No tennis today, but tomorrow is on, and it may be nice enough to play outside. I'm hoping for one or two more days of outdoors friendly weather before the snow flies.

Thursday in October

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon and since I hadn't blogged for a while and since I needed to get into nature again, I took my walk-around camera and went to Minnehaha Park to roam around. I parked in my usual free parking spot and went over to see the falls. And since I hadn't been to Longfellow garden in a bit I ambled over there to see how the autumn was progressing. I know that the Prairie Princess, who likes to be known as the Daughter of Norway these days, would like to see how the native grasses are getting along.  And so did I.  The view from down by the creek looking up the hill towards the old, deteriorating statue of Longfellow was nice enough to open today's posting. The grasses have browned, but since the first freeze hasn't hit the center of the city yet, there were still flowers and green leaves on the trees.

The creek (Minnehaha) flows under Hiawatha and to the falls. The water is low because of the paucity of rain in the area, but it's a quiet comforting sight as it flows through the tunnel.

I walked south, following the creeks path, but from up above the flood plain. As I neared the bridge to the Veteran's Center, I encountered some wild turkeys walking in the underbrush, bravely and brashly showing themselves to possible predators. I guess they weren't very frightened of me. The quantity of wildlife within the city limits is often a surprise to me as I saunter through the parks and wild areas in the Twin Cities.

And, there was Thursday night mixed doubles at Wooddale. We played a couple of sets with a lot of interesting, competitive sets - the hardcore girls, plus Jerry and me - 6-4, 6-3. Then I went to Yang's Chinese food restaurant for some of that succulent Singapore rice noodles.

Cloudy fall day

The autumn has been odd here in the Saintly City. The first frost has not yet come to this part of the city and the tomatoes and many of the fall flowers still persist. On the street light a couple of houses down the street, flowers that should have frozen by now continue to beautify the neighborhood.  Morning glories?

A block east of here a young maple tree has decided to turn scarlet and begin to drop its leaves. I think it must be reacting to the shorter day light hours. The ash trees, of course, have dropped their leaves, the quitters.

I'm going to Wooddale and play some indoor tennis.

Herds

It rained on St Paul today. It was a lot of rain, even some hail, and moved the tennis session inside to Fort Snelling, where it was dry, but a little noisy from the rain beating on the bubble. The tennis was fun, but the weather made the acquisition of suitable photos for blogging just too hard. These are from last weekend.

On a walk at Crosby Farm, these curious deer were close enough to get into a photographic frame. There were three of them, a doe and two first year fawns. They stayed around long enough to get their photos taken then thought better of the situation and bounded off.

And a slightly larger herd, but this time of Segway "vehicles." They were practicing their skills in the area around the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis. I caught them gathering together for a conference of some kind. You don't often see a herd of Segways of this size even in the wild. It might have been these guys.

The signs of autumn are growing more numerous in Minnesota. It has been a nice long spell of above normal weather, but soon the kingdom of winter will begin to prevail.