I went to vote this morning, got my sticker, and then waited around for the blizzard to arrive

The first possibly plowable snow of the season is expected here tonight. It's starting to look like it may actually dump perhaps 4-6 inches of lovely whiteness on St Paul's lawns and sidewalks. The Jack O'Lanterns are still sitting on steps and porches and likely will have a different look tomorrow. This sad looking monkey was on Osceola Street, hopelessly awaiting the hungry squirrels. I've been watching the squirrels scratch out vittles from the lawn - digging holes and burying treasured morsels. This year we have three colors of the long-tailed vermin - black, gray and white albinos.

The polling place in my neighborhood, where I spent several patriotic minutes this morning, voting, wasn't very busy. There were only two races on the ballot - mayor and school board - and the incumbents were heavily favored. The authorities expected about 15% of the eligible electorate to turn out today. St Paul is using ranked choice voting for mayor this time - the first time used here - and four candidates are vying for Chris Coleman's job. Everybody gets to vote for up to three candidates in order of preference and the computers sort out the winner, or so I'm told.

I saw several cardinals flitting about in the bushes in the back yard this morning - maybe five or six bright red males. I would have thought that they would have left for points south by now, but they looked busy, flying about, looking for food and contesting for their own home areas. I suspect that they'll be gone soon. I don't think that they winter here.

The fourth consecutive day of featuring Jack O' Lanterns

I'm still finding it quite easy to find Halloween pumpkins - Jackos - that continue to adorn the yards of the neighborhood. This one, and a companion pumpkin, stand next to the sidewalk at an apartment complex on Chatsworth, less than a block from home. It is starting to show some effects of weathering and age.  But continues to smile.

This is the same photo as yesterday except that the large black plastic bags that were once stuffed full of leaves and stacked here, have vanished. Evidence of due diligence in ridding my yard of leaves discarded by the neighborhood trees.

I must protest the policies of Ramsey County, especially the leaf recycling center on Pleasant Avenue. They don't accept "donations" until 11 a.m. on Mondays and then are closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They should start earlier in this season of yard toil. The Prairie Princess and I were poised to deliver the 16 bags of "yard waste" to them much earlier than that, but were forced to wait while a driving rain storm moved into town. It began to rain in earnest at about 10:45 and we were forced to deliver the bags to them in a steady downpour. We had to empty the bags and take them home with us, which meant that we had to untie the tops of the bags before ridding them of their contents. In a few words - "we got drenched." But we got the job done, three trips to the center and ten minutes of drying out and cleaning the car.   And ourselves.

To make the day much brighter, we went to the Italian Pie Shoppe with NCW to refuel and enjoy the wonder of hot, luscious pizza on a cold day. Ah, the taste of warm, sausage pizza.

The weather has turned again towards a wintry mix. There may be snow tomorrow and if so it may be harder to find a Jacko for the blog, but I made the strategic move of buying a pie pumpkin from Trader Joe's today and may have to make my own Jacko to station in the backyard to see what the squirrels make of that.

I mistakenly watched the Vikings play football today

It's Sunday and the third day of what Santini has called BEDFAMM. I have once again found a Halloween leftover in my neighborhood. This "jacko" was less than a block away and still looks pretty fresh. The squirrels are not yet destroying this one, but its time is coming.

The fruit of a couple of hours of raking and black bag stuffing was about a dozen well filled containers of damp maple and ash leaves. PP, Unky Herb and NCW rallied for some fun in the yard. NCW brought her leaf blower/suction device with her on our last return trip from the north. She named it Munchie 2, and sometimes calls it Barnie. It's reasonably adept at collecting leaves, but not as fast as the old style bag stuffing that has been around since black plastic leaf bags were invented. (She likes to name her machines. Her sewing machine is named "Ruby.") The rakes we used did most of the heavy work. We managed to get almost all of the current crop of leaves into one or another of the bags, but there is a large maple tree in the westerly neighbors' yard that seems to be bogarting its leaves - waiting until I'm unawares and then planning to drop a load in the yard.

Daylight Saving Time has fled and we're back to standard time, but it's still 54º and a pretty nice day at somewhat past 4 p.m. November has been kind thus far, but it's early and I plan to be vigilant.

There will be a city election next week, too. It's just for mayor and school board, but November elections seem to be a regular part of getting through to the end of the year. I almost always vote, even when it's not a contested election. I guess it just seems like it's a citizen's duty.

There are still Jack O'Lanterns on St Paul's porches

My favorite weather site is currently reading 57º and the sun has been out all day. It's a beautiful day. PP and NCW were up for a walk to Linwood Park and around the neighborhood. In addition, NCW needs to exercise her healing ankle so we set out around the neighborhood. The Halloween pumpkins are still sitting around on folk's porches, remnants of the candy eating holiday. Some of them show quite a bit of imagination and creativity on the part of their creators. I liked this one today. I may try to include more as the month goes on as long as the squirrels don't completely mess them up.  Which they will, eventually.

We walked to Linwood Park, past the neighbors raking leaves, and past the garden on Milton where the owner raised a whole yard full of red peppers of perhaps fifty varieties. PP said that Drew had talked to him about his crop, and he apparently harvests them all and makes sauce for his own consumption - including the ghost pepper, one of the spiciest in the world.  He eats them every day, Drew says.  The guy seems to have a cast iron stomach. When we walked by we noticed that all the peppers had been harvested, from all 50-100 plants in his front yard. (I love living in the city.)

We managed a 45 minute walk and are now home where PP is practicing her new artistry - classical guitar - which she's learning from some site on the internet. I'm blogging and recovering from my morning session of geezer tennis at Wooddale. Today, I was the oldest guy on court 3, but managed to hold my own. Later I plan to read a little more of my current reading material, "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  A tome and a half.  A historical narrative about Abe Lincoln and his cabinet.  NCW is sewing.

The trees are very beautiful this time of year. They are a little out of phase with expectations for November, but I think part of the problem has been the late spring. There are some streets yet, in the Saintly City, where the leaves on all the trees are still green and some where the trees are naked. This sugar maple is in its prime and with the blue sky behind it, quite striking. I'm not sure that I captured the beauty of it, but the photo is what it is.

Day 2 of November and the blogging continues.

Blog every day in November?????

It's November and I've blogged every day in November for the last several Novembers. It was a challenge, but I sort of liked the process. I think I'm going to do it again. Who's in???

I played tennis today at Fort Snelling. 6-2, 4-3. It was my now normal Friday session with the usual participants but with one sub. The oldest guy on the court, Dr. Bill, reiterated that every time that he's played tennis in about two years, he's been the oldest guy on the court. It happens to me sometimes, too, but not with the same consistency. Dr. Bill is 74 or 75, I forget which.

The North Country Woman (NCW) is now able to drive her vehicle. Her ankle surgery has healed enough that she tried out the new foot and pronounced herself capable of driving to her daughter's house and for sure to Trader Joe's.And she drove it to prove it.  Later  we had a walk up to Grand avenue and took in the sunny afternoon. Yesterday was Halloween and most of the Jack O'Lanterns are still out in the open. The squirrels haven't noticed them yet, but they soon will. These two were a couple of the nicest that I saw today. A cat and a big smiley guy.

The trees are looking like it's November. There are some that haven't received the message yet and they still are adorned with green leaves. The city has decided to sweep the streets. They say they can't wait for the trees to drop their leaves because it's probably going to snow and then they won't be able to sweep at all. At least the ash trees have agreed to participate. They gave up right away.

Day one. Twenty-nine more to go.

An eagle tale

October is threatening to leave and with it the last few chances to play outdoors tennis until spring, or maybe February in a warm southern state. Today was supposed to bring a little session of flurries, but instead it was just dark.

The NCW and I are back from a short weekend jaunt to the Range to check on her property and to sort of get ready for the dark months. She still is walking around in a cast that is made for walking, but driving is a few days away. Recovery is well on its way though. Today she went to work in Shoreview and I did some household chores and paid some outstanding bills. My computer modem, router and wifi cabling are still on the Comcast acceptable list, so I didn't have to arm wrestle any techies to get on the internet.

On the way back from fetching NCW at her place of employment, on Lexington Avenue near Roseville's Central Park, we encountered a bald eagle. He swooped down about a block in front of us to grab a choice chunk of road kill on the road. It was in the northbound lane as we traveled south, so he didn't seem to be worried about colliding with us. He misjudged a bit the stickiness of the choice morsel on the roadway. It took a couple of seconds to pry it free, but he was successful and managed to take off again and fly towards the trees on my side of the road. I guess he erred a bit in his trajectory calculations, because he flew directly into my path, and I was forced to brake to avoid knocking him out of the sky. I got a good visual closeup, but without my camera in hand, I can't really prove it. Instead, I'm left with this photo of another eagle taken in October, 2006, on Pike Island, to stand in for today's bird. It may be a grandparent.

It was dark day, but even on dark days there are memorable moments.

Halloween is just two days off.  The Prairie Princess carved a couple of jack-o-lanterns over the weekend, so I guess we're covered.  The eating season always starts with the candy holiday.  It's coming around again.

In Recovery

The North Country woman, pictured here from the 1940's, is recovering nicely from an ankle operation to remove about 29 pounds of metal from her ankle, put there six or seven years ago to repair a broken ankle, suffered on a fall on the north country ice. She is recuperating and is doing nicely, although it may be a few weeks before she salsa dances or runs a half marathon.  The doctor complimented her on her nice veins and the beautiful EKG.  Who knew?

No other photos are available.

Cardinal flowers

After a busy weekend, celebrating the arrival of NCW in a new decade, I came back to St Paul. The Prairie Princess was here and this afternoon we decided to take a walk over by Como Park, a place that she hasn't visited in the summer in two years. It has changed a bit, but the important spots are still there. As it turns out there are quite a few cardinal flowers growing in various spots around the lake, and so I was able to join the other bloggers who have graced their blogs with photos of this flower.  Now five of us have seen them lately.

There are monarch butterflies in the area. On our walk in Como, around the lake and through the butterfly garden, past innumerable milk weeds, we encountered a grand total of three monarchs. It's a slow year for them apparently after last year's drought in much of the USA. I caught this guy on a flower near the north end of Como Lake.

It was a quiet day at Como today. School is in session, so there were no field trips yet, and the only other activity in this pleasant September evening were other walkers and a school of karate students breaking boards near the Schilling statue - not pictured here.

The 120 party

It was the weekend for the 120 birthday party where a lot of the family and friends of the Pengilly woman and her eldest son gathered to celebrate their birthdays. Both ages were round numbers and the total of their two ages is 120 years. You can do the math. There was much laughter and consuming of food and drink. I didn't get a head count, but it was a crowd. I brought along the Prairie Princess for her first visit to NCW's lake and her first chance to meet some of the family. There was a cake and a video presentation of a lot of photos from the lives of the principals. The celebrants are pictured below with the cake.

A hit activity at the birthday party was the photo booth. The idea was to don a costume or disguise and have your picture taken. These fun loving folk are the North Country Woman and her children in self selected disguises.

The weather turned to rain in the late afternoon, but the party went on under the rented tent and around the tables of food set up in the garage. There were several photographers, but I managed to get some shots of the attendees. This one depicts the NCW with grandchildren in her living room as the end of the birthday party was approaching.

Mark and Peggy arrived yesterday about noon after the party had dispersed. We had a chance for to talk and to eat together. They missed the big crowd, but had a chance to visit the lake and enjoy the north country atmosphere. Mark and Peggy posed just before they left for home this morning on their shiny new motorcycle.

Today was Farmer's Day in Bovey. I hadn't been there for the celebration in 53 years, so I thought it might be fun to stop to see what was going on. It was meant to substitute for a visit to the State Fair, a visit that I was unable to complete this year, mostly due to scheduling conflicts, extremely hot weather in St Paul, and a couple of days of fatigue from playing tennis in the extremely hot weather. Farmer's Day seemed to be a good substitute for the fair, a remedy better than more cow bell, so we set out this afternoon to see Bovey. I was going to get a photo to post to the blog, because if there's no photo, then there was no event. Well, there's no photo, because there was precious little in the way of event. I did run into an old classmate and her hubby, and I guess that made the day a little bit better.

Potpourri

It was a nice enough day to play some tennis this morning. It's the third day since my return from the big lake that I've hit some balls, and the coolest of the three. The Prairie Princess needed some exercise and wanted to swat a few, so this morning we went to the Linwood Courts and swatted a few. I didn't get any photos so I'm using this photo of TT (me) hitting a forehand at the James Street courts in Holland last week. I wasn't dressed in blue today, but I was hitting to the same recent returnee to USA.  And using the same racket.

The Prairie Princess is getting back into American life. She has a new cell phone and has been to a couple of well supplied American grocery stores, and Target. This afternoon we took a walk in Crosby Park, around Upper Lake and past a lot of North American plants that she hadn't seen in about two years. She still knows the names of more of them than I do. Like the cup plant.  It was warm, but nice to be out among the trees and wild things.  We even saw a humming bird and a monarch butterfly.  

A photo from the Zooniverse site from the Serengeti. They sent it to me as reward for giving them money and helping out with an on-line project to identify African animals in photos taken by motion activated cameras in the Serengeti. The project is part of a University of Minnesota graduate students' study of animal movement and populations over time in the Serengeti. They have enlisted the power of the internet to examine the millions of photos taken over six seasons of the project.

It's the Labor Day weekend. I guess it started today. There will be a big party in Pengilly to recognize 120 years of life - a double birthday party. So I wish a happy birthday to Steve and his mom, the North Country Woman.