Today's leaves and happenings...

I don't quite know where to begin...with the pictures or with this day. I guess I will go with the pictures since they fall first.
This is the cottonwoods across the street. When I was trying to round up my cats the other morning, I happened to notice how the sunlight was hitting the first of three cottonwoods. I loved how the leaves just seem to have a golden glow.
Since I was having no success in calling Cougar home, I came in and got my camera and tried to capture that glow...I didn't succeed. I don't know why I didn't bracket some shots....I do that all the time when taking snow scenes but didn't think to do it with these.
I think I have got them adjusted till they will show up right on the computer, but not real sure. After I publish the post, I will check it out on the desktop computer and see how they look there.
Now for today. I am not sure, but don't think I mentioned that a month or 6 weeks ago...my husband stubbed his little toe on his right foot. Not once, not twice, but three times. Each time was almost harder than the time before. The last time he went barefoot out in the garage for something and kicked a cast iron jack stand with it, and moved it 5 or 6 inches.

That little toe gradually started bothering him worse and worse--felt like someone had hold of it squeezing real hard. He could not stand for the covers to be on it, and most shoes bothered it, especially if he was walking on uneven ground. So he had an appointment with a podiatrist 3 or 4 weeks ago. The doctor suggested surgery.

So today we had to be in Terre Haute at the hospital at 6:30 this morn. The doctor cut out a nerve, as well as a sort of spur on the tip of one of the bones. We were back home by 11:00 a.m. or so...the surgery itself only took about 15 minutes...we got there early in order to hurry up and wait. I no more than got home till I realized I had forgotten to drop of the prescription for pain meds, so I had to turn around and take that to the pharmacy....had to wait an hour for it to be filled.

And though the story is not mine to be made public, will just say that we also spent Wednesday at the hospital with someone else. I don't know about anyone else, but just sitting in the hospital tires me a whole lot more than an actual job. I am relieved that today is over with...I know it is going to be hard on my husband to just sit around....but surely he can manage that till the 10th, which is when he gets the stitches out.

Time for Sky Watching!

It is time for Sky Watch Friday once again. It is almost a habit that is hard to break. I don't have any recent pictures , so I was thinking about ignoring the fact that it was Thursday. It has become such a habit for me, though, that I resorted to some photos taken earlier this year.

They are all taken within a very few miles of each other, and probably within 2 or 3 hours time.
The last two photos here were among my favorites, not saying that the others don't have merit. I just didn't do a good job in the first photo of capturing what I saw and though I have messed around with Photoshop, I cannot seem to recreate what I saw with what I took, so left it the way I took it.
If you want to join Sky Watch, click on the badge at the top or go HERE. It is a lot of fun to see the views from around the world and I am very thankful to the team that keeps this running. The team is made up of : Klaus, Sandy, Ivar, Wren, and Fishing Guy. Sky Watch Links officially open today at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

A glimpse of Sunday...

My daughter asked me if I wanted to go for a short walk with her Sunday evening...I asked where? The strip pit? She knows I am almost always up for a trip out there...it is only about 5 minutes away. It is not the one we used to fish at, but just a small one that was made available to the community out there. A walk around it is approximately a mile long...I go one time. Then my daughter went for another lap. On her second lap she spotted the above 'fisherman.'
And these are a couple of the trees we passed on our way home. I have taken a ga-zillion fall pictures, but I just cannot resist views like these.

Round barn re-visited

I made a small post about this barn HERE....in it I stated that it is in the northern part of Vermillion county. I don't know why I made that statement...I know that Vermillion county is on the west side of the Wabash River, and this barn is on the east side. In Parke County.
We took a drive last week and ended up passing by it again. I took the opportunity to stop and take some new pictures.
Information in the book A Round Indiana by John T. Hanou states it was built in 1895 and believed to be the first true circular barn built in Indiana.
I am so glad that it is still standing. At one time, there were 8 of these round barns in Parke County. Now there is this one, and maybe one other if nothing has happened to it since the book was written. I have never had the luck to run across the other though.

That's My World Tuesday

It's again time to visit the world through the That's My World Tuesday meme...it is simple if you want to join just click on the link and you can show off your part of the world. Or, if you are not ready to join, you can just see the world through other peoples blogs by clicking on the links there.

It sure was with sadness that I read Tom and Imac are retiring from the team. They have been an encouragement to me in blogland.

Now to my post for today...I worked for years at an apple orchard. The picker on the left side of the row of trees was my picker for years. (that is not me on it.) If I am out there to visit, it is still my machine. The tractor pictured is not the tractor I started with...it is only about 7 years old as I speak. It was bought new, ordered with tires as small as they come till it would fit through the trees when they are loaded down with apples.
These are just a few of the apple trees...the ones above are some of the younger trees. I probably helped set some of them. The orchard is a small orchard--it had about 2,000 trees. In those 2,000 trees we had 20+ varieties.
favorite job I ever did out there, or maybe for all time, was grafting. I felt like I was creating something...but I sure loved picking and didn't mind the pruning except sometimes the cold got to me. When I was pruning I felt like an artist at work.
The above was the the first variety picked at our orchard; they are EarliBlaze. And the ones below are Blushing Golden, picked a bit past mid season and they are probably my favorite apple.
These below are Arkansas Black...they were picked at the very end of October, and at that time we only had the Granny Smith apples to pick after, though we did plant some Pink Ladies before I quit, and they have an even longer growing season that the Grannies, as we called them.
The Arkansas Blacks are gourmet cooking apples...but a lot of people love them because they are so hard and crisp.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of where I spent years of my life. The orchard is still a working orchard, and I still visit every now and then.

Something simple

I like this picture...I am not sure if my husband understood why I wanted to take it. I can't even explain why I like it. It was definitely the wrong time of day to take it but I have to take pictures when I have the chance. Also, since getting this laptop, I have a real hard time knowing if the picture is too dark or too light. Does anyone have a sure-fire way to deal with that?

Childhood memories...

This leaf was trying to float in the small amount of water in the stream that the covered bridge below spans. The second photo is the original...I was trying to make the water look more like what I remembered but then the leave has exaggerated contrasts. So try to picture something in between the two images and you will come nearer seeing what I seen.
This is the Marshall Bridge in Parke Country, Indiana. One of the shorter bridges--56 ft in length.
When we were kids, we had Gap Creek that bordered our farm in Tennessee. Every summer, well, it wasn't actually every summer, but at least 2 or 3 summers or possibly 4...my nephew that is the same age as me came down and spent the summers with us in Tennessee.

In my memories, we played in that creek every single day of the week, except maybe if it stormed and flooded. We turned over rocks in search of crawdads, hunted for fresh water mussels....not to eat or anything like that. It was just fun to search for them...and we did sometimes move them from their sandy spot in the water to a spot of our choosing...I don't really remember if they ever stayed or not.

I may have told about this before...so forgive me if I am boring you. These are just some of the happiest memories I have. I don't really remember our age, but we had to be up around 10 years old I think...just going by some of the other things we did.

On the other side of the creek a huge sycamore tree had been uprooted, I assume during a storm. It lay out over the neighbor's pasture--his cattle could walk under it with ease. The tree itself was so big around that we could neither have put our arms around it. Anyway, he and I would take such things as mustard and onion sandwiches and get out on it and sit and watch the cows and laugh and talk.

I don't remember if I had chores back then or what they were if I did....yet I can't imagine not having something I was responsible for. I know one thing I had to do and that was wash the supper dishes...mommy did the morning dishes, we both worked on the dinner dishes. (We always called lunch dinner, and the evening meal was always supper.) But other than that, I don't know what else I did.

Anyway, any time I am at a creek, it immediately brings to mind my childhood....or that of our own daughters. We don't have much of a creek near us, but there was a few years when they were kids that we went fishing quite often at Bridgeton and Mansfield. Roger and I fished, and they fished some, but they played more as we waded.

When we were doing that, we always got one of the hard plastic kiddie pools and kept in our backyard each summer, and they would bring home their treasures...crawdads, pumpkin seed bluegill, tadpoles, and some kind of bug that I can't remember the name of right now. But it was a water bug. I feel like I am forgetting something else but for the life of me I can't think what it would be. Now, neither of them have much time to enjoy the outdoors, but both still love it.

Camera Critters

I know it is kind of late but I thought I would share a couple pictures taken this week. I thought posting only one and about titling the post #49, but then that would make one think I had participated in Camera Critters 49 times and I think this is either my 2nd or 3rd time. And I think this is the 29th week for CCs anyway.

So I just posted both...if you want to join or just see more from the animal world, either click on the badge at the top or click Here.

Roger has been busy

If you are here for Sky Watch shots, please scroll on down. I just couldn't wait any longer to post these.
They are two of my husband's latest creations. The one in the top two photos is for a good friend that he worked with for years. This friend has not even seen it yet. The friend did supply the deer antler for the handle. He has had both the knives shown finished for a few days, but did the sheath for the top one day before yesterday.
(Don't you just love those kitty paws in the photo above????)
This knife in the bottom two photos was given to the son of another very good friend. Roger made the sheath while he and his dad were here visiting this evening and sent it home with him. I didn't think to get a picture of the sheath but it was simple made like the one above.
I really need to start laying a ruler by the knives or something till an idea of their size can be had. The knife in the top photo is quite a bit bigger than the second knife. I also need to develop all the views I want to take of the knives. I tend to get a little bit excited about things and I end up forgetting something.

Such as I wish I had taken a picture looking down the 'spine' of this...not sure what the correct term is. Roger did some file work on the edge of the back of the blade--it was his first time trying that and it turned out rather well. Just a little bit of cosmetic work.

I know I am a little bit prejudiced, but all his friends tell him he should sell his knives...they offer to buy them. I think it is amazing that he takes a flat piece of metal and makes a knife from start to finish. He usually doodles and comes up with the shape of the knife on paper first. He cuts the metal to shape himself, and does all the heat treating in his gas forge which he built himself, does all the sanding and grinding and buffing, makes the handles from whatever material.

As I type this, I realize I know so little of the process itself...so I am going to have to start taking notes when he tells me stuff. And maybe at some later date try to give a more accurate description of how he makes his knives.

Sky Watch Friday

This is from a slide taken in 1994--I posted it at my other blog several weeks ago. But I like it so much I am repeating it here.
Click on the badge at the top to join Sky Watch Friday.

Just a few more autumn colors...

That's My World in the USA!

A new meme has opened up called That's My World. I am running late getting this ready...I was actually preparing to get this ready to post early in the day when a friend stopped by. And while she was here, I had a phone call. As anyone knows that has followed this blog hardly at all, my favorite thing to do is to get in the car and just take off--destination unknown. Just follow where the inclination takes us.
I have really been enjoying the autumn colors, and hoping everyone don't mind a few more. These three photos were all taken on one of our rambling drives. It was kind of hard to choose just a couple or three.
If you want to join, or just check out more views, just go check in at That's My World.

Still waters...

My brother, Neal of Photographic Memories and I often discuss the merits of landscape or portrait layout for photos. I think I probably take a few more in the portrait style than he does. So I thought I would give you the different versions and ask which you like best and why.
The top three photos are all the same place, up at Mansfield, Indiana. I hope you will enlarge the photos before you pass judgement.


This was a little stream, and I am not sure if I was in Indiana or Illinois. I first thought I liked the portrait layout best, but the more I look, the more I think I like the landscape best.

Views from The House of the Singing Winds...

The above is the drive that led up to the house...and below is Lowell, our tour guide. He was a very interesting guy to talk to...I cannot even remember all the jobs he has held. But he had been a school teacher for one thing. I assumed he had retired from that.

Here is a view leading up to the house from the side...remember I told you I didn't get any actual pictures of the house itself.
I seemed to get bits and pieces of it in my photos, just never got the house itself. I took this one because of the ironwork...this was leading from the front where Lowell was getting ready to take us inside.....
to the back porch which this is taken from. That is Steele's studio we are looking at from here.

The photos above and below are just what you look out on from different areas around the house...don't they look just so peaceful. Makes you want to go take a walk and sit and rest a spell.
And this is their final resting place. He and his wife, and I think her sister, and two or three others were all cremated and their urns buried here, and the headstones set directly on top of the urn.
I am adding this late...should have been my first comment. Day4plus informed me that the plant/flowers shown yesterday was Hydrangea paniculata 'Grandifolia' or Peegee Hydrangea. I am so glad she told me the name...I didn't think it was a snowball bush, but didn't really think for sure that it was a hydrangea. I guess I have either never seen this variety or else never seen one when it got this big. And Mary at Faith, Fabric and Photos had told me they were hydrangeas.