As the leaves take leave...

I spent part of this morning watching leaves close to the house fall from left to right, while those further west by one hundred or so yards fell right to left. Swirling breeze? Anyhow, the trees are becoming bare enough to make it fairly easy to spot haunts drifting through the air come Halloween.

Halloween haunts

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we had dinner in Minneapolis at the Smack Shack in the North Loop area. We ate outside on the patio and had to request that the space heater(?) closest to us be turned down because it was too warm, in late October, in Minnesota! (I hope that's a sign of things to come this Winter.) As has been the case each time I've eaten there, the food was really good and, on the drive home, we got to watch an incredibly attractive sunset. Here's a similar version from a few weeks ago (for reasons I don't begin to understand, iPhoto's file export washes out the deeper reds in almost all sky shots, he fussed).

Autumn sunset (faded version)

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning while I was poking around the Internet, I came across something I didn't know existed and want to look into some more. Thanks to Birdchick, I learned that it's possible to attach a digital camera to a spotting scope. I'm going to see how the costs compare with an upgrade to my telephoto lens, but the examples shown are better than most of my shots, although I suspect that has as much to do with the photographer as it does with the equipment. Now, in celebration of the season and my Irish heritage, please enjoy:

Samhain

By Annie Finch 

(The Celtic Halloween) 

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.