Autumn leaves.....

Things are a bit backwards this year...today we raked leaves...a LOT of leaves. Leaves that came down AFTER our first heavy snow last month.

Jim started yesterday with the front yard and it looked so nice to see a 'clean' green lawn, that I started on the back, then Jim came out to help....




I had to capture what looked like a MASSACRE of my bushes.

Sequel to Day of the Triffids???

I quickly grabbed my camera and ran to the side of the house where I could still hear the snip, snip, snip of the shears...  I wanted to snap photos of my burning bushes before they were disseminated...

Can  you see Jim Scissorhands hiding there???

Phew! He decided to leave the burning bushes to my skillful trimming.
 
As I slowly went back to my raking, I caught a glimpse of a sign of hope tucked away in our beautiful maple that lost quite a few limbs in the last snowstorm. (In October!!!)

A seedling sprouting in the moss on the tree in what appears to be a heart in the bark!

Hate to say that little sprout won't make through the winter, but it was interesting to see new growth in the midst of all the dying leaves and plants around the yard.

Amazing too, that the grass is still green! It's November! We have already had two killing frosts and heavy snow!

How come we didn't have leaves when we had kids to jump in them? Not to mention rake them. One son was a landscaper for Pete's sake and took away other people's leaves...we could have used him today or at least his power blower!



Too bad there's no little Bell boys to jump in those piles...

By nightfall the leaves were gone and these two country folk were heading in for dinner and to soak their sore muscles in an effort to fend off the rigor mortis that was trying to creep in...









Note to viewer: Yes those are snow shovels leaning against the house. We had snow in October!!! Heavy, wet, snow that brought down tree limbs and caused power outages for days all around us. Just 30 minutes from us, people got 12"!!!

Then two weeks later....we are raking the leaves that finally came down.

North Lake Revisited

Just short drive from our home is the North (officially North/South) Lake State Park. This park holds many fond memories for me, first as a child when I came here for picnics and swimming with my mom and later with my own family. My mom and her friend, Irene, used to round up a hoard of kids and bring us here on several summer outings.

In my teen years, I came with friends for many joy filled memories sitting around campfires, sharing ghost stories and practical jokes and doing lots of hiking.

Then for several years I came here with my own family. The church I attended organized a traditional Memorial Day Family Camping outing each year. We hiked, swam, created church services, and even baptisms. The boys loved the time with the other families, the hikes, swimming, but most of all the campfires. We really thought we were raising pyromaniacs the way they would throw logs, food, rocks, and almost anything that we weren't sitting on just to see it go up in flames!

We also fished, canoed and Bryan, one time, mountain biked.

We had our share of memory makers, the biggest and last being the time our whole family camped together with the church families. Bryan was known for having accidents as soon as the weather got warm enough to play outside. Memorial Day seemed to hold some significance for him and became the time of year we would say, "Bryan be careful! This is the time of year you have mishaps." This one fateful day, I remember warning him just as he road his bike on the very edge of a culvert on the side of the road. Later that day he would be taken to the hospital with a broken collar bone after flying over the handlebars of his bike into a creek bed. That was the last time we camped as a family!

This past weekend however, Jim and I returned for a more relaxing time. Since my torn calf muscle was limiting my hiking abilities, we decided to go up and take a boat out on the lake. We rented a canoe and paddled around South Lake (where the rentals were) and then went through the small area connecting to North Lake. Usually we swim and camp on the North Lake side, so this was unusual for us to go back and forth between both sides.

As we rowed around I took some photos of the sights we came across. These days I find it amazing how something as simple as lily pads floating on the water can take on a beauty all their own. A beauty that I probably overlooked in my many times at a lake or pond.

These two were a just as surprised as we were as we paddle by them. They followed us over to the beach later in the day to feed themselves as we fed ourselves.

Though the day started out cloudy, the skies cleared for a beautiful fall day! We were amazed that the colors in the mountains were as far along as they were. We are pretty green still around our house. Just goes to show you can't trust the weather channel's leaf mapping!

All in all it was a good day for two 50+ adults to enjoy God's creation.