Day 335 - Rainy, hazy end of November

November is leaving us with a rainy, hazy, wet day that football fans watching the east coast games noticed. Since I have no leaves to watch, I have removed my leaf watch and added a winter watch where I will occasionally post photos of signs that winter is here The first is a winter flag that greets visitors to our front door..

Day 334 - Light from down under

No, David did not send me a box of light from Melbourne. I put a photo flood under our glass table with a black cloth around the glass ball, just to get a back lit subject. For another view of the ball, see my January 27 post.

Day 333 - Buster and new ornament

Picked up a few new ornaments for outside decorating today and buster decided to inspect them. Note the reflection of his eyes in the gold ball.

Day 332 - The finish

to a delicious Thanksgivng dinner - Watergate salad! I hope all of you had a happy Thanksgiving too.

Day 331 - A tree full of crows

On the way out today I spotted a bunch of crows by the road. As I approached they flew across the road and perched for in a tree a group photo.

Day 330 - Thanksgiving favorite

One of my favorite desserts that Marianne makes is Watergate salad, made with pineapple, walnuts, marshmallows, pistachio pudding and Cool Whip. We'll be having some Thursday.

Day 329 - Tom Turkey?

Our neighbors who had the Scary halloween display have now put up their Thanksgiving display. This family moved in this past summer and the lady of the house says she doesn't miss any holidays, so we look forward to lots more of her creativity.

Day 328 - Feline visitors

Two of Marianne's old friends stopped for the night on their way back home to Massachusetts from Tennesse with their cats. Mr. Blue (above) and Precious (with him below) made themselves right at home. Our shy cats mostly hid while these two explored and played.

Day 327 - More squirrels

Two squirrels were working the acorn supply when I went out to get the mail. They watched me and posed for the camera, then busily went searching for more acorns.

Day 326 - Contented cows

Just a pastoral scene as I was returning home today.

Day 325 - Oak tree & Photoshop

This is a photo of the oak in our backyard, taken at dusk today. I have been experimenting with Photoshop and decided to try some tricks on this photo. Below is the Filter => Distort => Twirl effect, which rotates the photo around a point. For more Photshop effects, see my other blog.

And this one is the Filter => Stylize => Glowing edges effect.

Day 324 - A few small minerals

A few minerals: brass button; thumb size, polished quartz, 2 grams of gold; and a small metal replica of a bellows camera.

Day 323 - Small farm by the creek

Another ride through the back roads of Frederick County found us beside Hunting Creek down in the valley. Plenty of vegetation and minerals are in view, but no animals. Marianne found the horses and cows on different roads.

Day 322 - Backyard birds

This week Karin's suggested theme is animal, vegetable or mineral. Our normal backyard critters were active today - jays, robins, sparrows, finches, squirrels, and one stray kitten; so animal it is today. We spotted a couple of woodpeckers that are not everyday visitors and this birdie, which I did not recognize and had to look up. It is a Northern Flicker, a little larger than a robin and wearing a bandana on the back of his neck.

This is the smaller of two woodpeckers that investigated our oak tree today. It appears to be a Downy Woodpecker. Check out Marianne's post for the other one.

Day 321 - B&W - Country roads

We went for a drive along some of the country roads looking for good subjects for black and white photos. The overcast skies added to the mood of the day. For a couple more shots, see Marianne's post.

Day 320 - B&W & color - Stormy day

We had an unusual November day - temperature in the 70's, wind, rain and sun; then repeat.

Day 319 - B&W - High wire birds (and bonus pic)

I caught thes birds assembling on the wires while stopped for a red light. But I could not resist this colorful pumpkin pyramid display at the orchard when I stopped to buy some apple cider. I increased the contrast on this one. Marianne posted the orchard's display last year. Catoctin Mountain is hidden by the fog.

Day 318 - B&W - another gray day

Today I set my camera to black and white mode and wandered around the yard taking shots of things I have photographed before. I choose one looking up and one looking down to post. The birds love to gather in the top of this tree (seen in my post yesterday) and have a songfest. Then they depart (as in the upper left of the photo) for the corn field or other trees. Looking down is our deck still wet from the morning rain.

Day 317 - B&W - and in between

There was very little color in the sky this afternoon, so black and white and shades of gray is what we have.

Day 316 - B&W - Kitchen sunshine

The sun was shining through the kitchen windows, creating very bright spots. This is unusual as the windows are on the north side of the house and the sun was in the southeast sky, but just happened to reflect off the window of a shed in the yard across the street. In a few minutest, the bright spots were gone as the sun continued its trek across the sky.

Day 315 - B&W Tree and fence

This shot was taken at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick. Original photo was in color and I converted it to black and white with Photoshop Elements.

Day 314 - Leaves and more leaves

The leaves have fallen from the maple and oak in our front yard and I have been blowing, raking and bagging them.

This was the third load this weekend to the county's compost facility and there's still more to go.

Lots of leaves and brush are piling up. The county will bring in a large mulching machine to grind up this pile into free mulch. The main county site (adjacent to the landfill) sells both compost and mulch made from the yard waste deposited there.

Day 313 - Squirrels and leaves

The squirrels have been very active feasting and hiding the bumper crop of acorns. These two spent a good part of the morning digging through the leaves to find the acorns. (The tree at the left is an oak; the maple is just out of the picture to the right.) This afternoon I went to load up bags of leaves to haul to the compost site and this one was sitting on the post. I was able to get my camera out of the van, walk to within 6 feet of him and take several shots before he scurried on across the fence.

Day 312 - Early and late views

The sun was shining this morning, but the ground fog gave an eerie view over the field behind our house. And as I was about to go inside at dusk, I caught sight of a bird flying to the tree above me. At first glance I thought it was a robin, but when I looked at the image (taken with flash) on my screen - it was a cardinal.

Day 311 - Still harvesting

There are still some fields that have not been harvested, while others have already been planted. This combine is harvesting soybeans.

Day 310 - Winterizing

Today the guy from WaterTurf was here to shut down our lawn sprinkler. He turns off the water supply and then hooks up an air compressor to blow all the water out of the pipes. The mist from the heads matched the gray day. On a sunny day I might have gotten some shots of rainbows.

Day 309 - Election day

When we voted late this morning, there was a steady stream of voters, but no long lines. With the registration roll on the laptops instead of paper, the poll workers quickly found our names, printed out our info, we signed and were given our ballot cards. There were two empty voting machines (touch screen) and we voted at the same time, returned the cards and were on our way. Afternoon reports were that turnout was about twice that of the previous few presidential elections, but I have not yet seen any final numbers.

Day 308 - The rabbit's perspective

I have posted pictures of this corn field behind our house many times. So I thought I would post it from the prespective of the smaller creatures that inhabit the field. And here's the rabbit who hid from the rain in our yard a week ago and then disappeared back into corn.

Day 207 - Fall along the GW Parkway

I was in Virginia on the George Washington Parkway this cloudy day and stopped at one overlooks for a few shots. Above is the view across the river into northwest DC. Below is a tree across the Parkway.

Day 306 - More fall colors

The maple tree in our yard

Monocacy River south of Buckestown

The road beside the river

See Marianne's post for more of today's color.