Only the Good Die Young

I'm a big fan of graveyards. Besides the art of the stones, and the interest in the rocks that were used to make them, cemeteries are tremendously tranquil and a great telescope into the past. One of the saddest things about the olds stones is how many kids died young. We were at a cemetery in Utah, and there was a string of four stones, all kids from the same family who died within a year of five. It leads me to wonder the circumstances of their death. Disease? Starvation? Parents? Many sad tales at the graveyard.

The Trickle that Starts It All

Grey day here, so how about a picture of the headwaters of the Mississippi. So small you can walk across it.

Trickster

Once when I was a kid, and we had just got back from a trip to the Smoky Mountains, my dad showed slides from the trip. In among the March images was this crazy picture of a black bear sticking his snout out from behind some flowers. I was dumbfounded. "Where was I when you took that picture?" "Weren't you scared?" "Did you get any other pictures of the bear?" It was only years later that I realized the image was fake, one of those slides you buy in a gift store. It was the flowers that gave it away. We were there in March and there was nothing blossoming. This picture has that feel about it. Here we are, temperatures and leaves dropping, and here's this flower. It seems so out of place. Our dahlias, too, are gorgeous right now, but summer is done. They should be dead.

High Bridge-South Fork

This is the walking bridge at Glen Park, over the South Fork, right before it enters the Kinni. Beautiful park, bridge, and waterfalls, here. Tomorrow, a picture of a great turn-of-the-century plate with an image of this same area.

Grey Day

Light was horrible, and I know there are people who devote their whole life to catblogging, so here's Crombus, the gentle cat of the house.

Green

Nice collection of greens from an area Scientific Natural Area.

Won't be long now

Gorgeous fall day today, but there was wind moving the early dead off of trees. Time for us northerners to stock up on furnace filters, ice melt, and Hershey bars (for roadside emergency kits (to be eaten when there are no sweets in the house (leaving an unsuspecting spouse to perish of starvation in a ditch during some sort of superstorm))). Our days are numbered, and the squirrels know it. They are working extra hard, building up stores of walnuts and fat.