Wow! Today is a gift. Just turn off the computer and take a walk

[HereSince1628]

It's not often that Fall drags on so long in SE Wisconsin.
We've hardly had anything approaching a hard freeze and the Kettle Moraine is ever so just past it's peak of color.

What can one say except this was a day worth stopping to smell the leaf litter? Sure there is political intrigue in Washington, judge swapping in Austin, and Bush taking it in Argentina.

But.

WHAT can you do when confronted with 68 F. at the end of the first week in November? I intended to do some real work on the house I'm building but I gave up at noon to just walk around the woodlot.

The sandhill cranes are gone, the puffballs' innards are turned to spores, and the rows of the field are stripped of cob and stalk.

But the Norway mapples are shimmering gold, and the red oaks span the spectrum from yellow through red to brown. The red osier dogwood stems stand boldly against the khaki grass.

And so there was me, the bluejays, the downy woodpeckers and chickadees the whitefooted mice, and meadow voles, all just taking in one of the last glorious days of Fall, listening to the pheasants cackling in the fence rows, and the hopping of deer too lazy to blast through the undergrowth but keeping just far enough ahead to be out of sight in the tangle of buckthorns.

Ahhhhhhh. Who needed work on a day like today?

[RevCheesehead]

1. Damn - it's 51 here.

It might be a gift, but it's a bit chilled here at the lake. :scared:

[HereSince1628]

2. What can I say, choosing tween a view of the inland freshwater sea or

the pastoral country side is tough.

Some of us love it either way.

Days like today just make you hate those those -20F mornings when the old battery quits!

[RevCheesehead]

3. And while you inland folk have -20 temps,

we at the lake will be a balmy -5. :)

[HereSince1628]

4. True, but today, TODAY, the boonies were glorious!