Changing Seasons

Recently I was eating lunch at work and a co-worker came in and told me, "Whatever you do, don't go outside." It was a perfect October day-- absolutely beautiful and experiencing that weather outside first hand would make the rest of the afternoon of work miserable.  October has always been one of my favorite months- great sports like football and cross country, wonderful food that involves apples and pumpkins- desserts in particular, and excitement of the changing scenery, and gorgeous weather. 

There have been a few changes that I have been dreading this week.  I had to scrape the first frost off of my windshield-- it made me a Grumpy Gus the rest of the morning.  We also set up the bike down in the basement for our off-season cycling.  We might be able to get out a few more weekends but it gets dark to quickly in the evenings now.  I have put in a total of 1 hour so far in the basement and am ready to get back out on the open road.  One of my favorite things about biking is looking at the scenery.  Let's just saw there isn't a lot of scenery in our unfinished basement. 

One thing I do appreciate about commuting to work is watching the changing seasons.  Sometimes everything along the interstate is covered with a fresh blanket of snow, or there is a ton of out-of-state traffic because of summer vacations, or combines cutting wheat or corn.  Right now trees are starting to change to yellow and  bright red sumac dotted across the pastures and ditches.  I get to enjoy sunrise each morning through my rear-view mirror as the sky turns from dark to shades of pink and orange as the sun starts to peek up in the east.  

 Here are a few shots from our walks around town this week.

This squirrel must have been resting after a busy day of gathering nuts.  He didn't move at all for the few minutes I was standing at the bottom of the tree with a camera.

This tree is near the top of the list of my favorites in town-- as usual all the best trees are in cemeteries