Falling into Autumn...

 This is just going to be a few shots and not much else. Fall is starting to show up and I am spending time just admiring the sun angle and the deep woods around our farm and on local trails.

Charlie sitting on a bluff.

Hiking...at the Reserve...

The forest that surrounds us... I got stuck on stuck leaves!

Much of the canopy is still green but slowly turning and in places the leaves are brightly colored on damaged limbs.

Many leaves were slowly drifting down from above in the forest making a noise almost like a rainfall.

....

And then I was stopped by this.

Light, dark, shadows, yellows and colorful.
Everything we look for in Fall Colors. 

Meanwhile...

It is August and that means the daylight each day changes quickly. 

August through November are the three months of the year where I can't seem to sit still. The weather is changing, the hours of daylight are changing.

I begin to chase the changes in the forest like I do with early spring. 

As the heavy growth of gooseberry bushes begin to drop leaves and other plants in the undergrowth begin to drop seeds and wilt, I find moving through parts of the forest easier.

This morning I got a fog notice on the weather app. I knew it would be foggy in the valleys because it cooled off so much overnight. I hoped the fog would drift up through the forest.

Off I went as soon as the sun began to peek through the trees. It was humid but not really foggy.

Our busy road:

On the way back home I took a different way and...

.... found some Indian Pipes 
aka Ghost Plants or the Scientific name:
Monotropa Uniflora .

I think these are some of the coolest plants that can be found in a forest.

Boy was I pleased to see that the high humidity, even though the fog dissipated quickly. It provided a beautiful morning atmosphere.

My favorite maple tree in the woods northeast of us.

The sights were pretty amazing as was the light.

I also stopped and took an opportunity to do something that has been on my mind since I got those little dragons.

An idea came to mind when I was looking at my collection of rocks. My son gave me a really cool rock years ago.  To me it looked liked a petrified egg.

I'm pretty sure ... well, this has to be...

I mean...

what else could it be...

but 

a Dragon Egg?

However....

I think someone else must be interested in it!

I spotted two Rock Monsters!

Glaciator and Sulfrix to be exact! 

Oh No!

Silly me. How I do love to play.

I think I should keep an eye out for Princess Sara and her Knight to see if they will come to the rescue in the Big Wild Forest.

😉

going sideways

The news lately has not been very promising. Suddenly I feel as though I've been jettisoned back into the COVID era and the horror of those 4 years.

I decided to stop looking at the news for now and just go do my own thing.

I donned a long sleeved shirt sprayed with Buggins, long lightweight pants, gloves with the fingers cut out, and a head net.

I was ready to get out to my happy place even if it meant dealing with T-Rex Skeeters and swarms of gnats.

I also needed to check in on the mules to see how the girls were doing since they were staying out in the woods.

They've been spending a lot of time in the Buckthorn Woods. Yes, they are invasive trees and are horrible to have. I'm going to leave them to the next person who wants to live here. For now, they provide a great shady area for the girls to hang out. It even feels cooler under the canopy.

The air was quite still, but still cool enough since it was only about 7AM. I made my way down the trails to the creek. I wanted to see how the new rains had affected the creek. 

Water! Slow moving beautiful sounding water. Once again the water flows gently through our rather messy creek bottom.

Over the past few years, so many trees have tumbled over crisscrossing the steep banks. Negotiating the bottom takes quite a bit of balance and determination. Sometimes it includes a bit of creative climbing and careful steps when the rocks are wet and mossy.

I brought Glenda, a Lego minifigure along and a couple of Lego creatures. I just knew that between the dappled light and the water, I'd find something that would tease my imagination.

My other favorite thing to do in the creek is look for iron concretions. While climbing around in the dry runs [which are wet] I spotted quite a few and felt like I'd hit the jackpot. These rocks always add textured interest to my succulent garden.

I stuck those in a sack I brought with and sat down on one of the wet rocks just to watch the sun shine through the trees onto the water. It felt so peaceful and comforting. Yes, the bugs were there and they buzzed my head net, but I was able to mostly ignore them.

I took a few shots of Glenda doing Glenda Things. She seems to be an expert at finding and rescuing creatures. Yes, you can actually see well enough through a No-Seeum Head net to take photos!

I'm sure she was as surprised as I was that she found an Iguana in Wisconsin. But since this is a Lego Imaginative play time. It could be anywhere, right?

She heard of a Dove that was lost and so she went searching and calling for it.

Imagine her joy at finding it!

The colors and light that come through the canopy of mixed hardwoods here is so beautiful. It takes an effort to get to and move around. But the journey is well worth it. It isn't grand or spectacular, but in its small way, it is stunning.

Here is a shot with Glenda in the middle of the stream. Yes, I had to build a place for her to stand on a flat rock in the water. Three or four times she tipped over and threatened to gently float away....

But that is the real fun of it all. A difficult hike with all sorts of challenges to get to a spot that feels like my private space in nature.

When things cool off, I'm going to have to bring a little saw to this spot and cut a path through the newly downed trees. With all the rain we've had the soil is saturated and trees on the banks are just letting go. Eventually the trees rot and break up and then are washed downstream in a large flash flood, but that hasn't happened in years.

I had fun and even though I got hot, I enjoyed myself. However, next time I need to spray some Buggins on my legs ... and rear end. Dang Skeeters bit me right on the Bum through my lightweight pants!

Oh well. It was a great place to get sidetracked and enjoy the beautiful outdoors despite the monster Insects...

Today is all about, hurry up and wait. The Home 02 People are going to come 'sometime after noon'. So maybe I'll go do something silly inside to entertain myself.

How about some space adventures???

👋

Light and Dark and Quiet

 There is always light.
If only we are
brave enough to see it.
If only we are

brave enough to be it.
~~Amanda Gorman

Sunday morning's sunrise was so amazingly beautiful. I dropped what I was doing [making hubby's coffee] and ran out the door in socks.

Charlie and I ran up to the pasture to the north and I just stood there and said OHHHH & AHHHH out loud.

The pony looked at me as if I was from another planet and Charlie sniffed around for interesting things.

I guess I was the only one excited about the amazing colors.

When I got back to the house I notice the clouds coming in from the south west. I had to do a double take as there was a rainbow too!

This has happened more than once so I usually check the skies in both directions. 

I imagine the moisture in the air along with the angle of the sun created the rainbow. I like to tell folks that our pasture must be amazing and full of gold as I've seen this more than once now!

The rains and high winds are preventing me from really going out and looking for other signs of spring. I expect that this week when the weather clears up, I should be able to wander about and look for spring beauties and other wild flowers poking up out of the leaves.

Hubby's daughter and her husband came to see us on Saturday and she cooked an amazing meal. It was to be our Christmas Dinner that we would have had in December but too many people were sick or getting sick.

It got put off until the timetables worked out for everyone involved, which happened to be this weekend.

Today is the big hulabaloo regarding the eclipse. I think we'll have about 75% or up to 85% for the eclipse.

I plan on going to the Reserve and doing a time lapse of one of the ponds. I think it would be interesting to observe all the waterfowl as the sky darkens and then lightens again.

In August of 2017 there was a very partial eclipse here and I was working in the garden and noted that the birds got quiet and the bees stopped what they were doing on the flowers.

Taken in 2017:

I think it will be an interesting couple of hours.

Plus it will be some great quiet time for me after having 3 weekends of visitors in the past month!

Daisy Daisy Daisies...

It is that time of the year when the Ox Eye Daisies bloom. They really are pests in the pasture because the mules won't eat them. I do chop them down in one of the smaller paddocks, but their are gazillions of them across the fence line and some days I feel like it is a losing battle.

However they do make for nice wild flower photos.

I do love capturing them in the early morning light...

 Sometimes I am lucky enough to see them before the sun is high enough to light up the whole plant.

The dew drops on the white petals and their happy bright yellow centers make me stop to admire them.

Then there is the 'daisy' looking flower with the horrid name of Fleabane. Before I knew its name, I called it Wild Daisy. I know it isn't the right name, but --- do they really deserve such an ugly name?

 I saw these while hiking to the creek [well the creek is mostly dry]. 

And then. The sun beams through the mist as the light shines through the trees to light up the forest that surrounds the creek. It is easily at least 10 degrees cooler in this part of the valley. Well, that is until the midday sun shines down on it. 
Now the creek bottom is Hot during the day with little or no breeze.

After my fence inspections were complete, I walked back home.

Interesting to note that this huge mess of thistles I cut down last week were gone!

Apparently they wilted to just right to make them Mule-ishious!

Go figure. 

Enjoy your day... and pick a daisy!

Rain! Heat ...Stuck inside.

Maybe my heart is in creativity in all shapes and forms.

I am not talented in drawing or painting. However I can make excellent stick figures and cartoonish figures.

Cartoon I did for Mules and More Magazine years ago. See? I can draw a line!

I read some articles debating the use of AI Art and some other articles which discussed the positive uses for AI in doing graphic art and commercial art. 

I've experimented so far with two AI generators. NightCafe and wombo. Both are free, both can be done from your computer or your smartphone. 

These are the simple AI art things a person can do.

I like to delve even further into the realm of 'interesting-ness'. I admit. It can be ho-hum and sort of pretty in a strange way. But since I was stuck with evading the heat and humidity, I thought I'd dabble in another form of abstract art. 

I went on a Horse kick and got this:

I mean most of this looks pretty and abstract. So I decided to get creative.

I combined two 'creations' from a photo of my favorite box elder tree in the winter.

I typed in Tree Ents for one image and Tree Ents with cottages for the second image using the above tree as a base image.

I combined the two to create my own mystical Tree Cottage.

It looks like some strange house straight out of a story like the Hobbit.

I can see where an AI application like this could be used to create a book cover, an album cover, or even perhaps a poster. [Each of the sites do offer prints for a pretty nice price and offer a way to sell your artwork as an NFT.] 

I could see this as a book cover!

I really wanted to create something with a horse in it so I went over to Nightcafe and started experimenting.

This looked like freaky flying horses with red farts.

It was not something I wished to work with. The one below looked vaguely like Wrath Horses stuck in a Swamp of Sorrow. 

The one below involved the words: Horses, clouds, angels, wings, 

...and something strangely creepy, but it held my attention with a ... 

This IS It!

I wanted something more dark and strange.

This was the original.

Here is the final edit.

I stopped right here because this exemplified what I thought was the definition of 

a

Nightmare.

Okay, this is not for everyone at all. I mean it has a certain scary awful dystopian feel to it. It is dark and a bit frightening.

I like scary movies though and this really resonated with me. It was all created with just words and then run through Artificial Intelligence and a Neural Network.

Let's end on some happy and cheery doodles.

Steam Punk Flowers and Clouds

What the dashboard of creation looks like:

Tropical Beach Cheerful Lifeforms...
I don't see the life forms, but at least it is cheerful and in the rather fantastical and weird style of Kincaid paintings. The colors are pretty, but I don't see any beach!