Brilliant

The maples turn red here - an astonishing, jaw-dropping scarlet.

However, fall in this part of Wisconsin is as short as it is brilliant - in the few days that we've been here most of the greens have turned to gold. All of the wildflowers are gone, except for a few purple asters, and most of the butterflies have gone with them. The weather is warming up though! And I feel like I'm coming back to life at the same time.

A word on the birds... We always feed them when we are out here in the country and I'm hoping to get some nice photographs this time. In fact, I have rented a lens (300mm w 2x TC) to help. It arrives on Thursday - something fun to play with when I'm out here and my golf nut husband is out on the golf course. But birds haven't found the feeder yet. They didn't find it when we were here in June, either, but I assumed they were just not hungry. Prior to the summer rejection, they would be zipping up to the house withing minutes of hanging it up. There is some suet out on our big Norway pine that has attracted a few chickadees, but other than that we are drawing a blank. I realize that when there are wars in the Middle East and the economy is in the tank that this is fairly low down on the list of world problems, but for this nature-loving city girl watching the wildlife in the woods is a major attraction of being here.

And on the subject of birds, we have bought a proper pole with a baffle for our bluebird house. The baffle will stop the raccoons and other predators from getting in. Mr LightWave took the house down from the pinetree and we looked inside - sure enough there was a nest and a few tiny scraps of light blue egg shell. So although we can't be sure that we had bluebirds last summer, at least we hand something!

Balsam Lake Area, Wisconsin