Pearl Crescent on Rudbeckia / Girl With a Camera

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. 
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

We've had some spectacular weather this week, the first couple of chilly mornings, which sends my soul into shivers of quiet delight. I do enjoy some of the best bits of summertime, and I adore going swimming, but I am no lover of the big heat. I welcome the first few little bits and pieces of autumn with an open heart and wide-open arms: BRING IT!!!!

It was so nice out that I went and sat in the yard for a while to do my morning Facebook and my Blip. It was there that my husband found me, and asked to take my picture. I was sitting in that new garden nook I made out of sunflowers and bones (!!!), enjoying a hot cup. So you may see his best shot in the extras. This is a portrait of the Girl With a Camera, happy at home with her husband, enjoying her enchanted yard.

A bit later on, I went for a bike ride around the neighborhood and discovered a busy little pearl crescent tasting every flower in a nice roadside display of rudbeckia, or black-eyed susan. It stomped around and made itself the very picture of every time on the clock face. I couldn't help myself. I took too many photos. I liked this one the best.

Further down the road, a CSI mystery awaited me, for that's how it is here in the country, a combination of life and death. A headless, squashed bird with fuzzy legs and big talons got creamed on the road that runs past our house. Further investigation revealed a clean removal of the head. Yikes! I carefully picked it up by its foot and removed it from the road, then took a few crime-scene photos, as one does.

Time for me to deliver the profile, as we say in Criminal Minds. I examined the evidence before me, which was to say, the sad remains. And looked some things up online when I got back. My best opinion is that a juvenile hawk, quite possibly red-tailed, was predated upon by an OWL. The headless carcass, dropped on the road, was then hit by a car and flattened.

I don't always travel far - although some days, I do - but my life is never boring. Even when I'm not really officially "going anywhere," my adventures take me from my yard, and around the neighborhood, and into assorted mysteries and delights. Never underestimate the power of a woman on a bike to get into all sorts of unexpected things! Both beauty and murder awaited me on this morning!

I've got two photos and so here are two soundtrack songs. The first is for the girl in the extras, who finds Heaven beneath her feet, and even in her own backyard, and mysteries awaiting everywhere. Here are the Bee Gees, with Too Much Heaven. 

And the second is just a song I like that I stumbled across on YouTube. No, overall, I'm not generally sorrowful unless there's a really good reason to be, but this is a cool song. Here are two versions of it: Man of Constant Sorrow, first from the film O Brother Where Art Thou, and second, an astoundingly good cover of the same tune by Home Free.