From the Archives

The dogs: Star and Pi.

A shot from a little preserve just the far side of the border into NY, back in August.

Button Bay State Park

Last Friday we drove up to Dead Creek WMA, where the migrating flocks of Snow Geese were hugely impressive but didn't photograph well (I desperately need that telephoto lens Jeffrey keeps telling me I should splurge on). I did get one shot I liked:


With the rest of our evening, we drove up to Button Bay State Park on Lake Champlain. Its gates are closed for the season, so we walked in and out to the point, where I snapped photos of the sunset, and one of the fall color still gripping a tree or three:

My Front Yard in Fall

Okay, maybe not "my front yard," but George lets me borrow it to walk the dogs. It's rather less of a yard and rather more of a farm... a large one, between George's house on Middle Rd. and all the way out to Otter Creek. I could walk for hours out there -- there's the room and beauty enough to do it. A few photos I've snapped in the last couple weeks:


And a few from the first heavy frost we got, just before the rising sun melted it off:

In Search of Trader Joe's - Oct. 17th

Trader Joe's sells certain items that are staples of my diet... whole grain tortillas and pizza dough, frozen bell peppers, refried black beans. There is no Trader Joe's in Rutland. In fact, there are no Trader Joe's in the whole of Vermont. Our search for the nearest Trader Joe's took us to Northampton, Mass, a good two and a half hours away. The drive itself was worth it all on its own, though... two and a half hours through the Green Mountains, then the Berkshires, in mid-October, is anything but a trial. Locals tell me the "leaf peepers" pay good money for those tours.

I didn't get any of the photos I wanted. Really, I was just too dazzled by the beauty of it to wrench my brain away from awe and into photo-taking mode. Nevertheless, I snapped a couple from a lookout on a summit in the Berkshires:



We also stopped in Shelburne Falls, Mass, and walked their claim to fame: the "World Famous Bridge of Flowers." Not the sort of thing I usually stop for, I'm glad Jeffrey made me do it.



The shame of it is, the only photos I've taken of dahlias were in Mass. George grows dahlias (though these days he leaves the work up to his son and hired help) -- dahlias are, in fact, George's claim to fame, at least locally, and we were here to witness them in all their glory... but I took not a single photo. These were on the Flower Bridge:


But George's, of course, were much nicer.