Today is national bittersweet chocolate with almonds day and that sounds good if you like that sort of thing. There is not a heron to be seen this morning and when George and I meet, we talk cameras and picture taking. He was so enamored of a tree growing from a rock in the stream, he went home a couple of days ago to fetch his Canon and returned by bicycle just to capture the tree. Today he is back on foot.

   “Do you have your camera with you?” he asks.

   No, I’m sorry to report the lens on my Nikon is dissheveled and a lens error message keeps coming up. George suggests I change the memory card. Taking it to the shop will cost an arm and a leg.

   This morning am well served at the grocery store. I drop the kitties’ water bowl which brings an end to an era. It was one of those glass vintage potato chip bowls with colored twine or string around it. Alas. On to the next thing.

   In the vast scheme of bizarre and unusual days and holidays, today we celebrate gunpowder and the image of a powder puff and a gun or a smoking gun (puff of smoke) and Guns N Roses and the DuPont family of gunpowder industry and gunmetal grey and all those kinds of associations are invited to the party. ( A friend also reminds me it is, and wants to be the first to wish me, Happy Gut Fawkes Day.)

    There is a heron silhouetted, at dawn, from the mill dam bridge. It is tall and fishing. There is a squirrel on the bough of a walnut tree, gnawing on a walnut. There is Keith examining his work on the blue tree with lights. There is a dead field mouse with its white tummy exposed. There is a dead deer at the suburban highway underpass with dried blood around its face. There is work to tend to.

   Water feeds wood. Tree decorating time at the park. Keith Beck takes a step back to evaluate his work thus far. The tree they wrap with blue lights is fifty per cent done. It is a perennial crowd pleasing favorite. He likes the new LED lights they have this year, they are efficent. They can string 44 strands together.

   “We actually eliminated a power harness,” said Beck. “We’re doing a lot of cost saving! That gives us power to use somewhere else.”

Elsewhere on my walk, a heron in the landscape and a female mallard duck in trouble. From afar I am seeing a different shape, a different color as one duck swims in the canal with half a dozen others. “there’s something different about that duck.”

Sure enough, at closer range it becomes clear the duck is wearing a sycamore leaf, like a ruff around its neck and this has it agitated while making it look like a queen or a courtier.

   “

Ranger Rick Rack

   Good thing we have binoculars! This Ranger owner has created his own dynamic wrap around in black and yellow.

   On a less exciting note – except to the parties involved – a note on a forest green Ranger. Read me: best to park Ranger elsewhere.

   Warrior met 3 ravens Friday afternoon as he began working the weekend.

photograph by Allison Huyett

   One has amber eyes. Another still has the early worm, mid-afternoon.

   Warrior with Raven #3: Blackbird π.

 Edgar Allen Poe and Raven

were taken with this pumpkin

 (see the Oct. 19 post),

 a round straw bale

 fancifully transformed

 into a pumpkin

 to let people know

 about Duncan’s Corn Maze along the Robesonia-Bernville Road.

 Ingenious, honest solution to the problem. Happy Hallowe’en!

    Fasten your seatbelts: Art group Thursday night.  The leader of our meeting, having abstained from work on the theme, Silhouette, instead provides a seasonal picture – a pastel drawing of a rainspotted maple leaf drafted in gentle fall colors. We all ooh and ahh.

    Next: a photo of the oddest and most intriguing kapok-like clouds and silhouetted trees. Somehow the bumps in the sky associate with the rain drops in the previous work. Where is Bette Davis? Can it be going to be a bumpy night?

    A handsome pair of linoleum prints are trotted out: a composition of fall leaves done in black and white and in color. We like these, too, and are interested in the process.

   Another member of the group produces a seasonal, i.e. Hallowe’en, card made with an iris folding technique and  a silhouette theme. Accompanying these, my own little nitwit puzzle, from a tract left by someone at the Y, a dictionary page, and the mental looping of lyrics from A Fine Romance, the fine song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which I like sung by Rosemary Clooney.

   One person provides the piece de resistance, a postage stamp quilt. A showpiece. It is derived from a photograph taken by someone she knows, a factory maintenance worker. The sunset sky is composed of  batik fabric: purple and orange and red and yellow, with an overstitched black tree silhouette. Although the finished product has an authentic Asian look and feel, it is not a tree in a Chinese or Japanese painting, it is a tree crown at the botanical gardens in Allentown.

   The one-inch squares make it measure about 23″ x 17″ plus double-mat and frame. She has sold it, too. We marvel at her gift for turning an idea or a picture into a fabric design and executing it, all in the past six weeks. She receives our highest honors. Here is an artist showing and sharing the power of making wise choices and in making something lovely, beautiful and desirable. It’s like a trip to bountiful that we all want a view to admire.

   This morning my bun was given to me in a a bag stamped with yet another new name from DURO. This one is Juana Sarango and the paper bag was created on September 22, a four day.  Juana has a name that makes me feel like dancing.

Fooling around with another man’s knife indeed. What a post. Blue ribbon. Metal fire and earth elements. Good feng shui. Wise guy!

    The rock having come to a standstill, it’s almost as if we have been on vacation. We have been walking and visiting the Franklin Institute and a donut hole and so forth and so on and spotted an eagle this past week and suddenly all the fall colors are come and gone. We declined the hot tub invitation and accepted a Halloween Eve invitation and have photos to download and edit and library books to locate that disappeared in the overnight drop box according to the main desk, and we have Craigslist things and Mom to see and work to do and Feng shui to tend to and a realtor for whom we did feng shui said the house had sold. Speaking of which we have a month before the government rebate expires, so we have houses to look at.  We have pumpkin irons to make and a new to-do list to activate. And we need to bring the blog up to date and up to speed. Halloween. It is the new Christmas. Thanksgiving is next!