Rope

Down by the harbour front on a gloomy day a few weeks ago

See the rope? See the hill beyond? That's Signal Hill with Cabot Tower.

But, if you follow that rope up to its top you can see, in the background, a glimpse of the promontory known as Gibbet Hill...can you guess why?

Happy Spring!

Happy first day of spring! I'm going to call this the first robin of spring, even if I took this pic a couple days ago. Isn't this a cute robin, with those little eyebrows? I swear, sometimes it seems like birds are posing as I photograph them. I'm enjoying seeing and hearing the birds. It makes me feel like there's some life out there! Aside from the birds, it doesn't exactly feel like spring around here, but at least there's no snow on the ground.

I haven't been around the blogosphere much lately or on the internet in general. I had a nasty accident with a craft knife a few weeks ago and that made typing difficult. But now I'm back and typing nearly close to normal!

Some of you who follow me on Twitter might know that I was planning to cut some Papel Picado. I picked up a few books from the library for inspiration:

I picked up those books shortly before having that accident, so I haven't been physically or mentally in the place where I wanted to do intricate paper cutting with little knives the past two weeks! I might end up using scissors. We'll see. In any event, I picked up some colorful tissue paper from Dollar Tree today, so I'm ready to go! If this project turns out well, I'll blog about the results. The plan for now is to frame them.

So back to spring, in celebration of the new season, here are some photos from Sunday's trip to the park! These pics will give you an idea of what March is like in Wisconsin. There's not a lot going on, plant-wise. But if you look closely, you'll see that those plants that went to seed or dried out over winter can form some interesting shapes. Like these thistles:

Interesting how those parts curve around where the flower was. And this, whatever it is...

If you use your imagination, you could see this as a super furry caterpillar. Those pieces at the bottom could be seen as legs. But my guess is that the "fur" has some seeds attached to it. And then there's this mysterious object:

I had been thinking it was either the one hunk of ice that was somehow left in the forest, or maybe a weird type of fungi that was new to me. I poked at it with stick and flipped it over. It was styrofoam!

This looks like a barn owl, doesn't it?

Speaking of birds, there were some seagulls and geese swimming in the pond. Just as I was taking a photo of this seagull, it dipped under to catch something, and made this cool display. This is the kind of picture I probably wouldn't get again if I tried! See what I mean about the birds posing? 😉

There's a wooded area up the hill from this pond and if you really pay attention, you can witness some interesting things there. Like that tree candling last year. This time, there were all kinds of little popping noises coming from the trees. It sounded like popcorn popping. I assumed it was bugs at first, but I couldn't see any. I stood very close to the trees and it sounded like the popping was coming from inside the branches or pinecones. Anyone know what I was hearing? It was like the trees were waking up after winter. Pinecones expanding? Sap dripping? I just don't know. These were the trees that were popping:

Another tree definitely had some sap going:

Isn't that color beautiful?

These are like tiny little tree roses:

Curling birch bark:

Looks like a nice place for a picnic, doesn't it?

Back on the road:

I'll end with some pics of what was one of the more relaxing parts of this walk.

The sun was sending these sparkles off the water, making it look like glass.

Now that I'm looking over these photos, I'm thinking it was looking a little more like spring than I thought. I'm just ready for some warmer weather and plants popping up! How's the beginning of spring where you all are? I've heard weather reports of everything from 70° to blizzards from you guys this past week!

Light through the leaves

We can feel autumn changing to winter around here today. There isn't any snow on the ground, but there is a definite winter chill in the air! Not all of the leaves have fallen off the trees, but a number have. I took photos of the changing leaves throughout the fall, from the beginning of October until last week. I have been planning during that time to share a collection of my favorite photos with you guys. Now seems like the perfect time to do so, as we're transitioning from fall into winter.

I ran into some relaxing autumn music on YouTube recently, and I think it's a good fit for these photos. So if you'd like to have a little mood music while you scan through these, here you go!

A link to the music: Autumn | Ambient, Minimalism, Piano Music

I've been listening to this music for over an hour and a half now. It actually plays for two hours!

This would be a good series of photos to watch as a slideshow if you're able to. At least for me, after clicking on one photo here, I'm able to scan through all of them in a larger size.

A little closer:

I thought this was an interestingly shaped tree.

I picked a few favorite leaves and set them out ~ Small, medium, and large:

Ginkgo leaves:

This is a sight I've seen many times. There have been leaf prints on this piece of sidewalk for years. Pretty cool, hey?

These next two photos aren't of leaves, but they are of pieces of nature I saw during the last week. These will probably be the last dandelion seeds I see until Spring.

And these grasses, looking so golden in the late afternoon sun, say "autumn" to me:

This last photo is a preview for my next blog post, the one about our annual trip to Cedarburg. This was taken on an upper floor of an old mill that is now split into shops. I loved the way the light was coming through these leaves on its way into the window. They look almost lit up! This photo happens to be my computer's wallpaper right now.

Hopefully, I will get that Cedarburg post up soon! As you can imagine, I took tons of photos there. It might take a while to go through them. But I know you guys will still be up for some extra Halloween stuff, even if you see it in December!