We visited the Terry Trueblood Trail and relaxed. The temperature was in the 60s, just a little on the breezy side. Everything seemed to move slower, except for the lady bugs which tried to keep warm by landing on us everywhere they could. I thought they would get into my rolled up blue jean cuffs, but amazingly they did not.
There was a small, brave patch of asters hanging on for dear life, literally. We both loved the red tree and you can tell which one it is in the video. I should know what kind of tree it is, but for now I guess just seeing it was good enough.
The cedar waxwings were flitting around maniacally and sometimes that means they’re getting smashed on fermented berries. But I didn’t see that there was enough on the branches for a party.
A pelican lazily swam across the lake in a way that suggested that it’s OK to just relax. What’s the hurry?
We might have seen one of the last northern shovelers (a dabbling duck) still hanging around. It’s like it was saying, “There’s still plenty of time.”
Whether that’s true or not, slowing down doesn’t hurt at all.
Yesterday, we took a stroll on the Terry Trueblood trail. It was a little breezy and warm for late October.
The fall colors were gorgeous and there was a lot going on. We saw a woman with her toddler flying a butterfly kite. It sailed on the wind beautifully. We saw the quilted hearts hanging from the trees. They’re very cheering. In the wind they looked like they were waving at you.
The woolly bear banded caterpillars were out. I don’t think you can really tell how hard the winter is going to be by looking at the color bands. But it’s fun to talk about.
And then we thought we saw ladybugs. But they could have been Asian lady beetles. It’s hard to tell them apart. The latter often don’t have spots at all. We noticed that they seem to sort of push up their hinders until they’re almost upside down and they may shove each other around.
There’s a pretty vigorous debate on the web about whether the Asian lady beetles are the bad guys and the ladybugs are the good guys. We know they can crawl all over you.
The oddball thing was that we found a baby booty hanging on one of the sign posts. It had an image of a ladybug on it. Or was it an Asian lady beetle?
When you’re in the autumn of your life, it might be time to stop asking too many questions.
The leaves are falling everywhere, including our back yard. Just watching them drop like a snowfall is mesmerizing. It feels like it’s going to snow. Temperatures have been low enough for frost and freeze warnings around here. The mowers were bundled up, wearing stocking caps and gloves yesterday.
Fall is Sena’s favorite season. Temperatures are cooler and the changing colors of the leaves makes us wonder how the trees know when it’s time to drop them.
When I was a kid, I and a lot of neighborhood kids jumped off a small cliff at a park into a huge pile of leaves. It was a big deal to take the leap. We felt like we were flying. The bits of dry, brown leaves got in your hair and down your back under your shirt, making you itch.
I remember raking leaves in an old guy’s yard once. I got blisters on my hands and he didn’t pay me much. I didn’t like that part of fall and still don’t.
The other day we took a walk in a different direction on Scott Boulevard. Sometimes the scenery is just as beautiful in the west as it is in the east.
There were three trees turning a bright red. Maybe there were maples. The birch trees are pretty any time of the year, but for some reason they’re majestic in the fall.
I don’t know what kind of birds those were soaring in the sky, but they were magical.
Sena got some new pants with an autumn leaves print. It fit really well with the colors we saw on a walk down Scott Boulevard.
We always see something a little different along the way. We never noticed that the Sitting Man pedestal has a hole in it shaped like a heart. It could have been chipped into the stone intentionally.
There was a lot of golden rod but we didn’t see any ragweed—which I’m very allergic to this time of year.
The trees around the Harvest Preserve property are changing colors. The old barn across the street from it looks a little more weathered. We don’t know whether the staff will decorate it into a haunted house again for Halloween. They did that last year and it was a hoot.
The walk up the hill to the Sitting Man seemed a little steeper this year. I don’t remember exactly when I got so bow-legged. A runner easily ran up the hill and still had breath to say “Hi” on the way back down. He never missed a step, even though I personally know there are a lot of irregularities in the ground.
We saw the miracles of autumn the other day, out on the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. It was quiet, only a light breeze set the flowers and grasses swaying.
There were almost no birds out. No ducks were out on Sand Lake.
On the other hand, I guess there were birds, sort of. We greeted other walkers, an older couple who turned out to be snowbirds. They’ll be heading to Florida soon for the winter. They had no worries about the weather down there. They’ll be in the middle of the state, presumably far away from storm surges. They stay in an RV park over the winter months. It’s not far from a place called The Villages, which is a famous planned retirement community, which got a reputation for being a haven for older but wilder swingers. They have a very large Homeowners Association (HOA), which is sort of a very large and expensive Disney World for older retirees. It’s often called a golf cart community because that’s how most residents get around the place. While there are no HOA fees per se, there is a community development district fee of around $120-220 a month. Dave Barry wrote a chapter about The Villages in his book “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.” I told the couple about Dave Barry’s take on The Villages. I don’t think they ever heard of him. They’re excited about returning to the RV park soon.
I was a little alarmed by a loud voice, calling out like a policeman, “Get on the ground!” I looked up ahead and didn’t see a policeman. But occasionally, we heard the barking order, “Get on the ground!” Eventually we saw a young man on a walk, apparently under someone’s supervision. This was the man who was yelling “Get on the ground!” He greeted us politely. As he passed by, every so often he blurted out, “Get on the ground!” I wondered if he might be someone with a form of Tourette’s Disorder, compelled to blurt out something every few minutes. The supervisor was walking side by side with a man who seemed uncomfortable, holding his hands up to his eyes which appeared sunken in the sockets. He made no sound at all. I wondered if, peaceful as we thought the day was, whether he found it difficult to bear what might have been a sensory storm for him. The supervisor was polite to us and paid close attention to the other two men.
Mostly we watched the breeze blowing the grasses and the flowers–and were grateful.
I caught a video of a buck deer (shot through our sun room window) on the trail of a doe yesterday. He looked a little old and on the slow side. And the doe was shy and just galloped away whenever he got too close.
Maybe he’s constipated. He might need a little Serutan. The Serutan company sponsored the Lawrence Welk show for a while. The laxative seemed to target people over the age of 35 according to one article on the web.
We saw these Blue Jays having breakfast in our back yard trees this morning. They’re pretty comical. They were also eating some kind of seeds they dug out of the trees. I can’t tell what kind of trees they are now that the leaves are all shriveled up.
I looked through an old bird book, Birds of Iowa, by Stan Tekiela. It doesn’t say anything very specific about what Blue Jays eat except the usual insects, fruit, seeds and nuts (like acorns and peanuts). They’ll eat raw eggs and baby birds. They also cache food.
If you can tell what kind of nut or seed that Blue Jay has in its beak, please let me know.
We were walking the Terry Trueblood trail on October 3, 2022 during the balmy early autumn weather. Sena and I had been looking for a decent picture of Goldfinches all summer long and didn’t catch any.
Sena gently alerted me to a female Goldfinch foraging on a tree right next to the walkway. She was trying to snatch bugs out of the air, and her olive feathers flashed in the sun.
That was right next to Hilde DeBruyne’s orange steel sculpture titled “Wings.” How lucky can you get?
We got out on the Terry Trueblood Trail today to stretch our legs, feel the breeze, and free our minds of the daily news, which is usually bad. It’s nice to just listen to the wind and the birds on the lake.
We see something interesting every time we walk the trail. Caterpillars were pretty busy, trying to cross the sidewalk without getting crushed by bicycle wheels. Some don’t make it. The grasshoppers are a little sluggish.
There’s a myth about woolly bear caterpillars. If they’re all black, some people say it predicts a really bad winter. The longer the brown color band, the milder the winter. We didn’t see any woolly bears today, just some nervous caterpillars trying to avoid getting smashed.
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