Oh yes, Fall. backward.

Until about February, I love leafless trees and the things they expose.  I saw a Merlin in the naked tree across the street from Ground Zero Coffee Shop yesterday and realized I need to carry my camera around more regularly (though the Cornell Lab of Ornithology photo is a bit more exciting than what I saw).  It was the first Merlin I'd ever seen, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time identifying it.  Worth it.  I was happy to see him.

I kept forgetting about Halloween this year.  Now that I'm not on a semester schedule, the day/month thing confuses me pretty easily.  Carter wasn't going to go trick-or-treating, so he dressed up as a zombie-axe-murderer to hand out candy with me.  I was surprised there were so few kids trick-or-treating on our street, but the ones who stopped by were all adorable: a monkey, Spiderman, Luigi... The best, though, was a one-year-old Batman squealing "nummy-nummy-nummy-nummy-nummy...." with his little hands grasping air as his dad flew him to my candy bowl.  Eventually, Carter said, "maybe I'll just go around the block," and grabbed a bag and took off.  And the real, real best part of Halloween was when Matthew came home with a bottle of wine, and we sat in the cold beside glowing pumpkins with our bucket of candy.

Already, I'm forgetting the taste of fresh tomatoes and zucchinis.  I'm trying hard to prepare for the darkness to come by keeping my eyes in the trees.