All Hallows Eve Doth Approach

I wandered up the street one morning with camera in hand to look for houses that had decorated for Halloween. While no one had gone over the top, there were two entrances that caught my eye.

You'd have to admit that the green door is pretty vivid. Kudos on their bravery for doing this. And the Halloween additions seem to fit in well enough.

I liked this little setup quite a bit. It is tasteful but well arranged. Someone has a flair.

There was a tree that was in a state of gloriosity with a fine carpet underneath.

It was a short excursion, and that is all that I have for today.

Amaziony

Amazon is pretty amazing, really. I had to make a return. They sent me a label via email, which I printed and asked Sue to package it because I am clueless about such things and she isn't. We are a team; when she needs to order something, she asks me to do it because I am better at that sort of thing.

Once she had packaged it, I took it to the UPS depot. Amazon emailed that they would refund the amount once they had received the package. Believe it or not, I received notice of the refund that same evening.

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Speaking of Amazon, I get notices for Kindle books on FB: for the self-published kinds of works. Recently, I purchased their suggested, Aspire to Die, a Bridget Hart novel by MS Morris. Hart is a female detective in Oxford, Morse's and Lewis's old stomping grounds.

The cost was $2.99, so I purchased it and liked it well enough to order the next volumes all of the way up pre-ordering volume 5.

Consider this as a PSA for fellow mystery readers. We easily run out of titles from the well-known, published authors, so finding another passable mystery is a good thing. At $2.99, it is not much of an investment for anyone to give it a try.

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Speaking of published authors, we have the latest Louise Penny and Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) books on Audible, but right now, I am more interested in reading and not listening. I do find listening a pleasant alternative at times, but I am saving those books for later, maybe in the bleak midwinter. 

Meanwhile, after reading the MS Morris volumes that I mentioned above, I came to realize that I had somehow missed Ann Cleeves' latest Vera tome: The Darkest Evening. It came out earlier this year, and I somehow missed it. Vera is like an old friend,espcially after watching the tv series. I read it in pretty quick time and enjoyed it thoroughly.

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I mentioned above that if Sue wants to order something online, she gets me to do it, partly because I have all of the required information close to hand. She found Merrell hiking boots online and decided she wanted them. She uses such boots as her winter footwear, and her current pair of Merrell boots is very old, but she has been very very happy with them.

So, we made the order, and they came the next day. Yay!

Not yay! Her normal size was too tight, so we were forced to return them as well. 

Meanwhile, she subsequently found from Merrell a pair of shoes/slippers. She has also has a similar pair of these that are wearing down, but when these arrived, they were too large. Same size -- the boots were too small, and the house shoes too large. Go figure.

Merrell also handled the returns without cost by having us print a label and taking it to the UPS depot. This pleased me because I still have negative feelings towards another shoe company which once charged me $10 for shipping. Then I had to pay another $10 on the return. Perhaps the are more competitive now.

Caturday 24: DeFEETed

Due to allergies amongst sometime guests, we keep Lacey out of the guest room. We have a barricade that while it would not present that formidable an obstacle for most cats, our Lacey is a middle-aged lady with a certain amount of girth. So it works.

But I go in and out at various times, and she absolutely loves to nonchalantly wander in after me. On rare occasions I forget about her. This happened in my post way back in August 2019 when she found a spot just just behind the pillows.

Since that time, she has been only effectively shut inside a few times, but we were alerted by her plaintiff meows. It must have been dinner time.

Not this time though, for there were no meows. Instead, there was utter contentment. 

I had seen her wander in after me, but then I forgot about her for awhile. Sometime later, it occurred to me that I had done that, so I went looking for her.

She almost pulled it off but, alas, was defeeted, so to speak.

Sue inconsiderately lifted the blanket and interrupted her sweet reverie.

One Tree in the Cemetery

At this point of autumn, it becomes unlikely that one would find big, colourful scenes. But there are trees and smaller scenes that can be found.

Tuesday has pretty well been the only day this week when the weather wasn't terrible. Sue was busy doing some chores, so I took the camera to the cemetery for a few minutes where there was one tree still looking might fine. I suppose there was more than one, but only one seemed to be in a good position, photographically speaking. I ended up photographing it from different angles. 

This was the first composition that presented itself to me.

I drove off to the left of the above frame to get on the other side of the tree, but on my way, I stopped to photograph it from this angle. You may notice that the tree looks more yellow than orange from this side. I thought that looking down the rows in the other photos would be best, but I think this is my fave.

Then, I found myself directly on the other side from my first photo.

Somewhat unusual for me, I had been using the tripod on that day, but in order to obtain this final photo I had to hold it above my head. This photo was pretty much an afterthought, but I think this is my second fave of the day.

Park and Trail

Thursday already, and here I am posting about our park visit last Saturday. Posts accumulate at certain times of the year when much is going on, such as fall colour. But a long long winter is coming when such may not be the case.

In the morning, Sue and I went for a slow walk in the nearby park and for a little bit along the trail.

Just about the enter the park.

Very near the entrance.

There was a certain resplendent tree.

Along the wooded trail, which would begin to the left of the two above photos, there were a few gaps. I took this through one of them.

Later, along the trail, there was a spot where we could get down to the water. Leaves were floating past.

It was a pleasant outing, and that was the day when we also met Sha and the kids in the park later in the afternoon (which I have already posted). The next day, we had planned to go on what would probably have been our final colour excursion, but the weather was terrible and has pretty much remained that way.

Movie Town

Our area has become a draw for movies of the Hallmark type. It seems that there are one or two productions per year.

Back in February, I posted here that Mel Gibson was in town . The movie, Fatman. "is scheduled to be released in the United States in select theaters on November 13, 2020." (Wikipedia)

There is now another movie being filmed, and on Friday, Sue got a message from a friend that we should go by a certain house and take pictures, for it had been done up with snow.

Trucks and cars lined the street.

Even the yard at the side was decorated.

I squeezed between vehicles to get a shot of the whole house. I was so close that I had to take two shots to merge together later.

I posted them on our local FB photo group. "Snow appeared in the rain today on Hawthorne St."

I guess that was too cryptic, but I didn't think it needed explanation as filming movies hereabouts is not a new thing. Some comments:

why isn't there snow on the roofs???

Shoot me now

WTF? I am not sure where Hawthorne Street is, but I didn’t get snow in my corner of town. Did it happen anywhere else? 

I had to explain. Really.

Anyway ... they did ask me if I was the photographer, which, of course, I wasn't. Then they simply asked me not to take pictures of the cast when they came out. Well, it was raining, and I wasn't about to hang around, so that was no problem.

That evening, there was quite a remarkable sunset. Sue took this with her phone from the bedroom as it was beginning to fade.

A Brief Meetup in the Park

It had been long enough, so, after some deliberation, we met with Shauna and the kids in the park on Sunday. With COVID raging in nearby Ottawa and the kids at school and Sha at work, we've been keeping our distance.

Our plans to continue to keep a distance once we were actually together didn't work out too well, but the chance of catching anything in a short meeting in the great outdoors is very very low. These were not random strangers to hang out with in a crowded bar for hours at a time but people with whose health we had much reason to trust.

We arrived first, and I took a photo of Sue.

Then JJ showed up on the bike. He doesn't live very far from the park.

Shauna and Danica came a little later after purchasing coffee for us all. They parked at the other end of the park, so we met part way. I had hung back to take some photo or other.

A family photo, minus one.

There was some sitting and talking.

Sue had the kids toss leaves. I squeezed off about a dozen rapid fire photos of the sequence and picked two to blend. The base photo is of the kids, but the dog was best about three frames later, so I blended them together. I love it.

JJ still can't resist climbing trees.

The JJ show continues. He was #1, but Lola didn't quite make the podium.

It was a short but beneficial gathering. Unless we are lucky with a nice day or two, coffee meetups in the park are over for a very long time, but a walk in the brisk weather worked on that day.

Danica would have liked to come back with us for a sleepover, but that seems like a step too far at the moment. Sadly.

Since I seldom make videos, I forgot about these.

Kids, dog and leaves.

Lola chasing the frisbee. Notice the light change from one clip to the next. The sun aas going in and out a lot that day.