No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace . . .

. . . as I have seen in one autumnal face.     ~ John Donne

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Lately I’ve been thinking that I really don’t have much to say. I’m sure most of you have long since realized this fact (ha!) but I have been blogging for almost three years now and I’m beginning to sound like a broken record to myself. I’m always walking around my yard taking pictures or taking portraits of a photogenic border collie who happens to live with us.

Well, the broken record is going to continue, because today I bring you more photos of walking around my yard. I did include a black cat and some birds this time, to change things up a bit.

Bittersweet October.  The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. 

~Carol Bishop Hipps

I love October. It just feels so good. And the color is beginning to get marvelous around here. To the reader who commented yesterday that seeing my photos of her beloved Maryland is making her cry, I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to make you cry.

My husband hung a bird feeder out the window at the breakfast nook. It’s up quite high and we get to see the birds close up now, every time we sit at the table.

A little Miss Blackie on a chilly fall day.

I took all of the photos in today’s post using my Nikon D80 and a Nikon 105mm macro lens that I borrowed from a co-worker for the weekend.

Last night my husband and I stood right where I stood to take the photo above and we moved our shadows up and down, stretching them out and elongating them again.

It was his idea. I’d been hiking by on the trail that runs behind the trees there and he called me over to show me the long length of his shadow. I wished I’d had the camera but knew that the light would be gone by the time I returned. So I promised myself to remember it because it was one of those completely sweet and touching moments that doesn’t just come along every day.

The sun was slowly setting and the bokeh was glowing.

bokeh (pronounced /boʊ'kɛ/) is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."                                                ^{~ Wikipedia}

I hope you all enjoy your weekends, whatever is that you do. The world is your oyster. And thanks, as ever, for your visits here.

Until next time . . .