VETERANS DAY

On this day set aside to honor our veterans, I'd like to express my heartfelt gratitude for the sacrifices they have made for us all. This includes both my grandfathers who served in the Army in WWI; my father who served in the Air Force in WWII; and my brother and sister who served in the Army in Vietnam. Thank you and God bless.

We have an adopt a soldier campaign going on here. Everyone is urged to donate items to send overseas to our military. Soldiers back from deployment say the smallest things like junk food and powered drink mixes are morale boosters and help them remember the folks back home are thinking of them. If you can, donate in your area and put a smile on the face of a service man far from home.


AUTUMN IN NORTHERN ILLINOIS

In a few brief days we go from the scene above to the one below.

The trees are bare, the leaves are on the ground. This Friday it was my mission to move them off the grass. I know it sounds foolish to rake leaves in a 30-mph wind, but I can't always pick my times. In the end there were leaves in my hair, leaves in my shoes and down the back of my neck, but the majority were on the gardens. It may not have been an efficient job of leaf removal but it felt good to be outside using my muscles and breathing the fresh air.

In fact I have a limitless need for leaves and often pick up bags set at the curb for the trash haulers. These bags go into one of the barns to save for mulch on next spring's gardens. It's hard to believe anyone would go to the trouble to neatly bag this lovely stuff and set it out to be hauled away.

This is my window tree.

Robert Frost wrote...

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Later I took a drive up to Janesville, Wisconsin to visit a scrapbooking store. Some scenes along the way...

My resident hawk surveys his domain from high atop a telephone post. Magnificent creature, but not welcome at my bird feeders.





The seed pods below are Euonymus atropurpurea growing in the hedgerows along my lane. A rather nondescript little tree until it produces these pretty pink pods.

Interesting non-native residents like this shaggy llama can be seen along the back roads around my farm. Actually, llamas originated here in North America about 40 million years ago and remained until fairly recently. Before the last ice age occured , many had migrated to South America. After the glaciers receded, none were left in North America.

These tiny black deer, which I can't identify, are diffinitley not natives. They are smaller than our white tails, even smaller than a goat. This photo was taken from a very long distance. Wish I could have gotten closer. If anybody knows anything about these deer, please tell me.

I hope you are enjoying beautiful autumn weather where ever you are. We are having a spell of indian summer here. No way of knowing how long it will last so making the most of these warm, sunny days.

The back roads

The back roads of northern Illinois are a wonderful source of inspiration and beauty. Often, I grab a camera and just drive aimlessly looking at whatever scenes appear over the next hill.



I wonder when I see a sky like this. What causes those patterns and color variations? Is it the wind that swirls and spirals the clouds?

The wonderful stories these old barns could tell. Think of the history they've seen--good times and bad. The men who built them and worked the land, growing old and dying there. Sad to see so many of the big old barns slowly falling. Too expensive to maintain.

Autumn grass has a special grace. It's constant movement is hypnotic.

Milkweed seed was blowing everywhere. It glistened in the sunlight as it drifted above the grass.

Brightly colored flower petals are gone. The seeds hang on waiting for just the right moment to let go.

This little donkey was happy to see me when I offered her pieces of smashed Halloween pumpkin.

I avoid the highways and interstates. How could getting somewhere fast be better than driving slowly through scenes like this one?

Blood Point Road

An ominous sounding name for a road. When you hear the legend you will understand why FEARnet has named it one of the nation’s 10 scariest roads in its “Streets of Fear” online video and On Demand series.

Arthur Blood and his family settled in the area just south of Cherry Valley in the 1830's. The road was named for the Blood farm which was at the road's farthest point. The Blood family formed a friendship with a neighbor, a strange and solitary woman who some claimed was a witch. One night, Arthur murdered his wife and children and then took his own life. Of course, frightened residents claimed he had been under the spell of the witch.

Since that fateful incident, the legend of Blood Point Road has grown. A demon dog was seen shortly after the Blood murders. This may have been the Blood's family dog gone wild but still attached to the farm, waiting for the family to return. It sounds logical but doesn't explain current sightings of a huge, fearsome dog that leaps out to bark and rage at vehicles to this day.

There is a tiny rural cemetery near where the old Blood farm stood. Strange sightings are whispered of and local teenagers frequent the graveyard late at night hoping for a ghostly glimpse of the old witch they call Beulah. (Sadly, they do great damage to the grave stones in their quest for thrills.)

A high bridge spans a railroad track about a mile west of the old Blood farm. The bridge is old but does not date back to the time of the Blood family massacre. Many years ago, people say a school bus somehow lost control and veered off the bridge. None of the children survived. From that day to this, reports of stalled cars, phantom children and the sound of screams can sometimes be heard.

I drove the length of Blood Point Road last weekend on one of the few sunny, warm days we've had this fall. It's hard to imagine a ghostly presence on a lovely autumn day but as our local newspaper pointed out, at night rural roads are very dark and anything could be lurking in the hedgerows or among the tall corn stalks. Just before crossing the bridge, several cars were pulled off the road and parents and children stood at the bridge rail peering down at the long drop to the tracks. Graffiti in blood red was scribbled across the road surface. I made a u-turn at the cemetery and slowed down to watch several people wandering among the headstones. Many of them were probably like myself, just trying to understand how the many old legends originated.

As I pointed the car back toward home, I was startled by the manic barking of a dog. I slowed the car again and watched a huge white dog (Great Pyrenees) snarl and lung at the fence. Behind the dog, an old barn stood back from the road and to the right I could just make out a dark colored house so overgrown with brush and trees it was barely visible.

Ah, the stuff of ghost stories.

Happy Halloween everyone.

The house below is on Mulford Road in Monroe Center. I've never heard any rumors about it but it certainly looks ghostly in the dim light. I like the poem about old houses retaining memories within their wood and plaster. Not a sinister thought...rather comforting that the past is still remembered.

I stand before a darkened doorway
Stairs before me rise.
Windows flanking on either side
Like square, accusing eyes.

No one dwells in this house now.
The walls are bare and cold.
The people who used to live here,
Have long moved and grown old.

Although no one has died within,
There lives an inhuman host.
Memories and dreams that linger on,
Have since become it's ghost.

Echoes of children's laughter,
The very essence of life.
Peal down the hallways,
Piercing the silence like a knife

While you're here, you feel it.
Nothing ever dies.
The wood that creaks beneath your feet,
Are the house's tired sighs.

A house like this can't be replaced.
New is not necessarily good.
The energy of the people who have come and gone
Lived on in the rotting wood.
~ Lorna May

Cloudmaker

Do you ever wonder where clouds come from?

They are manufactured right here in Byron, Illinois.
Today only one of the cloudmakers is online so look for partly cloudy skies.

Click on the skywatch icon to view skies all over the world.

"Gray drip-wet dawn Leafless tree in solitude ~ Don Sax

The dull gray skies go on and on. Saturday morning the birdbath was iced over and later in the afternoon snow swirled briefly before turning over to rain.

Summer ends but the crisp, clear days of autumn do not follow. Instead we have bone chilling damp and weepy skies. No lovely red and gold leaves to ease the way from summer's bright colors into winter's dreary browns. I wonder, will the leaves change this year or will they simply fall from the trees still green.



I said goodbye to my garden during a brief spell of sunshine. I was sad to see a monarch butterfly and a red admiral there. They won't survive this hard freeze. The monarch waited too long to leave home and journey south.






The annuals are gone now. The perennials are tough, they will hold on through a few more freezes, then they too will give up hoping summer will return.













I know the year is dying,
Soon the summer will be dead.
I can trace it in the flying
Of the black crows overhead;
I can hear it in the rustle
Of the dead leaves as I pass,
And the south wind's plaintive sighing
Through the dry and withered grass.
~ Mortimer Crane Brown

Olde English Faire

Departing from my usual garden related topics.

Last weekend Stronghold hosted a renaissance faire. I snapped some photos of the revelers.



On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
~ Tennyson

Had to add another blanket to the bed. Temperatures are dipping into the 40's at night and yesterday they never climbed above the mid-50's. Still, I can't bear to close the windows. I'm in denial. Wrapped up in my cocoon of quilts I can refuse to admit summer is over but when my feet hit the floor on these brisk autumn mornings, I question my stubbornness and consider turning on the furnace.

The summer was unusually cool and wet. A real gift for gardeners, like gardening in the Pacific Northwest. Not a happy summer for water skiers, swimmers, and sun worshiper, but to me it was very nearly perfect.

Several new perennials joined the collection this year. Mostly late season bloomers to provide color into autumn. With a few exceptions, all the plants preformed well and I'm pleased with them. Among these new plants, two surprised me with their beauty and length of bloom periods.



Hybrid geranium Rozanne, I had heard was not reliably hardy to zone 4 but this year she was given a chance to show what she could do. A six inch plant just beginning to bloom when she arrived here in June, she crawled and sprawled among the foliage of taller plants carpeting the ground at their feet in blue. Four solid months and still no sign of stopping. In late September she blankets an irregular oval more than three feet in diameter, every inch covered in bright blue cups. Fingers crossed the winter will not defeat her.



The second outstanding performer was a tiny plant without a name bought at a local plant sale. Finally identified as a native rudbeckia, but one I'd never tried--rudbeckia triloba. What a charmer when it finally burst into bloom in early August. In the evenings, just before the sun sets, when the garden is darkening and colors blur, some trick of the light makes the yellow flower petals reflect the sun's last rays and the blooms seem to be illuminated from within. Of course this inner glow doesn't photograph, but it is something to marvel at every evening. Triloba continues to bloom and looks almost as good now as it did in August. The length of bloom exceeds that of old faithful Goldstrum.



Of course this is the secrete, this is why gardens are never really finished. Every year it becomes a challenge to find just one more plant that will exceed our expectations and give us so much pleasure.

I hope this year brought you a plant that surprised you with its beauty. Have a wonderful week and don't admit summer is over yet. Hope to see you here next Wednesday.