. . . but not much left by 10:30 this morning. Went for a run in shorts and t-shirt about 3:30, when it was 50 degrees. Perhaps winter hasn’t really got started yet.
Nature
A winter sunset in Manassas
Great blue heron
At Government Island, Stafford, Virginia. 2:54pm, Kodak Easyshare, maximum zoom, no tripod. Got another chance at the same bird a few minutes later, 3:06pm, from a different angle and a bit closer.
How can the same bird look so different from a different angle and with light that must have been almost the same? And that is the same water, not snow, even the same spot. The temperature was about 60F, or 16C. I was in a T-shirt on the last Sunday in November.
Last afternoon of daylight savings time
The Cherokee Princess dogwood about 3pm on Guy Fawkes Night.
A table for two
Front lawn by day
Automated slideshow of about a dozen shots, Oct 22 and 24, about 5pm both days. Scroll down a bit to see the whole frame. Rapidly left-click the picture to speed things up.
Front lawn after hours
Automated slideshow of several dozen shots, Oct 15-20. Scroll down a bit to see the whole picture. Rapidly left-click on the picture to speed things up.
Sandy’s woodland garden
Sandy’s woodland garden at dusk after the rain today.
Tomato Cage
Elspeth designed this tomato cage for Sandy’s birthday, and I helped her and Tim put it up last weekend, though not quite all the chicken wire is up yet, and it still needs a door at the back. Maybe next year some of the tomatoes will come to us instead of the squirrels.
Famous last words
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This is the creature which fell out of my shoe this morning after I got back to the house with the paper, aware of a growing pain on the top of my right foot. Its body is only two or three millimeters wide, but the sore spot on my foot is about an inch wide, where the skin is red and feels clammy. The soreness reminds me of severe sunburn I had on the tops of my feet at the beach once, years ago, but the entire foot has an ache also. Initially I thought it was a spider, but now I think maybe not. Perhaps it got into my shoe from the compost heap, where I had been to dump lawn clippings Thursday evening. [Update, Sunday morning: I added the third photo, since I was still alive, and the insect is still dead. My foot seems to be recovering — less red, less achy, less itchy, and the very minor swelling has now gone.]