all paws on deck

 The season is marching on and I love it.  Some leaves are starting to turn!

The trail is lined with White Snakeroot, a sure sign of fall.

Bees, moths, and butterflies are active much later in the morning because of the chill.  You see them clinging to the bottoms of leaves and flowers, waiting for the temperature to rise.

Praying mantises are really active in the fall.  This is a rarely-seen Carolina Mantis, a native to Indiana.  We've tried to cull as many of the invasive Chinese Mantises as possible, since they will actually eat our native mantises.  

terrible cell phone pic

The fall asters are out!

blue wood aster

Acorns, too.

More caterpillars!!

imperial moth caterpillar

mottled prominent caterpillar

This looks like a caterpillar, but it's a sawfly larva.

Fall berries, too!

American spikenard

maple leaf viburnum

There are even some pre-Halloween ghosts out and about!

I'm doing my part.

brown butter maple pumpkin cookies

I'm even putting up Halloween decorations this week, although very slowly because of the pinched nerve in my back.  At least I'm still able to take my daily walk...

Pepita slipping her harness and dashing for the car...again.

The cats are doing the usual.  Helping.

Calliope 'helping' me with yoga

The Barnacle 'helping' me with photography

Frances 'helping' me sort clothes

I appreciate the extra hands...or paws.

Another week, another step closer to my favorite season!

apples to apples

 More hazy mornings...

...and days that can vary as much as 25 degrees from one day to the next.  That's early fall in Indiana!  The berries are starting to take on a slight blush...

...and at last, it's apple-picking time.

We got a fair amount this year...

...maybe around 20 pounds.  Enough for a pie and a couple months of baked oatmeal breakfasts.  I've been processing just under 5 pounds per day.

We didn't even try to get the apples at the top of the tree!  They are for the birds, and later they'll fall and feed the wild animals here.  Bees love them too!

I've been putting away summer clothes and pulling out warmer things (it was 58 this morning and I wore long sleeves and jeans.  Tomorrow it will be 95!).  The Barnacle has been a huge help.

This is a great time of year for walking...

Pepita loves the fresh air...

...almost as much as she loves doing nothing.  ;)

Even though it's September, there are still plenty of flowers in the garden, and plenty of butterflies on those flowers.

zebra tiger swallowtail

silver-spotted skipper

Plenty of cool mushrooms too, even though it's been fairly dry.

velvet-top fungus

berkeley's polyphore

false caesar's mushroom

turkeytail

golden bolete

violet-grey boletes

I've started physical therapy for a pinched spinal nerve and it's progressing well.  I'm juggling medications to help deal with the hormonal migraines I've been plagued with over the past 6 weeks...and I'm hopeful that I'll be ready to join the land of the living again soon!  Although Frances loves my down time...and I've become addicted to my heat pad.  I've finished three books in the past 2 weeks and it's a great silver lining.  

Looking forward to a more active October!  

are we there yeti?

 It's been hot this week...really hot.

We've been so lucky this summer with cool, wet weather, but traditional Indiana summer heat has arrived.  Almost 100 degrees, day after day.  Yikes!

At least the cats like it.

catching a sunbeam

Since mornings were still pretty cool, we decided to hike to Indiana's most haunted cemetery, Stepp Cemetery.  It's only 10 minutes from our house!  

I love cemeteries.  I spent a fair amount of time at Whetzel Cemetery near my house growing up, making rubbings from the old tombstones.  Some date back to the 1700s!  I also made sure to visit the Bonaventura Cemetery when we were in Savannah.  

I love the statues...

...but I'm fascinated by the personal messages on tombstones.  How do you capture the essential quality of a person in just a few sentences?  I absolutely love seeing what people come up with.  

Stepp Cemetery was very odd, though.  The graves had become mini shrines, and you could tell that a lot of the items had been left there recently.

A lot of the "haunting" rumors are centered around a religious cult called the Crabbites that used to gather here.  They were a free-love sex cult who also liked to handle snakes and dance naked around the graves (to add a bit of science cred to their group, they also believed in a square Earth).  They indulged in a bit of small-animal sacrifice, right here at the cemetery! In addition to the Crabbites, there have been several sightings of "a woman in black," and Indiana's very own version of the "hook-man" myth!  Well, hook-woman.  A mother and her son were in a car accident on Old 37 and the son was killed and then buried in Stepp Cemetery.  The mother lost a hand, conveniently replaced by a hook, which she'd wave angrily at cemetery trespassers.  Apparently she continued to do this long after her own life had ended.  Sasquatch has also been sighted, as well as "men in white cloaks" who were definitely "not ghosts" (seen as recently as 2010).  We've hiked here daily for years but somehow have missed this entire cast of characters!  But we've never been here after dark... 

I did see something of interest in the forest this week.  One of my favorite caterpillars, the spicebush swallowtail!  What a beauty!!

If you see a folded-over leaf, there's probably someone inside.

More beautiful mushrooms...

coral fungus

red-capped bolete

amanita muscaria

american caesar mushroom

amanita jacksonii

...but with the weather being so hot, we mostly focused on getting in and getting out.  Mostly spending time at home...in the air conditioning.

Trying to reach some personal goals.

Hopefully the heat will relent soon and we'll be able to get outside again soon...fingers...and paws... crossed!