It's Halloween here today/tonight.  Jack and I carved one pumpking yesterday and I carved this one this morning.  The big guy said Jack ran into daycare this morning and didn't even say goodbye.  Some kids were already dressed up and the big guy said you could cut the excitement with a knife.  I imagine he'll be bouncing off the walls by the time he goes out to trick or treat.  

The yard is cleaned up and it's supposed to snow tonight, as it so often does on Halloween.  I'm ready.  

Big red turned out to be big orange/red and is so beautiful.  It'll be a beautiful tree as it grows.  We still have five more trees that have to be cut down in the yard, due to disease, but this maple will hopefully get quite large and fill in for all those lost trees.

Two years ago I collected oak acorns and tried to grow oak trees come springtime from those seeds.  I had very poor success.  However, there must have been a squirrel burying acorns in my backyard that same fall.  I have four or five small oaks growing in my garden.  I'll dig them up in the spring give them to a coworker who has an acreage.  He took two of the oaks that I grew from seed and they're doing well.  

Yesterday was lovely and warm and I spent some time outside, tidying up, putting things away, moving leaves onto my garden beds and poop scooping.  The sky was blue and it felt like a gift, so late in October.  I've been trying to spend as much time outside this fall as possible, not sure why, but it feels like every moment spent outside is important this year.  Perhaps I feel like this every fall but this year it feels different somehow.

Doom and gloom still exist in the news, Russia, nuclear weapons, lies, deaths, elections, twitter, etc, etc, etc., but outside the seasons still pass.  The downy woodpeckers show up for the suet every fall.  The chickadees are back to feast on sunflowers seeds.  The trees turn colour and lose their leaves, leaving us a beautiful carpet of colour to walk upon.  The sky is still blue.  The sun and moon still rise and set.  Mother Nature continues on, regardless of how we fuck things up.  Thankfully she is much wiser than we are.