A Gallery of Beautiful Leaves

Yesterday, my Mom and I visited a local park to see the changing leaves. We saw a pretty nice show of autumn colors. The trees are just at the point here where they are freshly yellow, orange, and red. And because it was such a bright, sunny day, I had the opportunity to catch the light glowing through the leaves.

It probably looks warmer than it was, because of the bright sun. It felt like maybe a 40-something degree day with a brisk wind.

Isn't it cool how this tree changed color basically in half? I'm reminded of those hairstyles where someone dyes their hair a different color on each side of their head - straight down the middle. This is that hair-do on a tree. You can look up "split dye hair-do" if you don't know what I'm talking about. You'll see some pics of girls who have actually chosen these very colors. 

And here's a close-up of a beautiful tree that has completely turned red:

I love the green to yellow to orange fade on each of these individual leaves!

This photo reminds me of stained glass because of the dark lines in front of the lit up leaves.

These two came out soft and pretty, almost pastel. Do you think this is bittersweet? The shape seems right but it was pretty pink.

I'm not sure if this is a Japanese Maple. The general leaf shape seems right. It was sort of a low growing bush, though. My best guess from looking at pics online is that it is a Weeping Japanese Maple. 

This one looks like it's either reaching out or pointing at something.

You can't ask for a better array of colors from one plant! Just wow.

Neither of us had ever seen leaves change like this, with this intense black against the bright colors. And what was so neat was that there was red, orange, and yellow featured against that black. The ultimate Halloween leaves, right?

We saw a few other colorful plants that fit nicely with the autumn leaves. I'm not sure what these are, but I liked them so much that I included several photos of them.

They could be some kind of burr? They certainly look like they could attach themselves to a passerby. Do you guys know what these are? My only clue for you is that I think they're the seed pod form of something...

This is Paintbrush Celosia. I grew some of these this year. They grew a little differently, though. Mine were taller with multiple spikes, but not as full.

Some nice autumn colored Zinnias:

I'm not sure what these berries are, but they were so pretty with the light shining through them. I feel like I am looking at a miniature streetlamp.

We had a very pleasant day in the park. We ran into some nice people and I had an amazing first, which was seeing a bald eagle! The eagle was far up in the sky, but I managed to get a photo of it with my zoom. Isn't that something?

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this virtual trip to the park. I know some of you may be in places where the leaves don't change color like this, so I am happy to share! Some of these leaves were new to me this year. It's amazing that any could be new at this point.

🍁🍂🍃

I realized that those of you who have been receiving my blog by email in the past, no longer are. The service I was using for that just decided to stop. So, I'll be figuring something out to replace it. Again, any tech advice is appreciated. If any of you were using Feedburner to send blogs by email to your readers, what have you replaced it with?

Hiding in the shadows of Venice

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go. 

~ Truman Capote
 

I think the quote above is a good description of Venetian decadence. I'm trying to imagine Truman Capote vacationing in Venice, and my mind is conjuring up all kinds of entertaining things!

The above photo was taken through a shop window at night. I think a mask can look scary with even a mannequin's eyes peering through it! In case you don't know, Venice holds a yearly celebration called Carnival (Carnevale). Basically, during Carnival, people dress up in elaborate costumes and masks. Mostly people are so covered, that you couldn't guess who is inside the costume! 

Part of assembling my last blog post involved paging through trip photos. I was searching for photos of plague doctor masks. I ended up finding more mask photos than I remembered taking! I wanted to share these photos with you guys. Actually, I wanted to share more trip photos than this, but I'm staying true to the Halloween theme and sticking with just costumes and spooky shop displays. All the photos in this post are from my trip to Venice.

The video below features an interview with a German woman who travels to Venice each year for Carnival. She has designed some beautiful, prize winning costumes. Get this: she doesn't sew, but rather hot glues her dresses together!



I felt really inspired after watching this. With Halloween fast approaching, I might have to get going with my glue gun!

This is probably the scariest photo I took in Venice:

You might need to click this picture to see the details. This was taken through a very dark shop window. Don't enlarge this if you're scared of clowns!

If you've been to Venice, you know about the narrow alleyways between buildings. I can't imagine walking past someone wearing this clown mask in a dark alley.

Here's another mannequin at night. I'm not sure why this one freaks me out, but it does.

There are many videos on youtube that show people dressed up for Carnival. Here's a favorite:

You'll notice that most of the people in this video are entirely covered. There's no way you could recognize a person wearing one of these costumes. As you can guess, anonymity didn't always bring out the best in people. We've all seen what sometimes happens when people hide behind their avatars and user names online. Imagine that kind of anonymity in real life. To make matters more dangerous, everyone was anonymous.

Hundreds of years ago, all Venetians were wearing masks year round. There were many reasons for this. Wealthy Venetians didn't need to fear being robbed if no one knew who they were. Masks were handy for spies who wanted their identities hidden. Criminals found masks as useful as bank robbers find ski masks today. If a person didn't want others to know they gambled, they wore a mask to gamble. It goes without saying that there were all kinds of sexual acts that wouldn't have happened without the anonymity of the masks. People wearing masks could do all the things they were ashamed of or wanted to keep secret.

This lifestyle was fun for a while, but after a point the masks were having a negative impact on Venice's society. Things got so out of control, that masks were banned! During the 1100's the Catholic Church got involved and it limited mask wearing to only several months out of the year. This eventually led to the Carnival celebration we know of today. Outlawed off and on, Venetian Carnival was officially reinstated in 1979. More Venetian Carnival information can be found on this informative web site: http://www.magicofvenezia.com/servlet/the-template/maskstory/Page

Aren't these animal masks cool? It would be fun to go to Carnival as the whole zoo with a group of friends.

Oh, and last but not least... I was pretty happy to find this lurking in my photo collection!

Of course I had no idea what I was looking at when I took this picture. A neat feature of this mask is the full plague doctor figure painted between the eyes. If anyone can read Italian, please let me know what is written on the beak.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my trip photos! I know that if I ever visit Venice again, I'll have a better understanding of the history behind the masks I see.

Lunar Eclipse

Anyone who loves Halloween would have loved to have seen the lunar eclipse that occurred last night at the start of December 21, 2010. I wish I could have seen it, but it was anything but clear in the sky here. This was the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years, and the second of two lunar eclipses this year. That's pretty unusual, but what is even more unusual is that this is the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the night of the winter solstice since 1638! Here are some photos of the moon rising like a big orange pumpkin ~ Just gorgeous.

For those who would like to learn more about this, last night's lunar eclipse actually has its own Wikipedia page: Here it is