It was a dark and foggy night

A few nights ago my mom and I took a walk in the fog. The streetlights were casting an eerie glow that seemed to hang in the mist.

Those are car headlights lighting up the tree's silhouette. It was good timing for me to have a car drive up as I was taking a photo.

It looks like something could creep out of the corners of this photo, doesn't it?

Some people had their Halloween yard decorations out already. It might be hard to see here, but these inflatable ghosts had witch hats on. These were some of those cool inflatables where the little twinkle lights move around inside.

These were in the same yard.

Some cut-out monster silhouettes made a very cool display in the front window of the house across the street. I know these are 2D but it felt like a display, something you might see in a store window. I thought the string lights were a nice touch too.

This is a giant eyeball being projected onto the side of a house. It changed colors and this red was by far my favorite of them.

Here's a classic. The string lights added a really bright glow.

And speaking of classics... I love this! Yeah, I've probably taken a picture of this for years, but here it is again. ;) There's something kind of mysterious about the curtains being pulled around the pumpkin.  

Here's another one you might have seen in years past - the Casper outdoor lamp cover. Usually when you see these they're plastic jack-o-lanterns. Maybe you guys have even seen that craft online where people take the plastic jack-o-lantern treat buckets and cut them in half, using the half to cover their porch lights.

This one is slightly spooky with that uplit scarecrow behind the pumpkin.

Now, it may be a little hard to tell what's going on here, but these people have a rope with a string of lights around it going across their yard from tree to tree. Hanging in the middle is a figure they made.

Now, I'm not entirely sure about this figure. It is wearing a Scream mask and maybe some painter's white coveralls? Anyway, it's creepy having anything that looks like a life-size human hanging over you.

So this is about the point in the walk where a man emerged from his house to tell us that he'd just seen three coyotes creeping around his yard. He said they looked like they might go for his daughter's dog so they took it in. Then the man drove off, leaving us in the dark and fog looking around for coyotes. We never saw or heard any but that didn't keep me from looking over my shoulder every few minutes on the walk back.

I'll leave you guys with this little skeleton in a cauldron. This one might be worth looking at in the daylight to see what's going on. But it looks like maybe a small graveyard covered in cobwebs is surrounding the little guy.

I hope you guys are all doing well and enjoyed this little virtual walk through the fog. I have to get out there with a camera on the lucky nights when a fog like this rolls in. 

Happy 50th Moon Landing Anniversary!

I'm sure you guys have been hearing a lot about today being the 50th anniversary of when the first man landed on the moon. There have been many interesting TV shows about that event and I've learned a lot from them. I wasn't alive to experience that moment, so I can only imagine what it was like. I'm sure people were on the edge of their seats. I still can't wrap my head around how it was possible. If any of you were alive at the time of the moon landing and would like to share some memories of that day in the comments, I'd love to hear about it.

This is a photo I took of the last full moon, on July 16. I wanted to be sure and take a photo of the full moon that appeared closest to the date of the moon landing anniversary.

So, you guys know I like taking photos of the moon. I decided it would be a fun moon landing tribute if I shared a few of my favorite moon photos. These two are from July 15. Look at those clouds!

Amazing how much the sky can change overnight, hey?

These clouds look like they were drawn with charcoal. Anyone know what that little bright light is up to the left? I think it must be a planet since it looks too large to be a star.

This is July of 2018's Super Blood Full Moon. It's so incredibly bright and a little bit pink.

June of 2018's full moon silhouetted by a branch:

I like the way it looks like the branch is cradling the moon.

May 2018:

There were several great moon photographing opportunities in February 2017. This one looks almost iridescent.

The wicked cat's eye:

October 2017's full moon rising:

Another pic of the moon from October 2017:

Looking at this, I remember that was a hazy night. Those are phone lines you're seeing under the moon.

December 2016:

June 2016:

If you look closely, you can see that slight circle shape around the sliver.

I'll leave you guys with what looks like a classic harvest moon, even though this pic was taken in April of 2016. Wouldn't that have been a perfect Halloween moon?

It's amazing to me that I can, with a pretty normal camera, zoom this far to the moon. I look at these photos and think about someone actually standing there. Standing there and looking back here! 

Looking back at the warmth of autumn

Has anyone else seen some surprise early snow this year? We had some snow several days ago. It puts you in a weird mood, a weird Christmassy mood for early November. Even being inside, the light feels different. I think in part because of the way the sun is bouncing off that bright white snow.

After this quick change of seasons, even if the season hasn't technically changed, I'm nostalgically looking back at my autumn photos. Never mind that they're only from a few weeks back! Every autumn, I take lots of nature photos. Here are a few of my favorites. Come take a walk back in time with me, several weeks ago!

My photos were taken over several different days so you're going to notice some changes in light. The sun wasn't giving that fiery appearance to the leaves on this day, but they were still pretty.

Something I find cool about this leaf was probably the result of an insect paying it a visit. You might have to click on this picture to see what I'm talking about. That lighter spot looks almost like fine lace with the light going through it.

Does anyone know what those red bud type things are growing out of the tree?

"Squirrel View"

These oak leaves are almost a silhouette

This is one of my favorite leaf photos. The bright colors are on the other side of the leaf but because the sun is so strong, the colors are showing through in an opaque sort of way. It reminds me of an opal.

I was calling this the "Packer Branch". It was in the process of changing color.

One early leaf

An Ash Tree

A Burning Bush

This is another favorite photo. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a fallen leaf with two distinct colors going on. There's usually more of a blend. This leaf looks like it was spray painted with a stencil.

These next two make me think of stained glass.

And what better goodbye to fall than this?

I feel warmer just looking at these pictures! And I really need to feel warmer right now. I think it would be fun to look at these in slideshow form or click on them one by one as larger pics while listening to this:

For those who get this blog by email:

Relaxing Celtic Music - Evening Breeze

The next blog post or two will probably be about Cedarburg. I have many, many pictures to share from Cedarburg this year. My mom and I went on actual Halloween day/night, which is something we've always wanted to do. It was pretty darn cool. I took an almost unmanageable amount of pictures to sort through. That's basically a tradition. Eventually, I'll have those up to share. I noticed that last year's Cedarburg post was shared in December! So I guess it always takes a while.

P.S. ~ If any of you are looking for some easy to use, free photo storage, I found a good site: www.irista.com It's a Canon site, but your photos don't have to be taken with a Canon to use it. Some of you, like me, who were using Flickr previously probably noticed that you're now being limited to 1,000 free photos on there. So before any of your Flickr photos are deleted, you might want to move them over to Irista. You can transfer photos from Flickr to Irista with a click of a button. I have over 5,000 photos on Irista now and still have room for more! They give you 15 GB for free. So I'm just passing this info along to my fellow photographers and photo-storers. 😃 It's always nice to have an online backup of your important photos.

Happy Spring!

Happy first day of spring! I'm going to call this the first robin of spring, even if I took this pic a couple days ago. Isn't this a cute robin, with those little eyebrows? I swear, sometimes it seems like birds are posing as I photograph them. I'm enjoying seeing and hearing the birds. It makes me feel like there's some life out there! Aside from the birds, it doesn't exactly feel like spring around here, but at least there's no snow on the ground.

I haven't been around the blogosphere much lately or on the internet in general. I had a nasty accident with a craft knife a few weeks ago and that made typing difficult. But now I'm back and typing nearly close to normal!

Some of you who follow me on Twitter might know that I was planning to cut some Papel Picado. I picked up a few books from the library for inspiration:

I picked up those books shortly before having that accident, so I haven't been physically or mentally in the place where I wanted to do intricate paper cutting with little knives the past two weeks! I might end up using scissors. We'll see. In any event, I picked up some colorful tissue paper from Dollar Tree today, so I'm ready to go! If this project turns out well, I'll blog about the results. The plan for now is to frame them.

So back to spring, in celebration of the new season, here are some photos from Sunday's trip to the park! These pics will give you an idea of what March is like in Wisconsin. There's not a lot going on, plant-wise. But if you look closely, you'll see that those plants that went to seed or dried out over winter can form some interesting shapes. Like these thistles:

Interesting how those parts curve around where the flower was. And this, whatever it is...

If you use your imagination, you could see this as a super furry caterpillar. Those pieces at the bottom could be seen as legs. But my guess is that the "fur" has some seeds attached to it. And then there's this mysterious object:

I had been thinking it was either the one hunk of ice that was somehow left in the forest, or maybe a weird type of fungi that was new to me. I poked at it with stick and flipped it over. It was styrofoam!

This looks like a barn owl, doesn't it?

Speaking of birds, there were some seagulls and geese swimming in the pond. Just as I was taking a photo of this seagull, it dipped under to catch something, and made this cool display. This is the kind of picture I probably wouldn't get again if I tried! See what I mean about the birds posing? 😉

There's a wooded area up the hill from this pond and if you really pay attention, you can witness some interesting things there. Like that tree candling last year. This time, there were all kinds of little popping noises coming from the trees. It sounded like popcorn popping. I assumed it was bugs at first, but I couldn't see any. I stood very close to the trees and it sounded like the popping was coming from inside the branches or pinecones. Anyone know what I was hearing? It was like the trees were waking up after winter. Pinecones expanding? Sap dripping? I just don't know. These were the trees that were popping:

Another tree definitely had some sap going:

Isn't that color beautiful?

These are like tiny little tree roses:

Curling birch bark:

Looks like a nice place for a picnic, doesn't it?

Back on the road:

I'll end with some pics of what was one of the more relaxing parts of this walk.

The sun was sending these sparkles off the water, making it look like glass.

Now that I'm looking over these photos, I'm thinking it was looking a little more like spring than I thought. I'm just ready for some warmer weather and plants popping up! How's the beginning of spring where you all are? I've heard weather reports of everything from 70° to blizzards from you guys this past week!