After a rainy start to the weekend, we had a beautiful day on Sunday to walk.
I am glad that I'm starting to recover from too long hikes when I was on vacation.
I would hate to miss autumn walks at home, and thankfully am finally getting the energy to walk around the lake near my house.
I had to laugh when I noticed the party going on at the picnic table (shown below) in a flooded area around the lake.
The ducks were having a great time partying on the table although I didn't see any picnic food.
There was a great blue heron perched on the fish feeding station.
He was scared off by a human fisherman on the bank.
The heron ended up fishing on the other side of the lake and is in the shot below but too distant to see him, except as a spec on the left hand side.
I zoomed in though to get a better shot of the heron's new fishing spot.
The cormorants have returned to their favorite perch where I tend to spot them in the fall.
I like the way the evergreens are mixed in with the trees that will lose their leaves in the winter.
We still haven't reached peak color in my neck of the woods as the oaks and a few other trees have just started to change leaf color.
Click for the home of Our World Tuesday. Happy Halloween!
My mother was from Boone, North Carolina and growing up we always spent a lot of time visiting my grandmother there.
My mother died when she was 65 in 1990 and about 13 years after that my grandmother died (she lived to be around 103 as I recall).
The Boone/Blowing Rock part of NC will always seem like a second home to me.
Bill and I were there last week enjoying the fall foliage.
In central NC where I live, most of our trees haven't changed colors yet.
It always feels like I'm extending fall when I go to the mountains during peak color.
Then I come home and only the dogwoods and a few other trees have changed.
Every day though I'm seeing more trees beginning to get some color.
All of the shots in this post were taken last week in the NC mountains.
I took so many pictures that my blog can look like a very long autumn.
I started some time ago with the dogwoods in color at home, since they've already changed here.
Since I got home from the mountains I've been posting shots from that trip.
By the time I am done posting vacation shots we'll have more and more color here.
I like all the seasons but I think fall and winter are probably my favorites, although I'm usually ready for spring.
I wouldn't mind having a shorter summer than we usually have.
We had an unusually hot summer this year although it did start cooling off earlier than it sometimes does.
I didn't get any good shots of the protected parts inside of rock overhangs.
The light wasn't good for shooting those areas but I commented to Bill that a whole community could live inside some of them.
I was exaggerating but during our longest hike there were some rocks with protected areas that could shelter a large family during a storm.
I'm running out of things to say because I picked way too many pictures to go into this post.
The house below nestled in the hills appealed to me.
The house below is a view of cone manor that makes it look a lot smaller than it is.
There weren't any lilies still blooming on bass lake on the cone estate but lots of lily pads could be seen.
One last shot for this long post.
Click for the home of Our World Tuesday.
Photographs on this site are by Carver © 2006 - 2019
