Perspectives and Inspections

Hello November....I lovingly call this my "quiet month".  The calm before the storm if you will.  Jack and I did a big collective sigh as we finished cleaning up the last of the Halloween festivities.  The yard back to normal, the house free of the weird and freaky..well, we still live here!  We even went and voted early.  We both had few free hours Friday afternoon so to kick off my weekend of call we headed out to the Board of Elections to get our voices heard.  Done and done...may the force be with us the next 4 years!  So on to the rest of my quiet month.   The weekend had me hauling around my call phone and anyone who knows me knows I hate call.  But from a different perspective I have to look at it as extra money.  Yes, I get the satisfaction of helping folks who truly don't want to be in the hospital any more than I do, but on the other hand with beautiful Fall weather outside it's hard to be indoors.   So today after work I took Chubbs and headed outside to see the last of Fall colors.

The front door at the Pines will greet you with pretty leaves..and they don't have to be raked either!

The oak tree in the backyard turns yellow/brown almost in one day...but I decided to look at it from a different perspective...

From the ground up! Come and climb it's welcoming limbs any time.  It was fun to see the sun shine through the leaves instead of on them.

Some of the trees are completely bare but then there are the others who still have some beauty to  brag about.

Standing under their yellow canopy the blue sky sparkles and gives a different perspective on a crystal clear afternoon.  My next trip was up the path to the Creepy Woods.

You can see the many branches left from the trees we had removed a few weeks ago.  You can also see the path strewn with brown leaves that snap, crackled and popped under foot.  But on closer inspection the unexpected color came through..

Yes, a different perspective on the dry, brown path.  You must stop and look or you'll miss the subtle color of the season easily trampled under.  Finally, tonight #3 son stopped by with a small gift.  On first inspection I thought it was a bottle of Vodka! Ha! We don't drink alcohol so I needed to look a bit closer...

Really closer:

Starkey Spring Water!  One of his friends found this on a trip and gave it to him.  He shared it with us knowing we'd get a kick out of it.   When Jack's folks were alive they had a gentlemen's farm that had spring fed ponds and spring water in the house. We would take jugs of it home and often talked about having it bottled...Valleybrook Farm Spring Water would have been it's name.  It never made it past the dreaming stage.  Jack's parents and the farm are gone. Others are enjoying that special spring water, but it's great to see that some other "Starkey" had been able to do what we only dreamed of.  We decided that we would open this on Thanksgiving for a different kind of holiday toast.  A toast to good memories and past dreams and our many family blessings.  No close inspections or different perspectives needed!