some favorite things

And *here* is the jewel of the day -- a perfectly ripe O'Henry peach. I think it was more than ten years ago now that I tasted another out-of-this-world peach -- the Angelus peach -- and as the name suggests, it was truly heavenly. I've searched for this variety of peach ever since but with no luck. I think I may have found a good rival, though, with this one. I could have sworn with the first bite that it had been marinating in vanilla sugar..


As I was enjoying my tastes-like-vanilla-sugar-peach breakfast, I was treated to some front row entertainment from this guy, a big 'ol pileated woodpecker. Though the Great Blue Heron rates #1 in my book for "majestic", this guy is a close second --

A windy overcast day today. Fall has started, and each breeze and gust of wind is nature's way of helping the trees to cast off this year's growth in preparation for winter. The leaves haven't quite started turning yet, but the seedpods on the Big Leaf Maples *have*. Right now they're mostly clustered on the branches, but they're brown and dried and ready to launch.
That's got to be one of my favorite "gestures" of nature -- watching the maple seedpods fall through the air like little helicopters. The show is just beginning... only the most-ready and mature of them are heading to the ground right now, but in another few weeks these fall breezes will have hundreds of them fluttering down from the sky.