I bought a digital camera today (Nikon 775) and then went for a long walk to experiment taking pictures.

My favorite out of the bunch is Zeke overlooking the beaver pond down the road from our house. This is a favorite swimming hole for Zeke and a few of his friends. Click the picture for a much larger version. In the spring we walk down in the early evening to be serenaded by hundreds of frogs, it's so loud that you feel compelled to plug your ears. Today was pretty quiet except for the blustery winds and rattle of fall leaves falling and skittering across the forest floor.

The next picture is of one of our favorite local roads, Poverty Lane. Canopied in trees it is usually dramatic looking the year round. This is the eastern end of Poverty Lane, heading towards Ascutney View farm. If you continue down and around Poverty Lane you'll eventually reach Poverty Lane Orchards, where we usually buy our apples and cider. They also have some interesting selection of "classic" apple breeds, which you can sample.

I'll leave you with one more picture. Each year we plant summer squash and each year it overwhelms us with more squash than we, or anyone foolish enough to know us, can consume. Towards the end of the year Faith starts picking and leaving them by the side of the garden, where more often than not they rot. This year l took five of these "extra's" and arranged them on our front rock wall, sort of like a hand of yellow fingers reaching to the sky. Over the course of the next couple of days I kept thinking about decorating them with some sort of grease pencilled face, since they really looked cartoonish, but someone else beat me to it.

One day, while we were out on a hike, someone came by and decorated two of the squash. On returning from the hike we found one squash fit up in a tu-tu, and the other with a nice white hat. Each had new eyes, nose, and some form of lips. Nobody stepped forward to claim the work. Later that day I cut up some vegetables and decorated another of the squash. Two days later I dug through my old electronic parts bin and dolled up another squash as something of a vegetable terminator...a happy terminator. More than three weeks have gone by now and the fifth squash remains undecorated. Minimalistic squash, as Faith would say.

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