Seeing as today was a rather spectacularly beautiful blue sky November day I felt inspired to capture some of the spectacular coloring of the maple tree growing outside our front door. This tree is a relatively young tree and as of yet hasn't matured to the red leaves that it will eventually come to have, as of now only the top leaves are becoming a orangish red, but as for now we're enjoying the golden color every autumn.
The Fall is my favorite time of year, it makes all the other weather that you have to deal with in Minnesota so worth staying. Some would say that the winters here are too long and harsh, but it's okay, really, winter has it's charms and it does serve to make one appreciate the milder climes when they come. ( I know I say that now but talk to me again in February, when I'm climbing the walls, waiting for the winter to end.)

The cool weather and the sunny day also inspired me to get a little more work done on putting the flowers to bed for the winter. I tucked in a few more perennial plants before the ground starts to freeze. What? I always do my spring planting in the fall, doesn't everyone? I may be pushing it a little this year, and I usually try to get my last minute gardening done before the end of October, but I have been known to be digging in my front flower beds as late as December. Don't look at me like that, I'm not proud of it.

The forecasters are predicting some cold weather coming in, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to be out and about the yard today. I also had to insist that my youngest daughter come outside with me for awhile and get some fresh air and exercise. The only exercise she is interested in these days is her thumbs on video controllers. There will be time enough for that in the winter, when the sun shines around here, get thee out into it.






As I was lying on the ground in the wood chips with my camera looking up and taking pictures of the fall colors, I had an odd sense of deja vue, for only two days earlier on Friday afternoon I found myself lying in the wood chips looking up on account of another rather spectacular fall of different sort.
A different kind of fall to be sure but I wouldn't say any less spectacular, in fact, my fall was probably even more spectacular as in there were actual spectators.

It had been a very long week at work and I had picked up some hours to cover for a coworker who had an unexpected death in his family on Halloween and I was still struggling to overcome a cold that has had a tendency to move from place to place, it started in the ear and then moved to the nose and it's latest version had gone for the throat, so needless to say I was exhausted by the end of Friday. I had thought that I was going to picked up by my husband and daughter to go to her Parent teacher conference but due to a series of miscommunication was left stranded.
This isn't so terrible, it only meant that I would need to walk home, which isn't a terrible hardship either because the weather was clear and the walk is not so far, about a half mile, except when you are extremely tired, as I was.

I started walking across the parking lot and toward home and I came to a curb with some shrubbery and I had the choice to either step up on the curb or walk along the curb. My first thought, perhaps by habit, was to step up, but I was so tired that at the same instant that I lifted my foot to step up my mind made the split second decision to abort, "too tired, don't step up."

As a result my foot didn't make the curb but came down on the ground in front of the curb, but I had a lot of forward momentum going forward to step up that I lost my balance and started falling forward. To catch myself, my other foot had come forward but instead of catching my balance, the toe of my shoe hit the curb and I launched myself into a forward triple axle that would rival Michele Kwan's best jump and landed myself full out in the wood chips next to the shrubbery, on my back looking up at the evening sky.

Now here's how tired I was, I was not hurt, except for perhaps my pride and dignity, but that is of little matter and my thought was that since I'm already down, what I would really like would be to rest there for a few moments, as long as I'm already down there anyway.

But I knew I couldn't, I couldn't because I had made this magnificent display of myself in full view of a whole parking lot of people. I knew if I just laid there and rested that inevitable there would be that question. "Are you Okay?" I know they mean well and they are just trying to show their concern but, seriously?

Well let's see, I just took a tumble in front of an audience of strangers and I'm pretty sure that the whole thing has been caught by the security cameras, that aught to give the security people something to amuse themselves with tonight and I'm lying on my back in a pile of wood chips.
"I've had better days"

So I rolled myself over, sat up, stood up and continued to make my way home brushing and picking the wood chips out of my hair and off my jacket and out of my ubiquitous knitting bag.
Fortunately I hadn't landed on my knitting, that could have been bad, wouldn't that be just perfect: Woman stabs herself in the back in the parking lot on her way home from work...news at ten.