Only the Shadow knows....

(SkyWatch Friday below)

No spooky Halloween stories, but I thought I'd share a couple of photos of "Shadow"..the mystery kitty, since he is a nice Halloween black. I have no idea where Shadow lives (or his real name) but he shows up at my house once very 3-4 months. If he wasn't so friendly and healthly looking, I would swear he lived in the wild.
He first came to my house as a little kitten....I caught him sleeping in our warm garage in the winter and wondered why he had no warm bed of his own! I always left a little food because I was worried about him.

He is a beautiful cat and I would cheerfully adopt him if I didn't already have 3 who do NOT want any more cats to live here! Plus, I assume that somewhere he has a home. He doesn't belong to anyone on our street, so he must come across the fields when he is really hungry or wants a warm place to sleep....he knows I'm an easy touch! He has been visiting the last 3 days.

Sky Watch Friday...sky as a backdrop to autumn

It's Skywatch Friday and I'm using the sky today to highlight the beautiful color that is peaking here in the Midwest.

For more Skywatch Friday click on the icon on my side bar.

Look at the sky and everything wonderful in it!

Autumn will be gone all too soon and we will want to remember all this lovely color!

Last Call......

The birds must have heard me when I yelled "Last call...." for the October Bird count!

This morning the Song Sparrow put in an appearance.Were you looking for me?
The Cowbird showed up yesterday!

The Bluejay was already here, but I don't get very many photos of him.

The White-Crowned Sparrow showed up this morning, also!

3 additions to my count!

Mike swears that he hears an owl in the neighborhood and something swooped over the car last night when we were leaving......maybe if I go out real late or real early?????
The only time I've seen an owl here was when a small one flew into our garage one year :-)

We do hear them in the neighbor's trees somewhere in the area and I would love to see one!

I think this might be my little hurt goldfinch.....

It was cold this morning and she was sitting around all puffed up and burying her beak in her feathers. Sigh.....I tried to throw some seed where she was sitting without scaring her away.

I went back to my October 1st posting to see if I could put a name to that "mystery warbler" I had, and think it might be a Tennessee Warbler.....I hope so because I have never seen one before! Here is the post if anyone wants to take a look and see if they can confirm it.

October bird count day #1.....

Nightmare on Oregon Street......

And you thought you've seen Halloween decorations??!!

I thought about posting these for My World, but don't really want people to think that all of Evansville is like this! This is one house in a very small crowded neighborhood that goes nuts at Halloween and Christmas! It is hard to take one photo of the whole thing. He has built wooden tiers in the side yard that he fills with every decoration he can get! These are last years photos, because when we tired to go over there last week, he did not have all of the lights on yet....must be saving energy this year! This is an annual thing and people from all over the city come to stand in amazement....I guess it's amazement anyway.

Black cats and witches....

.... bats and monsters and Snoopy....

.......1000's of lights!.....(must cost a fortune!)....

.....Frankenstein's monster.....

......spooks in a car.....

.....even animated pop-up monsters....

.....pumpkins!....

......a little bit of everything....

....giant purple spiders....

.....creepy skulls...

.......every inflatable ghost in the entire world.....

....and Tigger, too!.....

Somehow a witch crashing into a pumpkin seems to sum it all up!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

(There will be 3 times this much stuff at Christmas, believe it or not!)

Fall in the neighborhood...

I guess this is my smaller world. Ill be posting a LOT of fall color on Friday, but here are photos I took from our own yard and the neighborhood on Saturday. We have more green than color :-) This lovely birch tree is at the corner of our front yard.

The crab apples in the front yard. The oak out front turned brown and dropped its leaves due to our drought. The ash and silver maple are still green!

I know some of you are curious about my house.....it looked prettier before the dogwood tree died, but that vine almost makes it look alive :-)

This is a side yard view.

This is standing on the back deck looking towards the pond.

The far side of the pond and the neighbors little red trees. One field away on the other side of those trees is a busy highway with a church. They play their carillon in the morning and the evening and the beautiful music drifts across the lake to us...wish I could capture that for you!

The dam is on our side of the pond and this lovely yellow tree is hanging over at the end.

This is in the neighbor's back yard.

Part of our back yard from the deck looking down the road. Too much grass for my liking, but when you have a septic system, you don't plant trees over it :-)

Our maples that are just tinged with a bit of color. I was disappointed to find out they were not the type that changed to bright orange.

Near the top of one there is some red. The sun was in and out the whole time I was trying to take these photos. Tree color is so much better with lots of sun!

Walking down the road, there was a lovely little yellow maple along the drainage ditch/creek area.

Looking across the neighbor's yard at the bean field beyond.

The house down front has this lovely maple!

Across the main road there are some terrific trees in one yard.

A Burning Bush at the neighbor's.

I'm surprised they have not harvested these beans yet! It's one of the few bean fields left standing in the area.

Nice yellow bean color.

My neighborhood is not as colorful as some....not enough maples, gums and oaks!

I got some great fall shots in town this week and will post them Friday.