Artzoobilee: Red Toes

Animal: Red Toes
(A toad seemed appropriate for the day before Halloween)
Artist: Sarah Aslakson

I must be masochistic

Yesterday afternoon I forced myself to bundle up and get out of the house. The walk up to the Arboretum was rather frigid, with a temp around 44F and windchills in the 30s. Not to mention the wind. After two days of gusts raging at 50-70mph, yesterday's gusts of 15-25 felt like a light breeze. Despite hoods on both my sweatshirt and coat, my ears were still a bit cold on the walk up. At least I had gloves and a scarf, though there were times I wished I'd grabbed my warmer mittens as well. As expected, it did feel "warmer" once under the shelter of the trees. Listening to them creak and groan above your head, however, was a tad bit creepy.

Although a bit chilly, it was a pleasant walk, which several other patrons seemed to agree on. After wandering about for an hour, I turned down the path that would lead back to the entrance. Looking up, I saw that I was not alone. One rarely is in the woods. We stood watching each other in silence for several minutes before my friend slipped across the trail and into the woods to my right. Continuing slowly and quietly along the lane, stopping to peer into the trees every few feet, I soon saw not one deer...

...but two!



Using the awesome zoom lens on my camera I was able to get a couple of pretty good photos, though not one with the two together. You'll just have to trust me that these are two different deer. They are. Really. Totally made my day!

The walk home always seems to take half the time as the walk there, and after being out in the wind for an hour and a half my apartment felt downright balmy, even though the heat is not working. Oh, they turned it on on Monday, and every now and then I hear the metallic sound expanding dust particles in the vents make when heated, but it never quite kicks in. Sometimes the register feels slightly warm to touch, but never hot the way it should be when the heat is working right. Usually it's ice cold.

And did I mention it dipped down into the 20s last night? Without factoring in windchill? Or that we awoke to frost this morning? Yeah. Would almost serve the cheapskates right if a water main burst—except, of course, then I would be subjected to the inconvenience of noise and lack of water for several hours. Sigh... I am so not ready for cold weather.

It's supposed to be around 50 degrees over the weekend. If I can motivate myself to bundle up again, I plan on joining a guided walk in the main body of the Arboretum Sunday afternoon. Hopefully I'll remember earmuffs and mittens this time.

What Mini Chocolate Bar Are You?

So appropriate, considering I prefer dark chocolate over any other.

You Are a Special Dark Chocolate Bar

You are a deep and complex person. You don't let anyone get too close to you. You stay a mystery, and you're good at keeping secrets... especially your own. You prefer to stay on the outside a bit and observe. You find people fascinating. You seek to understand and appreciate the world. There is more to you than anyone will ever know.

What Miniature Chocolate Bar Are You?

Blogthings: Our Quizzes Weren't Written By Bored 12 Year Olds

Thursday Thirteen 176: Autumn Days

A few Autumn photos this week...

Wild grapes in the Arboretum




Old gravestone at Forest Hill Cemetery




Oak leaves in the Arboretum


Rain-kissed leaves


Grapes at Eplegaarden, Sept.








Corn still standing in the field

WISHING YOU ALL A
HAPPY AND SAFE HALLOWEEN!



LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)
Kelly Butcher * Journeywoman * Adelle Laudan
Alice Audrey * Savannah Chase * Hazel * Jen
Jennifer Leeland * Maddy Barone * Shelley Munro
Kimberly Menozzi * Marianne * CountryDew
Busy91 * Xakara * Darla M Sands * Paige Tyler
Harriet * Tatiana Caldwell * Colleen * Inez Kelley
Jeanne St James * Holly * STUFF * Sandee

More Thursday Thirteen participants

Corn-y?

Bushel of dried corn for decoration.

Teaser Tuesday 57: The Trouble With Magic

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few “teaser” sentences from somewhere in the book.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

FINISHED OVER THE WEEKEND--I REALLY LIKED THIS ONE. PERFECT FOR THE WEEK BEFORE HALLOWEEN!


The old homestead wasn't my usual choice for a lazy Saturday afternoon, but I felt a strong need to be back among the world of the living. The normal. Back to where the sun rose and set, the dead stayed dead, and the living were as screwed up as they had always been.
(pg 152)

ABOUT THE BOOK:
A Bewitching mystery--first in the new paranormal chick-lit mystery series.

Antiques-shop clerk Maggie O'Neill was a little weirded out when she discovered her new boss Felicity was a witch. But when Felicity becomes the suspect in a local murder, Maggie must enlist Felicity's wiccan friends for help--and discover her own spellbinding talent.

Gourds 2

More gourds from Eplegaarden

Artzoobilee: Puttin' On the Ritz

Animal: Puttin' On the Ritz
Artist: Trudi Theisen

Troll Eggs

Eplegaarden markets these ugly, deformed pumpkins
as "Troll Eggs." Clever!

Thursday Thirteen 175: Internal Playlist

There are days I never turn the radio on at work. Sometimes it's because there is already too much noise (either machines or people); some days it's because the Internal Playlist is blasting loud enough to keep me company. Okay, so maybe no one else can hear it, but do they really count? Sometimes it's a song I've heard recently on the radio or TV. Sometimes something I've seen or read might have brought a song to mind. And some days something will pop into my head completely out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason. Here are some of the songs I've had playing in my head over the past week. Click on the links to hear any with which you are not familiar.


* The Brandenburg Concerto #5 by Bach
(The Brandenburg Concertos are a favorite piece of music played in high school orchestra, esp. numbers 3 and 5.)

* My World (Sucks to be You) by Bascom Hill
(This one made me smile and laugh first time I heard it.)

* King of Anything by Sara Bareilles
(I blame this one on a recent episode of Medium.)

* What About Me? by Moving Pictures
(Prompted by the song above.)

* Gone Gone Gone by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant
(The official video is blocked in the USA...the nerve!)

* The Sound of Sunshine by Michael Franti
(Dare you to listen to this one while sitting still!)

* Theme from "The Munsters"(This would be one of those completely out of nowhere songs.)

* Autumn Leaves by Nat King Cole
Or, if you prefer, Les Feuilles Mortes, by Edith Piaf
(While walking in the Arboretum under...autumn leaves. Duh!)

* Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow

* The Entertainer by Scott Joplin
(Prompted by a mention of the movie, The Sting; I used to be able to play this on by heart on the violin. Emphasis on used to.)

* Hammer and a Nail by Indigo Girls

* Go On by Bascom Hill
(Woke up with this one in my head)

* Shattered by O.A.R.


What song is playing in YOUR head today?



LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)
Sandee * Adelle Laudan * Maddy Barone * Colleen
Shelley Munro * The Lemme Librarian * Brenda
Alice Audrey * Hazel * Divaa Divine * Xakara * Harriet
Kimberly Menozzi * Sandra Collins * Paige Tyler
KS Manning * Lia Morgan * Kim Knox * Darla M Sands
Tatiana Caldwell * Jennifer Leeland * Noelle * CountryDew
Jill Conyers * STUFF

More Thursday Thirteen participants

Gourds 1

Taken during a trip to Eplegaarden, Sept 2010

Teaser Tuesday 56: Wyoming Manhunt

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few “teaser” sentences from somewhere in the book.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!




These are the opening few sentences from this older book by Ann Voss Peterson, a favorite local author, read over the weekend.

Shanna felt the sound of the gunshot more than she heard it. The first sharp report jangled her nerves. The second cracked through her ear and jaw, so close she could almost feel the air stirred by the bullet.

About the book:
Genre: Rom Suspense

Cop turned rancher Jace Lantry had no idea how Shanna Clarke--a seemingly law-abiding single mother--ended up on the run from a rifle-wielding boss hell-bent on killing her. But when Shanna came to him, desperate for help, one look in her emerald eyes and Jace was powerless to resist. As the manhunt across Wyoming intensified, the more Jace believed in Shanna's claims of being framed. The question was, why was she a target? Now with both of them being hunted, Jace knew the quiet future he desired was no longer possible thanks to the deadly repercussions of this tempting woman's past.


Disclaimer: A copy of this backlist title was won from the author through a blog contest.

Sunset Through the Trees

I had planned to go on a 'woodlands' walk at the Arboretum yesterday. However, since the weather is turning cool again and I've had a sore throat the last few days and woke up feeling like crud, I thought it wiser to stay home, watch the football game, and read. There may have also been a nap or two. So, in lieu of an autumnal woodland photo, here is one of setting sun through the trees from a few weeks ago.

Golden

Artzoobilee: Farm Gang

A closer look at...


This is the pig that introduced me to Alice.


No, seriously. The week she and her family were in town, we arranged to meet one day to walk the Arboretum. Due to heavy rains the night before, we decided on a dryer walk around the zoo instead. When I arrived at our meeting point, the Herpetarium, Alice wasn't there yet, but I noticed several of the Artzoobilee animals in the vicinity that were missing while there the month before.


So, I decided to take advantage of the time waiting for Alice by photographing a few animals. Got the frog, toad, and small giraffe and was photographing this colorful pig, when I caught sight of a woman vaguely fitting Alice's description walk by. I looked up just as she stopped and came back towards me, and sweet little Farm Gang here made the introductions.


Alice later told me it was the fact I was photographing the pig that made her think the person behind the camera was me. Hmm... Anyway, it's all the pig's fault. *grin*


Animal: Farm Gang
Artist: Tamara Tsurkan

Talking Spirits XII

Monday I promised there would be more pictures from last Sunday's "Talking Spirits" tour. I had planned to get pictures uploaded and processed for this week's Thursday Thirteen, but between one thing and another...it didn't happen.

This was the twelfth year for this annual event, held at Forest Hill Cemetery here in Madison. Forest Hill dates back to 1858 and was laid out as a pleasure park. Families once journeyed here on weekend afternoons for picnics, up until around WWII. With it's hundreds of shade trees and winding paths, it is still a pleasant and quiet place to walk.

Talking Spirits is a "living history" tour, in which actors portray former citizens of Madison who served their country in some capacity, or were affected by war in some way. Though the Civil War has been featured most often, there have also been tours focused on WWI, WWII, and there was even one year that featured a cast spanning the Civil War to Vietnam.

Visitors are guided through Forest Hill Cemetery where they learn about the cemetery's history and about some of the graves and people buried there. Along the 90-min to 2-hour tour, there are five or six stops where visitors "meet" some of those who lived--and served.

Within the grounds of Forest Hill are two Civil War graveyards, Soldiers Lot (where Union troops were laid to rest) and Confederate Rest (where POWs from Camp Randall were buried). Confederate Rest is the northern-most Confederate graveyard in the US.


The tour began with a short introduction in Catlin Chapel before moving across the road to Soldiers Lot. This is where many local troops killed during the Civil War were buried, including about a half dozen unknown soldiers. There are also eight children buried here, orphans from the Soldiers' Orphans Home, founded by Cordelia Harvey. We "met" two of these children on this year's tour, William Blount and Emma Billow. Emma suffered a long, lingering illness, while William was taken ill quite suddenly one day and died before the next morning (although they did not say, my guess would be polio).


Atlas Brewster as William Blount and Destiny Sabljak as Emma Billows. Sabljak's father, John Sable, writes the scripts for the annual tours. Both youngsters were on last year's tour as well.

A teddy bear leans against the grave of Emma Billows.

Unknown actress as Alice Whiting Waterman (I did not get a program this year as they ran out early), instructs vistiors in the history of Confederate Rest and how she came to care for the neglected graveyard. You can read more about her in this post from 2006.


Lt. Alfred Lamson was captured at Gettysburg and spent ten months in Libby Prison, before making a daring escape. After months on the run, he was again taken prisoner, but managed to escape once more. You can read more about him in this post from 2006. After the war, he and his wife moved to Madison, where they grew strawberries and other produce. I think the actor here is Brian Belz, who has participated in previous tours.






Tom Lodewyck reprising his role as Lieutenant Colonel Henry Harnden, another favorite character featured during the 2006 tour. You can read more about his exciting capture of Jefferson Davis here.


As you can see, Lodewyck is an exceptional actor and storyteller who really gets into his role.




The final vignette of the day featured Col. Cassius Fairchild and wife Mary. These two characters were previously featured during the 2007 tour, and I think they were portrayed by the same actors.

This scene is set after the war, when a wound Fairchild received during the Battle of Shiloh was fatally reopened. He died just ten days after he and Mary were married--talk about a short honeymoon!


I hope you enjoyed coming along on this year's Talking Spirits tour with me.


(ETA: Thanks to John Sabljak for letting em know that the actress who portrayed Alice Waterman is Jennifer Poppy.)

Thursday Thirteen 174: Random Quotes

I'm always copying down quotes or passages I see in books, on calendars--heck, even lines of dialogue from TV or movies. Some are witty, some inspirational; a few are both. Here are thirteen random quotes I've come across this year.


1. The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
~Sally Berger

2. The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.
~ Emile Zola

3. Big results require big ambition.
~ James Champy

4. Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.
~ Robert E. Lee

5. We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

6. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
~ Greek proverb

7. The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
~ Mark Twain

8. There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food by a cook who doesn't eat.
~ Laura Lippman

9. Within our dreams and our aspirations we find our opportunities.
~ Sue Atchley Ebaugh

10. Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.
~ Paul Bryant

11. Love dictates, but a kiss writes the secrets of the heart.
~ Anonymous

12. Giving is a necessity sometimes...more urgent, indeed, than having.
~ Margaret Lee Runbeck

13. If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein



LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)
Adelle Laudan * Colleen * Rekaya * i beati * Xakara Jill Conyers * Kimberly Menozzi * CountryDew * Judy Hazel * Darla M Sands * Harriet * Tatiana Caldwell Paige Tyler * Alice Audrey * Jennifer Leeland Shelley Munro * Jeanne St James * Maria