Brad Sondahl's blog

Brad's Blog

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Oct. 3
The warm weather, frost free, continues to hold, with a bit of smoke haze from mostly distant fires... I got a quality minute or two with a hairy woodpecker today:

Oct. 7
On Monday we took a 70 mile trip to visit Roman Nose lakes, alpine lakes near the Canadian border... We thought we remembered one of the two ways we've gone there. but ended up missing the small turn sign and explored a couple of new county roads, including one that Google said would get us there (except for the locked gate--Google also didn't ask if we had a jacked up 4 wheel drive vehicle either). We finally got up there after 2 pm. Once along the 2 mile trail to the lake, we also missed the sign to turn off to Lakes 2 and 3, and found ourselves on the loop back to Lake 1. It turns out in that case the sign was missing, but the directions were carved into the post... Anyway we made it to the entirety of Lake 2 and back before dusk...
Pictures:

Here Lake 1 is sort of framed in by one of the many skeleton trees that are still standing from a major 1960's Sundance fire...

This is the view of Lake 2, with what looks to us like the namesake Roman nose in the top of the left side...

Oct. 10
We've had our first (historic) historical society yard sale yesterday and today. Yesterday the weather was perfect, and the crowds kept coming. Today the weather has turned to rain, which is great for our remaining garden (I spent a couple hours gathering 10 boxes of tomatoes in advance of expected frost in upcoming days). So we moved the sale into the museum space (which is still devoid of exhibits)
A couple times lately I've seen turkeys walking through the pottery display. Here's a phone photo:

Yesterday I walked along the side of the mill pond and got some fall photos of lily pads turning fall colors, and the lovely wave patterns:

They're prettier with lily blossoms, but that season is gone...

Oct. 15
We had a light frost last night. With frosts frequently in the forecast, we quit fighting the frost with tarps, so this qualifies as the hard or killing frost, as late as we have experienced. When we moved here in 1982 we were lucky to have frost free days from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and often we had a cold snap threatening frost around the 4th of July. Growing corn, or ripening tomatoes on the vine, was out of the question. This year we had bumper crops of corn and tomatoes. We are working at digging the potatoes currently. Farewell to the green beans, cucumbers, and peppers. Hello homemade salsa and sauerkraut...
It was predicted that we would have a low of 25 last night, but it appeared to drop just below 32. I think fog from the lake may have done a bit of insulating, or a tad of microclimate from the lake as a reservoir of warmth... Anyway the fog looked magical as I walked up to the cabin from the pottery this morning:

The sun made this effect disappear in a few minutes...

Oct. 16
It's been gray the last few days, and the photos I took today reflect this. But a few days ago I got a nice blue sky sunset--the view of the ridge from our back yard:

Most sunsets that catch my eye fill the sky with oranges and reds. This one has the subtle cloud colors based on their altitude... And the gentle roll of the ridge as well. I have been finding that many of the photos my camera assumes are right are better when darkened in a photoshop program... For a while I've also been bracketing the exposure with one above and one below the automatic optimum... That leads to around 1000 photos a month, so I've gone back to taking single photos and adjusting if needed...

Oct. 19

Raindrops on mud puddles--the dark parts are reflections of tree branches...

A photo I took while trying out some camera feature. It's kind of a still life with cat (Manxy) and foot (mine).

In Iowa the cone cloud shape would be ominous, but not here on a still evening, taken of the Mill Pond at Fireside Park...

I wasn't even sure at first if the pattern in the sky was clouds, or as it turned out, geese. I got some good clear geese photos, but these were SO abstract...

Chokecherries after fall rain...

Oct. 21
I'm often walking Butters to the pottery nearly at or after dark, and often have my camera...

Oct. 23
It was frosty yesterday morning, and I happened to catch a great angle photographing our rain barrel. Today I thought I might get more, but it froze smooth for some reason...

Oct. 24
We used to say, "We got 3 seasons in North Idaho, and temperate isn't one of them..." We went from fire danger and no frost to 5 inches of snow and lows predicted below 10 tonight in a week or two...
Here's the view from our pottery tree house this morning:

The leaves were still on the trees since there hadn't been a hard frost, but that probably also helped keep the branch breaking to a minimum, as they were still wet from recent rains and not stiffly frozen...

Oct. 27
It warmed above freezing today, and with continued warm this snow may not last... There's an air inversion in the area, resulting in a lot of smog in the air, and a class A sunset this evening (the silver lining in the smog cloud)

It was hard to pick among the many photos I shot of this wonderful sunset. The setting of this one feels like a wave of fire being surged to the left by the dark landscape.

Oct. 28
If one picture is worth a thousand words, a video may be more so.. I took some videos of the garden harvest last week, and am trying out a new-to-me free video editing program called OpenShot. It will take a while to get the nuances--was trying out various transitions--used an old original tune for the music... The best thing about the program is it compiles without dumping the program ( which my previous $10 program, and Windows picture/video editor both do).

Oct. 29
It was calm and clear and relatively warm this morning, so went for a walk along the beach. Butters could have improved this composition by admiring it, but then photography mostly doesn't manipulate reality...

Lately I've been taking about 100 photos a day (back to bracketing). I got some photos of a ruffed grouse in a tree in our yard, but they weren't good enough...

Oct. 30
Here's a photo of Lake Pend O'Reille near sunset when a cloud bank on the far end was probably dropping rain..

books read

Silent Bite by David Rosenfelt He's as funny as Janet Evanovich, and better at building a who-done-it ala Earl Stanley Gardner... And his credentials as a dog lover are outstanding (although 25 dogs should put him in the same league as cat ladies who have that many felines)

The Adventures of a Dwergish Girl by Daniel Pinkwater... He's still in his prime... He can tell you what will happen in the plot and still make it seem like magic, how it all works out...

To Sleep in a Bed of Stars by Christopher Paolini. This SciFi epic is all about fractals, how a world of complexity is hidden in each level of reality... The author can pull you into the rules of a futuristic card game, or spend many pages describing one fight scene. As I read it, familiar tropes appeared, but it always evolved past them, like Alien style assimilation, Star Wars hand amputation, Strong Female Lead, and the always reliable Saving the Galaxy... It was long-- 750 pages hardbound, plus addenda-- but enjoyable...

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