Fall Nature

Our neighbor's front tree is always one of the first ones on the block to change colors. It dumps tons of leaves, which I gladly rake into our yard into huge piles for the kids to jump in. (The neighbors love that I "steal" their leaves, Chris does not.) The combination of a perfectly blue sky behind bright fall leaves is a sight so beautiful that it always makes me catch my breath and take a minute to soak in the view.

I love the way birds line up along a wire. I noticed these cuties while we were having a family day at the pumpkin patch.

The maple in our backyard turns the most brilliant red, and early in the season, just the tips of the leaves turn, while the center remains bright green. The kids collected these multi-colored leaves.

One of my favorite views from our house is out the side window, where I can sit and watch the birds at the bird feeder. We always get lots of birds in the fall, so we try to keep the feeder full.

We had some stale bagels, and instead of throwing them out, we decided to cover them with peanut butter and birdseed for the birds. This little fella found them instead, though. But we had lots of fun watching him hang from the branches, doing acrobatics for treats. He reminded us a lot of the squirrels in one of the girls' favorite books, Those Darn Squirrels, so we pretended to be Old Man Fookwire and we shook our fists at him.

By the beginning of November, the maple was on fire, a deep beautiful red.