Pretty normal kind of fall day, until late afternoon, when the sun found a hole in the clouds and lit up selected pieces of the far shore. I drove around until I found a good vantage point.

Then, driving up the driveway, the barred owl flew right in front of me and landed in this tree. She let me stop the car, and even get out to take her photo. It's a bit blurry because it was getting dark, but too far away for the flash to help any.

Cory got a new car - it's a 1986 Toyota Supra, a high-powered not-quite-sports-car that is a favorite among the younger crowd. His has a 1988 engine with Turbo, so it goes like a bat outta hell!

It needs a lot of work, but the engine and running gear are sound, so it's mostly cosmetic and whatever hot-rodding he wants to do.
He's pretty excited, has lots of ideas and is looking forward to the project. It's a car he has wanted for a long time, and finally found a used one at a good deal.

Fall is in the air. Literally! Yesterday was windy and stormy, and today the forest floor is littered with leaves and branches. Ponds which had dried up over the summer now have standing water in the low spots, reflecting the sky.

Bracken Ferns have completed their cycle, standing now, but soon to fall and begin to become one with the soil.
Apples are plump and rosy, at least the lucky ones out of reach of the deer's bite.
And walking the paths requires a long stick to snare the spider webs stretched across every open space.

Went to Suze's for pasta dinner - it was just right for such a blustery day! The storm was moving through, and you could just see parts of the Olympic Mountains, which appeared to be enjoying a brief sunny spot.

Suze loves Halloween - and why not, her birthday is on the 30th. She had fun decorations and tablewares, and was working on her Halloween Quilt. She's planning a party, too - we'll make all kinds of weird food!

It has rained off and on all day, still warm, though, but definitely fall-like. I wondered how this web would look at night with the flash - came out pretty neat. I watched this spider methodically eat it's web - all of the space below it was web. I think there were lots of fly-bodies there, otherwise I have no idea why it would eat the web strands. I think I helped it out, though - the web is built outside my door near an outside lamp that I seldom turn on, but tonight I did, and it has attracted all manner of flying things, most of them blundering through this web. The spider seems to be keeping real busy. Tomorrow I will probably forget all about it and walk right into it.

Next Day Note: Someone wrote back to me explaining why spiders eat their webs, and I found the following on Wikipedia:
Webs allow a spider to catch prey without having to expend energy by running it down. Thus it is an efficient method of gathering food. However, constructing the web is in itself an energetically costly process due to the large amount of protein required, in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is not uncommon for spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. The silk proteins are thus 'recycled'.

Today was Whidbey Weavers Guild meeting, and we had a slide show and talk by Jill Nordfors Clark, who did needle lace for many years before discovering hog gut, which she uses to make baskets and three-dimensional objects. It was an interesting talk - we all learned a lot.

The latest Photo Art Journal has arrived, Sacred.
This is a beautiful book filled with lovely images and different interpretations of the word "sacred", with inspirational quotes and writings.