It's a hell of a beautiful day out there. High 70s/low 80s, sun-sun-sun, bright fall colors betwixt here and Gladwin, low humidity, busy bees and birds...

I spent the weekend visiting my aunt and mother. We had lunch outside today (venison steaks, onions, and gravy, mashed potatoes, loads of beets) while chickadees whirred past us, popping in and out and in and out of the bird feeders, and bees nosed around trying to decide if beets were sweet enough to suit them.

I drove home with a cache of Washington state giftees (most notably, poison oak honey), and the requisite Thing or Two from auntie's stores (in this case, a couple containers of strawberry freezer jam). I stopped at the outlet stores on the way down and did some seriously belated shoe shopping. And yet, I liked nothing enough to buy it, except at the Nike store, where I got some discounted running shoes (yays!). Still no new black or brown shoes for work, though.

Yesterday, Mom and I sat in the sun for about three hours on the riverbank, and talked and watched the river slide by--until a laughing bird-call alerted us to the presence of a very large woodpecker indeed. We got up to see, across the river, a pileated woodpecker decimating the neighbor's woodpile. Woodchips flew everywhere. I took about thirty good pictures of the girl (on Mom's camera, alas), and maybe fifty bad ones. This morning we walked over and investigated the buggy logs with deep holes filled with sawdust, but the woodpecker was nowhere to be seen.

Not quite a cure for my discontent, but it's a start. If I thought the weather might last...