Goodbye 2020

365 days, 365 rows.  One row for every day, color coded by temperature, I've  finished my temperature blanket 2020 last night. 

Day by day, month by month from cold dark blue and green to hot orange, red and finally pink.

Whew!  one more reason to be happy to finish  2020.

 

Was Kilroy here?

We found this on the Neuse greenway near the River Bend Park.  Maybe it was Kilroy?  (see here)

 

Birds on the move

Both the Chickadee and the Titmouse are hard to photograph.  They are never still.  I was surprised to be able to get both in one picture.  

 

Old Homestead

The trail sign labels this as "Old Homestead."  These few stones are all that are left.  I've tried to find more information about it, but so far no luck.  The park used to be a boy scout camp, but someone must have lived there before.

 

Holding on

There are only a few leaves left on the trees.  This oak is holding on.

 

Alien form?

This little guy was sitting by himself on a wooden bridge.  It looks like an alien spaceship, but it's only a sweetgum seed pod.

 

Ripples

Ripple patterns in the dam outflow at Durant Nature Park.

 

Merry Christmas

Nature's Christmas decorations can be better than anything we can light up, string up or set up.

Merry Christmas!

 

Joy to the World

We need more than a little joy this year!

Happy Christmas Eve

 

Front yard visitor

The neighborhood hawk made a visit to the front yard bird feeder.  He was watching the action very closely, and then flew away.  Whew!  no little birdie snacks today!

 

Santa Paws

This decoration is cute, but the best part is when the owner's white Scotty dog walks by.  He's the spitting image of this Santa Paws.

 

Feeding station

Along with the usual garden gnomes, the neighbors have added a feeding station for passing reindeer.

 

Electric

North Raleigh is crisscrossed with tall power lines.  These run along above the Honeycutt creek greenway.

 

Deck the Halls

Holly is a native tree in North Carolina.  

 

Dramatic

This seemed like a dramatic sky behind a scraggly tree.

 

Vintage?

I like this decoration, it seems like something out of  "Christmas Vacation", something that Clark Griswold would have blown up.  But it's probably a new retro model.

I do like how Santa has his face covering on.

 

Stay out!

Walking along the public greenway we came upon this sign going into the adjacent neighborhood.  Not very friendly, I think.

 

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  At least there was in this one.  It's the tunnel under I540 on the Honeycutt greenway.

 

Merry Covid Christmas

Even Cock-a-doodle-que, outside City Barbeque is complying with the mask mandate.

 

Winter shadows

The sun is low in the sky and the shadows are long in the winter forest.

 

Bluest bird

This Eastern Bluebird almost glowed with it's electric blue color.

 

Angel army

This band of Angels surrounds the North Raleigh United Methodist Church.  I didn't count but it looks like hundreds.

 

Backyard visitor

My granddaughter was looking out the window at lunch and shouted, "There's an owl!" We looked out, and there was this beautiful bird.  I think he's a juvenile Cooper's Hawk, or Red shouldered hawk.  Either way, he made the squirrels in the yard very nervous.

 

Regrowth

If you look closely you'll see the original tree bent over.  The little branches look like small trees growing straight up from their parent.

 

Turtle Ballet

Out in the middle of the lake all by himself, this turtle did his ballet stretches.

 

Graceful

I liked how the seeds seem to flow down like a fountain.  The leaves of this plant looked like bamboo.  

 

Meet your reflection

Did he think he was meeting a friend?

 

Whale rocks

They call these whale rocks.  To me they look more like walruses.

 

Salvia

These flowers look like little dancing ladies.

 

Monarch

I was surprised to see flowers still blooming.  But I was even more surprised to find a monarch butterfly floating around them.

 

Is there a lawn at the North Pole?

I guess even Santa needs to mow his lawn...?

 

Theme Day: Comfort food

This month's theme is comfort food.  What is more comforting than food when you are in need.

My husband and I took over the running of our church food pantry last January.  Surprise, surprise along came the pandemic.  We've had to be creative and flexible to keep the pantry open.  But the generosity of the community has been overwhelming!

 

Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker

His name sounds like an insult, but he's not worried.  This yellow bellied sap sucker came visiting the backyard.

It's hard to see, but he really does have a tiny bit of yellow on his belly.

 

Chrysalis

Where else would you see a butterfly chrysalis but in the butterfly garden.   

 

Sunlit

I walked around a bend in the path and saw all these grasses backlit by the sun.

 

Tree and sky

The tree looked stark against the sky.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

We walked through the neighborhood looking for Thanksgiving decorations.  There weren't very many.

Most people have skipped Thanksgiving and gone straight to Christmas.

 

Lonely Cormorant

This cormorant swam and dived all by himself in Durant lake.  Where are the rest of his friends?  I've rarely seen a cormorant by himself.

 

Bare tree reflection

A different kind of watercolor.

 

Bare Trees

The leaves are almost off the trees now.

 

Brown on brown

The little anole matched the leaf litter.

 

American Lady

Is this the last butterfly of Fall?  It's probably the last zinnia flower.  This American Lady butterfly was fluttering around in mid November!

 

The Trees' Macbeth

Walking by the art center, we heard some strange voices.  Following them, we found a circle of trees with speakers.

They were telling a story - a strange story.

It was an adaptation of McBeth, told by trees.

Basically, the script was computer generated by feeding the MacBeth script and books about Everglades ecosystems into a learning machine.  It generated blocks of text.  The artists cut up the text and rearranged into a play.  In the play, Lady Macbeth leads a tree-killing army into the forest.  The three Weird Sisters and three talking trees conspire to stop her.  She experiences an epiphany and becomes a tree herself.

They leave us with questions: 

What does it mean for a tree to be an actor and not the scenery?

How do we give agency and voice to other forms of sentience?

How does listening to these new voices help us empathize with the non-human?

Standing in the center of a circle of trees, telling their side of a story was eerie.  They didn't seem too friendly.

Under water

After the last rain, the bike paths took some maneuvering.