Fall Days

It's been a pretty October.  Not brilliant like last year, but better than a lot of Octobers in recent years.

Sadly, I've been too preoccupied to get out much on my days off--what few I have.  But I did make a run out to Raccoon Creek to see the fall colors.

We're buying property at last up near the Allegheny National Forest!  Just a little hunting camp, though I don't hunt.  So I think my leisure days will be more and more northwardly focused.

Plus, my older daughter is going to college up that way, so that's another northward draw.

She was home the weekend before last, so we went into the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  I often duck into Heinz Chapel while I'm out that way.

The Chief Cornplanter window.

While at Raccoon Creek, I collected some wild walnuts--which are a chore to get out of their spicy-smelling green husks.  On the right are the walnuts as you find them on the ground.  The green husks smell a little like citrus.  You have to wear rubber gloves to get the nuts out because the husks will stain your hands, and the color won't come off for weeks.  After removing the nuts, which you see on the left, they have to sit for about 3 weeks before you can shell them.

Processing the walnuts in our backyard, this squirrel became oddly assertive!  He chittered and scolded and got way closer than a squirrel should.  I thought it would be a wonderful idea to trap the squirrel and take it elsewhere---a few miles away, so it would let me process my walnuts in peace.  I put a walnut in the cage-trap and within minutes I had a captive squirrel.  Sharper fangs and claws I've not seen on a beast.  Of course, as soon as I'd caught the little feller, the complexity of the situation dawned on me.  What do I do with it?  I ended up taking it 6 miles away and setting it free with the three nuts to give it a headstart on building a new home for the winter.  It never occurred to me that it could have been a mother with a drey full of babies to feed....