I love the theme for this week’s photo challenge … fresh!
Fresh flowers on a summer’s day.
This is a house down the road from where I spent the summers of my childhood – as did my parents and aunts and uncles. It was old even when I was a little girl and old, I imagine, when my grandparents built their camps. It is built against a hillside and sits on the lakefront, a stone wall separating its front yard from the water. A paved road sits behind the house. I have walked down that road and passed this house countless times, wondering what it was like to live there when it was built. I know that there weren’t many houses around then – there weren’t many when I was a girl. Most of the houses there now – many bigger and all more modern – have been built in my lifetime. I think that is why this house captures my imagination so still. Amongst all the changes I have seen, it has always been there – a reminder of my past, all those walks, so many summers, so many memories, of people long gone and of how things used to be. More on this week’s photo challenge.
Surprise! I am a day late with my weekly photo challenge entry. But I only found a suitable subject today … and given that the theme is ‘surprise’, I thought that I could be forgiven.
I have a number of Phalaenopsis Orchids all of which stopped blooming when the autumn sun started pouring in through the kitchen windows. Seeing no indication that the orchids would ever bloom again, I was starting to give up on them. However, I have great difficulty bringing myself to throw away living plants. So this afternoon I put the orchids in a sink to water and fertilize them when to my surprise I discovered new growth on several of the specimens.
Now I can hope for new blooms in the new year. Maybe someday they shall even look like this again!
Late Autumn – Early Winter on the Konza Prairie
For this week’s photography challenge, I headed out to the Konza Prairie after breakfast. I was captivated by this one ashen white tree. Notice also the moss colored tree just in front and to the right of it. Upon close inspection, there really were so many subtle colors to be seen.

The evergreens covered with berries reminded me of Christmas.

It was a heavy sky, but just a little too warm to snow. All that fell were a few sprinkles of cold rain.

Quite a few trees were covered with moss. It made them look bundled up for the cold.
This pair of trees seemed ready for winter to be over and it has hardly begun.
What a pleasant surprise every now and then to run into some brightly-colored berries.
But then I would look at the woods, so ominous-looking, and I was happy to head home for a cup of hot tea.
This is a photo that I took over the summer when the Weekly Photo Challenge theme was urban; but when I was putting that post together, I decided to focus on local architecture instead. I still like this image of a broken down car’s reflection in the window of a tattoo shop, though, so I decided to resurrect it for the reflections challenge.
One of my projects for this past week was to put away our Thanksgiving decorations and put up our Christmas ones. I put the last ornaments on our Christmas tree just this afternoon. It is tempting to share a bunch of photos of the tree; but since it is still November, I figure that my readers will hate me in a few weeks if I go overboard so early. So here is just a peek … our tree lights reflecting in one of the living room windows.