Autumn miscellany.

Just emptying my phone of recent pictures -- another sentence that would have made no sense 25 years ago -- and I wanted to share a couple with you. Always something interesting around, if I bother to look. 

A month or so ago our lilac plant, one of several we planted last year, came under attack by those disgusting purveyors of disgustingness, tent caterpillars. For a short time in late August and early September these punks were busy in the neighborhood, and apparently some of them like lilacs. The plant became bare of leaves where the little creeps were munching away, and it seemed to be spreading rapidly. My wife, who hates tent caterpillars even more than I do, or would if such a thing were possible, was convinced we would have to uproot the thing and hope to plant a new one in its place. But not I. I was too determined, too thoughtful, too cheap to entertain such a notion. So I went to Home Depot to get vicious, dangerous poison, and came back with some weenie insecticidal soap in Miracle-Gro's Nature's Care organic schmorganic line. I didn't want nature to care, I wanted it DEAD. The store was out of all the really effective stuff because everyone else was also killing tent caterpillars. So I wound up with soap. I wasn't planning to give these bugs a freakin' bath. 

Well. Not only did the soap kill the bugs, but the lilac survived, and was the only one to give us a late bloom. 

"Ta-da! Thanks for killin' the bugs, mate!"

So I owe Miracle-Gro an apology. Sorry, Miracle-Gro; thanks for saving the plant.

Other bugs I have left alone this fall. This big fellow gave me a start, but he was just minding his own business.

Caught this shot below while driving (totally illegal, I know -- breakin' the law! breakin' the law!). Obviously an abandoned little house, right by a busy road. Almost looks like it had just been dropped there.

Made me wonder if little tiny houses can be haunted. It's always castles or big mansions in the stories and most of the movies, but the little ones might have even more ghosts. Depends on what happened there....

And maybe... maybe even station wagons can be haunted!

There was so much stuff packed into this one that I thought it had to be driven by a ghost, because there was no room for a live human being. In a way this car was itself a ghost; there was a time not that long ago when cars like this were all over the place. Then they started to fade away, get replaced, drive off into the sunset, and now they're all gone. All but a small, brave, possibly haunted few.

To end on a pretty note: All the mums are fading, but weren't they nice in September? A neighbor had a bunch of these around.

So that's some stuff that swam into my ken of late. What's new with you?