out my window

Out my window, the strip tease of the walnut; hard freeze morning. Volunteer millet in the garden, frosty tan, with the corn stalks. I haven't opened the chicken house, too cold. But I stepped onto the deck to feel the petunias in window boxes and they are dead stiff. 

first picture of newly sculpted swim hole

All of the vegetation on the beach is gone. Less sand facing the river, more now facing down river. Out crops of blue slate that were covered by sand and shrubs are bare. Baldwin has made some rock stacks! Pearl has colored a face on a rock using pigment from other rocks. We have yet to explore debris piles along the banks.

After the Rain

The sun showed up around noon; the sky aching blue. Finally. Last Wednesday my rain gauge topped off at 5 inches in the morning. The creek so high and fierce that my son and his wife were swept off their feet and dragged 12 feet. Three more inches by the next morning and the road rutted and just barely negotiable. The river higher than we've seen in 41 years. John's picnic table was snatched by the fury down at the camp site; the hammock filled with debris. The bottom field slippery with a coating of river silt. Baldwin's cedar chairs and bench floated off. It is a new landscape, the creek scoured, the logging road to the swimming hole strangely clean.
Playing today where the water would have been over our heads.