Daddy Long Legs

Spider on chrysanthemum in the garden of special delights. The gardener is not on duty and Daddy Long Legs came out to play. It is getting colder here where I live so I turned the office furnace on and flipped the switch for the main furnace to come on and it did. My fingers were almost too cold for me to type. The Gardener will be going to the plantation in Florida this winter. If I had my "druthers" I'd druther be somewhere south of Brookville, Ohio--almost anywhere if it is warmer.

Canon Rebel Cameras

I am happy with the 5 thousand photos of Coopers Hawks that I photographed since we have lived here. All of them were taken with a Canon Rebel camera and some with a longer lens that I no longer have. I used to think it was important to get up as close to the hawk as I could using the best lens I had but I learned that it is not always the closeup that makes the best picture but the person who took the picture and when the shutter clicked makes the best picture. And, of course, the people who make the Canon cameras want to keep you buying their cameras so they advertise the lenses and accessories that goes with the camera to keep you hooked. After a while you have so much Canon stuff that you can't afford to start over with a Nikon camera and their standard, out-of-the-box lens. I like Nikon. I even owned one of their first 35mm cameras and took a lot of color film using it while I was stationed in Japan but I sold it when I got back to the states and now I just have Canon . I do wish Canon would put a red plastic strip someone on their new models so I could think I got the best camera with a red stripe on it. Now, these many years later, it doesn't matter which camera I use because I no longer mess ith the results trying to make them look different or better than the originals.

Driving Miss Audrey

It is truly hard to believe that this is Audrey. She wasn't very old but was living with her mom at our house in Brookville, Ohio. Patty used to take her to school every morning and go pick her up every evening and did that for many years. All of a sudden Miss Audrey grew up and is now able to drive her mother to our house and back home. Now, however, they have moved south to the Centerville area and driving down there will be different from driving around the big city of Brookville, Ohio.

Starling Landing

Snow is coming to our area. The starlings will have a soft landing in the snow.

I am not sure that I like the change of seasons but I like them all better than muggy and hot and we had that all summer.

Coopers Hawk Bluffing Squirrel

Large but immature Coopers Hawk is trying to scare off a squirrel who may have never seen a hawk. I watched and the squirrel was curious and went below the hawk on the rail the boards are fastened too. The hawk then threatened until the squirrel went lower to pass. Actually, the squirrels use the top of the fence to travel along the yard and everything else moves for them but the hawk didn't move. It was funny to watch but it was over when one or the other got bored. The hawk can and does something grab a squirrel and eats them.

Ivester Inn

Surrounded by large trees

IVESTER INN

Such an elegant building

My mother used to bake all the pies that were served at Ivester Inn and while I no longer remember how we got to Arcanum from Gordon each morning or how we got back home; but we did and I spent most of my time in the kitchen area sitting at a small table staring out the window and watching the business people come inside for their meal at noon.

The place was also called "The Ivester Tavern" at one time though I am not aware of them serving alcoholic drinks at mealtime.

Nowadays the building is part of the Arcanum Library and it has a long history that fits the library and seems like it would be a nice place to read a good book about Arcanum and the village founder named Gunder.

When I was growing up in Gordon, the Gunder family had been in the chicken business and I believe it fell through during the Great Depression and the family were reduced to poverty like the rest of us in Gordon, Ohio.

Medieval Monks

A mailing envelope showing a medieval scribe at work in a room in a monastery that was set aside for writing or copying manuscripts. A scriptorium in some venues found scribes standing but rarely sitting as they listened to speaker or reader of what it was they were supposed to write down.

The slope of the writing desk was at 60 degrees. The reason was that when the quill was dipped in ink and held in the hand to write, the ink in the quill settled in the center and not on the tip where, when touched to the parchment it would run out and leave a blob that was difficult to clean up. The monks had to prepare their writing parchment before the day began; and they had to make their ink using lamp black and water and their sepia ink was made from the cuttle fish. When their writing tools and desk setup was complete; and after morning prayers and a meal of bread and water was done, off they marched to the cold, damp, room ready to begin recording what the master read aloud.

A monk listened carefully as the work to be copied had to be correct or, if in some error, the scribe would be whipped and be forced to say many extra prayers.

Cleaned Up Backyard

Pepper Jax was outside almost all day watching Patty and I work in the yard pulling up Dark-eyed Susans. What a mess they had gotten to be. When they go to see they must drop a million new seeds so we got them up and out before the seed dropped. At least we hope we did. They will be taken in paper bags that we buy from the city for this purpose and stacked one or more next to the big trailer they use to haul all the green stuff in the bags to the proper dump.