| I\'ve been wanting to do another journal entry on DN for awhile now. I\'m glad that I\'m getting the chance to do it before yet another month slips by. 
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Sunday, November 11, 2018
In mid October, I saw something in my neighborhood that I never expected to see. I spotted two pretty garden statues of deer on somebody\'s front lawn, and... wait a second--- they were NOT statues!
We\'ve been coping with an almost ridiculous amount of road construction around here. Not that roads in Michigan, the Pothole State, don\'t need it, but honestly, this seems to be "the Year of Construction in My Own Backyard." Even many of my favorite side streets for dodging roadwork are blocked off!
But if it weren\'t for all the road construction, I wouldn\'t have seen these deer. I was doing my best to dodge some roadwork when I was driving on a street that I don\'t usually use. When I happened to look on my left and saw the deer, I I pulled my car over and parked. I was very happy to remember that my camera was with me. Then I remembered that it was in the trunk of my car. Darn...
Upon thinking it over, I decided I might as well try to get my camera. If they ran off, at least I had a good story to tell. So I carefully got out...and the deer didn\'t move. They were to busy enjoying mouthfuls of fresh grass to care about me. They kept right on grazing. I was able to get nearly 3 dozen pictures of them! The happy grazers were two older fawns; a male and a female. The male had little antler buds on top of his head.
What really amazes me is that they were so close to my house. My Mom, who lives 3 miles away, has had deer in her yard on occasion. There is more cover and foliage in her neighborhood so that doesn\'t surprise me too much. My neighborhood does have a lot of older trees, but it is more developed than my Mom\'s, and has more fences and dogs. Apparently, nobody told these deer that though.
After my "Deer Day", you might think that any other photographing might not be as exciting for awhile. Happily, that wasn\'t the case for me. As many of you probably know, I am a self avowed color freak. The leaves in my area were changing color. Every day after work I went off with my camera in quest of the quintessentially colored tree or trees. I took many beautiful photos; some of which I\'ve already uploaded to DN. Even on Halloween I was out taking pictures for my Traffic Signals nSigns group; determined to get some good shots with lovely Autumn foliage in the background. (I stayed in nearby neighborhoods, and it\'s a good thing that I did; the trick or treating children got started early this year!)
I got in another week of Autumn leaves picture taking. Then the beautiful Autumn colors were brought to an abrupt halt by the weather.
It started off with a day of fun. I was stranded at home with car problems when snow hit Michigan, on November 9th, two weeks earlier than normal. I made the best of being stranded by going out and snapping all sorts of pictures of the snow. The falling snow was certainly an interesting contrast to the colorful Autumn trees.
With the snow, however, came icy temperatures that were (and still are) 20 degrees below normal. The following day, when my husband and I were driving to a potluck supper 12 miles from our house, I had plenty of time to observe that 95 percent of the beautiful leaves had been driven off the trees-- by the unseasonable cold.
Yes, I’m a little disappointed, as I was looking forward to at least one more week of “Autumn Tree chasing.” But at least I was able to get a lot of good pictures of them already. And there’s always next year.
I hope that you are all experiencing some beautiful seasons of your own, wherever you are from! 
Elaine
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