October 2

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Morning glories.  Today's flower.

Yesterday's flower, with some future flowers.

I suppose we should really call this house the "sidewalk-chalk house," as they have sidewalk chalk out for any passerby's use, all year 'round.

But we don't.  We call it the "rat house," for their Halloween extravaganza.

Chalk, with rats.  A few small rats at the top of this flowery work, and many more rats all over the front yard.

Rats near the chalk basket.

I wonder how they taught the live cat to pose between those two cat-skeleton models.  Or maybe it's a model,too?  I didn't see it move......

I couldn't tell if the skeletons were cats, until I saw them on the big screen.

One of the things I learned in evolution class is that reptiles have undifferentiated teeth.  This means that all the teeth in a reptile's mouth have the same shape and purpose.  As contrasted with mammalian teeth -- one mammal probably (always?) has different shapes of teeth for different purposes.  Think about your own teeth.......  Cutting teeth, grinding teeth.......

They told us that teeth are a good way to tell if a skull is mammalian or reptilian.  It pleases me that they took the trouble to make differentiated teeth in this model of a cat skull.  (We'll forgive them for pretending that external ears made of skin and cartilage can be part of skeletons.....)

Locust leaves turn the pavement to gold.

Maple leaves.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

So interesting, the way some branches on a single tree are bright red, and others are solid green.......

Crab apple.  The camera chose to focus on the grass rather than on the berries.  Alas.

What happens if we take it to some filters?  This is "colored pencil," and there are some things about it I really like.  The big leaf that was blurry/boring in the original is still boring, but look at the background!  I think the parts of this are pretty interesting (except the big leaf), though I'm not finding the whole to be very pleasing.  Look at the little leaves behind the berries in the upper right corner........

I kinda like it.

Another maple leaf.  Like the very dark tips on the otherwise mostly pale leaf.

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