"Consider again the November trees..."

"...which lift their arms to say that they have only temporarily yielded; that next spring they will again assert their determination to live. Those trees, like the frog now sleeping under the mud, are on our side. " From Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons, 1949.

I love this book, and consult it whenever it seems to me that time is whirring by.

My first walk at Green Lake since sometime this summer before my foot surgery. It was memorable, even if it was only a mile long. It's my right knee, not my feet, that kept me at that conservative distance.

I think only Seward Park rivals Green Lake this time of year. I have photographed these same vistas for three or more years, and love them more each time I do.

Everywhere one looks, there are leaves still on the trees -- not quite the November that Krutch is describing, and leaves to scuff one's feet through on the ground. Magical colors.

Here are the most charming pumpkins that Leroy carved yesterday for our Halloween visitors. He does this carving with a scalpel. None of these pumpkins is more than 4" in diameter.

Here he is setting them out and -- the most fun for him -- playing with fire to keep them illuminated for the kids.

You can see his two larger pumpkins in this shot.

And here's a close up of one of the large ones, carved with his buck knife.

I am feeling good about progress I'm making on current goals. I've eliminated the most obvious forms of sugar from my diet -- including yesterday's big bowl of Halloween candy for the kids. I am in the gym with Tami, my trainer, two mornings a week. I think I'm ready to add several walks during the week, as well as another session at the Y on my own with the weights. I'm looking forward to work this week, because it includes a University of Washington lecture I'm giving on change management and risk -- a nice diversion from thinking about and working on bio-events like H1N1, which seems likely to consume much of my time until the end of the year.