A big cat, a big blow and big news

First of all, Happy Halloween to everybody. My wife and I went to Rhinelander last weekend, and along the road, we saw something interesting.

Remember this summer when I saw "Mr. Robert Cat" along the road? This time, I saw a much bigger cat. Very big ...



And the very big cat had some inflatable companions for the holiday season ...



Hope they all survived our big blow okay. That's the big storm that passed through the Upper Midwest a few days ago.

It was a "three-day blow," like the title of the Hemingway story. The wind was really blowing hard from Tuesday through Thursday, especially on Tuesday night and Wednesday. We never lost power, and the house is still standing. Back in Rhinelander, some areas lost power for several days, and they opened the high school and YMCA as shelters.

Record low barometric readings were reported. Here, the reading sank to 28.59 inches (968 millibars). The low passed through Minnesota, several hundred miles west of us. It took its own sweet time.

Tuesday night, as the storm moved in, I drove off to a Wisconsin high school playoff game about 35 miles away. All the playoff games went on as scheduled, and I made the trip with my little digital camera--the big one stayed home. The little one is pretty good, but it's not the kind you want to use for taking night photos, especially on poorly lit football fields. I don't take my photos for the paper with that one. Otherwise, this is what they would look like ...



The home team is called the Bobcats. As I sat in the stands, I saw a real live Bobcat walking down the sideline, rooting on his team ...



Alas, things didn't go well for the home team. They trailed 17-0 after the first quarter because of two very short punts (into the wind) and a fumble in their end. The bobcat mascot got very sad. He was literally holding his head in his hands ... uhh, hand ...



The Bobcats fought back but eventually lost 24-20. The light rain and brisk winds we had during the game continued during the trip home. I saw a couple of deer along the road as I drove back west. I saw some wood debris on the two-lane road in places.

And then ... I got a glimpse of something that flashed past me, on the other side of the road. I turned around and went back east to get a better look ...



A dead birch tree had blown over and was completely blocking the eastbound lane. Luckily, I was westbound. In the next shot, the westbound lane is closer to the camera ...



More luck: I had enough of a signal on my cell phone to call 911 and alert the local sheriff's office of the tree blocking the road. Thanks to GPS, they could see exactly where I was. They said they would send out a truck right away, and I went on my way.

****

Our older son called on a recent Sunday night. He had passed along some big news to my wife the last time he called--but I was away that night.

In fact he had two things to tell us: The big one (from earlier) is: His girlfriend (and her dog) has now moved in with him (and his cat). Most of the excitement so far involves the dog and cat, who are having a hard time not acting like dogs and cats.

That decision didn't surprise me. They are old enough and smart enough. (He is 33; she, about five years younger.) They have gone on a number of trips together since they met last March. They have visited us twice and stayed in our spare bedroom. And they continue to grow closer. I wrote him after missing his earlier phone call, speculating whether they may want to look for a bigger place in spring. (Though I haven't seen his new place yet.)

The other news: He hesitatingly asked whether it would be OK if they do NOT come up for Christmas this year. I told him no problem--maybe they can visit once the snow melts in spring. Keep in mind--his Christmas situation has changed very much in the last 12 months: He has a close girlfriend now, and his grandma who loved him very much has died.

I know what he goes through to make those Christmas visits. It's a very long drive (550 miles each way) from Detroit to Mom and Dad, even in the best of conditions. In winter, he has to deal with snow, snow-covered roads, sleet, freezing rain and other fun stuff, since three of the five Great Lakes are so close. In the northern Lower Peninsula, about 100 to 150 miles of I-75 is often snow-covered and/or slippery due to lake-effect snow.

In short, it's not an enjoyable, relaxing drive by any means, and I speak from long personal experience. Maybe we can work out a video visit via Skype.

Our own holiday plans? Undecided yet. Our son usually stayed with us until just after Christmas--then he drove home. Some years, we visited my wife's sisters near Ladysmith around New Year's. Other times, we had quiet time at home. We need to talk about it.

In for a blow

At times I have commented that if the Upper Peninsula ever gets its own National Anthem, it would be Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." All 6 minutes, 32 seconds of it.

(Either that or "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas. You hear that one A LOT all winter on the radio stations up here. A LOT. I can see marching bands playing that song as they march down the street on gray and cloudy days, which we have an abundance of during winter.)

Right now, it's nearly November, the month when the real Edmund Fitzgerald met its watery fate in the waters of Lake Superior back in 1975. Thanks to the song, it's the most famous of the weather-related maritime disasters on the Great Lakes--but hardly the only one in a region that has seen many wild storms during fall. (Like this one, which took over 250 lives back in 1913.)

We are about to be hit with another. The big feature of this one is expected to be the wind. Even here, far inland from any of the Great Lakes, they are expecting gusts over 50 miles per hour. The worst of the wind is expected in eastern Wisconsin--over 60 mph gusts. Most of the Wisconsin-U.P. region has a High Wind Warning in effect.

Interesting--especially since Tuesday night happens to be the first round of high school football playoffs in Wisconsin. I had been planning to go to one of the games--it's only about 35 miles away. Wisconsin has such a tight playoff schedule (the second round of games is on Saturday, just four days later) that the games have to be played barring some absolutely incredible weather.

Will this turn out to be incredible enough? Imagine trying to pass a football in 50 mph winds on a high school field that has no protection from the gale/storm (unlike all those college and pro stadiums with seating all around the field).

If that's not scary enough for you, imagine trying to drive a school bus full of kids in winds like that. Talk about "high profile vehicles." Now that I think about it, Wisconsin officials probably should be thinking about postponing this round of games despite the schedule chaos it would cause. Cheerleaders will be flying through the air, otherwise. Little kids, too.

All this reminds me of a story from about 20 years ago. One of our teams had made the playoffs and was playing in a town on the north shore of Lake Michigan. It was a very windy early November day--sunny but windy.

A memorable day. I saw things like passes being knocked down by the wind and punts going almost straight up--one went for exactly 1 yard. And I saw something else during halftime, while the marching band was performing.

The band had flag girls who were holding flags while the rest of the band played. This time, the wind had ripped the skirt of one of the flag girls. Of course, I observed closely, and later I duly noted that "She resolutely held her flag with one hand while holding her skirt together with the other to cover her predicament."

****

It's been a while since I wrote about the cats, right? OK, then. let's get you caught up on their adventures.

They are, after all, creatures of habit. Lately, Max has been sleeping a lot in our bedroom--either on top of our bed or, presumably, under it. Close enough so that when I sit at the end of the bed (when changing clothes), Max springs up on the bed right away and is purring and meowing at me.

He gets all excited when I pet him. As he waits, he is rubbing is head against me and making excited throat sounds. Max likes to get petted a little rougher than most cats I have known. He especially likes it when you hold out your hand, palm downwards, near him--he rises up and presses the top of his head against the palm. Over and over, while tromping with his front feet. Left, right, left, right.

Then he lies on his side and back, four feet in the air, and treads the air, buzzing happily. We keep that up for a few minutes. Inevitably he starts licking himself, and that's when I return to what I wanted to do.

Remember my recent post about the e-reader? Well, I had to get a picture of the thing while Max was on the bed. He started by looking at me ...



Then he rubbed against the e-reader as I tried to get my picture ...



And then he decided to try out the camera lens ...



Very subtle about getting attention, isn't he?

Just realized that Max has been a part of our family for two years this month. Max was a sad kitty when we got him. Did I ever tell you the story?

He had been at the shelter about 10 months when we adopted him--he had been found roaming outdoors in winter while struggling with an abscessed tooth. They fixed the tooth and then tried to find him a home. It took a while. I remember he was there when we adopted Charlie back in February. Just him in his little cage. He had been adopted out once, but it didn't work, and the people at the shelter said that he got depressed and stopped eating after he was returned.

Today, Max is a happy cat. When it's warm out, he sits in an open window, breaths in the fresh air and listens to the birds as he sunbathes. He has a nice soft bed to sleep on (when we're not using it; he doesn't use it at night). He has other windows to sleep in and innumerable hiding places. He's got staircases to sprint up and down and long hallways to dash along. He's got people to chase him (which he loves) and pet him when he finally allows himself to be caught. The life of a happy cat in his forever home.

As for Charlie, she seems to like the e-reader, too, for when I go to bed and try to read a little while, she soon hops up on the bed and walks up by my side. Meow, meow, purr, purr. She likes to lie down on one of my arms. I can manage to hold the reader and hit the "turn page" button with one hard, but it's not easy. After a while, she walks away. Sometimes to the foot of the bed, sometimes off the bed and out of the room.

She usually spends the night on the kids' old beanbag chair in our room--we have an old baby blanket on it. That's good until it gets close to morning. Sometime between 3 and 5 a.m., she hops up on the bed and walks up by my side. Meow, meow, purr, purr. She lies by my side, and I rub her tummy. Purr, purr, purr. Life is good.

At times she moves away, and I roll on my other side to put my arm around my wife and maybe doze off again. But then Charlie comes back for another round. Meow, meow? My wife understands about cats, though.

Everything changes, however, when Charlie's radar picks up a certain sound from the hallway: the sound of Max "talking" as he walks around. Suddenly she looks towards the door, wriggles out of my arm, hops off the bed and moves over to see what Max is up to.

A day or two ago, she was only in my arm about a half minute before the Max alert sounded.

I guess that shows where I rank.

Going high tech; going low tech

(This little essay was supposed to start with a wry observation about change and keeping up with the times or something like that. But I couldn't think of anything appropriate, so let's just plunge into the meat of it.)

Recently, I invested in something new, and I think it is helping me revive a pleasant pastime.

Voila! ...



Yes, I have invested in an e-reader. The one you are looking at is the Kobo reader, which I ordered from the Borders.com website.

There are many other e-readers. Barnes & Noble has the Nook. Amazon has the Kindle. There is a Sony reader. I could go on.

I selected the Kobo because it is relatively inexpensive, a charge lasts a long time, it can hold tons of books, it's easy to hold and easy to use. Even for an old coot like me. It also uses open-source Epub files and PDF files, unlike Amazon's Kindle, which is probably the best-known e-reader. It's also available in Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

How did I first hear about it? From Twitter. Bob McKenzie is a well-known hockey analyst on Canada's TSN network, and I subscribe to his Twitter feed. While in North Carolina on vacation this summer, he was twitting about his Kobo and how happy he is that he bought it. He was reading the Stieg Larsson books this summer, among other things.

That got me to looking at the Kobo website, where I saw I could order an e-reader from Borders.com.

The e-reader, which weighs well under a pound, can hold about a thousand books in its silicon memory and another thousand or so if you connect an SD memory card (which are cheap nowadays). Just after I bought mine (naturally!), Kobo released a updated version that can do more things and do them faster. I'm happy with mine, though.

My e-reader has about a dozen books I have downloaded plus a hundred classics that were preloaded. Many, many books are available for free--all you have to do is download them and transfer them from your computer to the e-reader. Check out feedbooks.com and manybooks.net--all their stuff is available for free.

My problem with reading has always been time. I tend to keep pretty busy and have a lot of things I like to do. My job, both during the day and at night. Some TV sports. Watching stuff on TV with my wife. Surfing the web. Taking and editing pictures. Writing letters and blog posts. Oh, it's a busy life! Multitasking, anyone?

All that has crowded reading for pleasure out of my life for quite a while. Occasionally I get excited about a book and spend much of my spare time with it. I have been reading texts I download from Project Gutenberg, using an eText reader. When I am at the computer screen, I can read the book. But I don't want to be staring at a computer screen all the time. I also want to read when I'm elsewhere, doing other things.

For instance, I took my wife to see the doctor for a checkup late last week. She was gone for about an hour. How did I spend all that time in the waiting room? You guessed it! I also want to have some maintenance done on my little car (which just hit 189K). How will I spend my time while the car is on the hoist? Old magazines or something I really would like to read?

(Actually, I picked up a copy of Playboy and paged through that while getting a haircut recently. They had some really good articles in there. Really!)

Part of the reason is space. I have been shying away from buying new books lately because I have too many books at home that I haven't gotten around to reading. Magazines, too. Collectively, they take up space. I realize that I really need to winnow the inventory down. Someday.

But the e-reader is light and easy to pack along. I bought a little neoprene sleeve for it, so it can safely hit the road with me--along with tons of books. All of it weighing less than a pound and taking less space than a trade paperback.

What am I reading? Not the popular bookstore stuff. Long ago, I developed an affection for classic literature, and there are so many classics I'd like to read. I love Dickens, and I've never read "A Tale of Two Cities." So that's what I'm reading now--I'm about halfway through it.

Also, at times during my eText days, I was plowing through "Lorna Doone." I got bogged down about two-thirds of the way through, but I'm making headway on it again. (At least I was until I got into "Two Cities.") Several other books, too. I read the last of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales ("The Prairie") while in college. Now I plan to start with "The Deerslayer," the first book (chronologically) in the series.

The thing I enjoy most about reading, of course, is that it takes me away from the here and now, whisking me away to another time, another place. The classic writers have the human condition down pat--the same human frailties all around us today existed back then, too, as well as the virtues. I made sure to download Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" and plan to re-read that. A very long book that rewards the reader with many wry observations about life and people. A excellent read. There are so many more, I know. I wish I had more time to read.

Time. That reminds me that I also went low-tech this year.

For years, I have worn complex wristwatches. Most were digital models made by Timex, which had timers and stopwatches and alarms. And they also stored data. Notes. Phone numbers. Reminders. A calendar. Data was transferred from the computer to the watch via a cable or even a flashing screen.

But while the watches were complex and a bit costly, they attached on my wrist with cheap plastic bands. After a year or so, the cheap plastic band would break, and I would have to buy a replacement. Before long, the battery needed replacing, too. The replacement batteries never seemed to last that long.

The data watches were a product of the 1990s: before cell phones were popular and smartphones evolved. About two years ago, it occurred to me that my phone already stores all the info that was on my data watch. So what's the point of having one?

When it became battery time again, I decided to go in an entirely different direction. Low tech. No new data watch. Not even a digital.

Yes, I went analog ...



I decided to get a simpler watch that only has to tell me the time. That's the kind of stuff watches do best. I remembered many times during winter, when I was driving somewhere in the dark and I wanted to check the time. There is a button to light the digital data watch's face, but the digits were hard to make out, especially in a moving vehicle. And in order to activate the light, I needed to reach over and press the button with my other hand. While driving.

I finally selected a watch that has luminescent hands and a dot on the second hand, so I can read it when it's totally dark. With one hand. It's got a dark green face and white hands; with that contrast I can read it in low light conditions. With one hand. When I use my other hand to press the light button, the watch has a light green face with dark hands.

Of course, the watch operates with a quartz crystal and is shock-resistant. I may have wanted to go retro, but not so retro that I was always checking its accuracy and turning the hands a few minutes ahead or behind as needed. Two major things I will have to do each year: switching to and from daylight time. That isn't done automatically any more. But I can handle that. In spring, I turn the hands ahead an hour. In fall, I pull out the stem--and let the watch sit frozen in time for an hour. Before long, I'm back on time.

I got the new watch early this year, and I really like it. There's just one thing I don't care about--it's got a leatherish strap (real leather? who knows?) that you have to open and close when you take the watch off, like when you wash your hands or shower. Maybe an expansion band would make life a tiny bit easier.

"What are you going to offer me?"

I talked with my wife Saturday morning. We were both waking up and talking about what we had ahead of us that day.

I had been out of town, covering a high school football game Friday night. It was about two hours away, so I got back home about 10:45 p.m. My son David came along--I dropped him off at his place before getting home. My wife was just heading for bed when I got home; we talked a few minutes, I checked a couple things on the computer and then lay down, too.

I had another game to cover Saturday. This one was in the afternoon, about 70 miles away. The weather forecast said it would be sunny and mild. David was staying home this time, and I got an idea.

"Do you want to come along?"

"Why? What are you going to offer me?"

She asks this because sometimes I can offer some special incentive for her to come along and keep me company. Things like towns that have a shopping center or a quilt shop. Places where she likes to stop along the way. Some especially nice scenery. A good restaurant.

But in this case, there was no such place. Between here and there, it's mostly forests on each side of the road, 75 miles west through the national forest and after the game 75 miles back east. The fall leaves have mostly fallen, and the countryside can be rather barren in places. No big towns. Nothing much larger than a convenience store. It's just a long drive.

If we had more time after the game, maybe we could have visited N, who lives about 20 miles further west. Maybe take her out to supper. But that's another 20 miles each way, and I wanted to get back home. Also, I hadn't mentioned it to N as something we might do, and I don't like to drop in on people unexpectedly.

Still, it would have been nice to have someone to talk with and keep me company on my long drive. I have to walk up and down the sidelines during the game, true, but I could come over and sit with her during halftime. Maybe fetch her a hot dog (high school football cuisine; that and nacho chips). And when she goes with me to a sports event, I always pay her ticket.

But in her eyes, going for a ride with me and sitting through a football game wasn't an appetizing enough prospect for a sunny Saturday. She said she'll stay home. Maybe she would go to a rummage sale. Maybe she would work on her vacuum cleaner.

So I made the trip by myself.

It was a long drive.

Marching through October

Our march to winter weather is marching in place at the moment. September was chilly, wet and cool. October? Not bad at all.

We are definitely enjoying Indian summer. Last Friday, we got close to 80F (26C) here. It has cooled off since then, but we were still in the low 70s (23C) Tuesday. It's not mild enough to leave the windows open at night (unfortunately for Max, who loves to spend his nights in open windows), but pretty nice for mid October.

Hmmm. Honey, didn't we get our first snow last year on this date?

With all that has been taking place lately, I haven't been very active with the autumn color pictures. But last week I took a drive west to visit N, and I took a few nice pictures of some trees I saw along the way. Unfortunately, the color was obviously past peak ...







One other nice thing to see: With all the rain we got this summer, the big swamp near the west county line looks a lot healthier than it did before, when it was almost totally dry, as drought conditions prevailed over the area ...



But the summer of 2010 is dead and gone. I like fall, but I'm sorry summer is over, for a simple reason: I like warm weather more than the cold that is in our not-too-distant future.

The usual regrets, too. I went on a number of trips with my wife and son, but there are more places we wanted to go. That trip to the Amish area near Bonduel, Wis., which my wife wanted to do, hasn't been done yet; as long as fall sports continues, it's hard to get days off. In my son's case, his broken hand in early August threw things off for him. He wasn't interested in going places after that, with his hand in a cast.

As for myself: As you know, B and I never got together this summer. I felt pretty bad about that for a while. But fate took an unexpected twist when S and her husband broke up, and she started living with her girlfriend, T. So when I can get away and drive down there, I am more than welcome, and we have a fun time. That's a turn of events I never would have imagined at the start of 2010.

I was able to visit N several times, too. For this or that reason, we weren't able to get together between late July and early October--over two months--but our long separation ended last week. I drove over to visit, and there were no further problems with weather, snarky septic systems or other matters.

The surprise highlight of last week's visit: We watched several episodes of "You Bet Your Life" from the 1950s with Groucho Marx. Groucho will come along next time, too, as will the Three Stooges. N absolutely adores all the old cars she sees on the DVDs--like those 1950s DeSotos that Groucho was selling. "Wow! What would a car like that be worth now???" And many of the Stooges' films come from the 1930s.

If you don't know, N is a widow, a few years older than me, and she lives by herself in the woods with her rescue dogs. While she enjoys her independent life, she also enjoys my visits; for one thing, she gets to cook for someone else. She doesn't get many chances to do that. Then we settle down on her sofa and watch some of my crazy movies. We laugh a lot.

S and I never got to Dragonfly Beach this summer, either. That's partly because T never wrote a short essay to the owner (only about 100 words) about why she wants to go there. But they could only have gone there with me, and I only got down to visit them once during summer (aside from our trip together to Freedom Fest). That's the day it got so hot, and we went to the animal park.

In fact, I didn't go swimming all summer, clothed or otherwise. Just too busy with stuff.

I hope to visit S and T during the second week of November. We are talking about visiting the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, to see all the geese. My mom and dad would take my brother and I there when we were kids, and it's a truly incredible experience.

If my camera and I can make the trip, you will see why.

That also, by the way, is the week my wife plans to go on another bus tour to Branson, Mo., to see the Christmas shows there. It's not a final decision, but she is definitely leaning that way.

But it's also possible that I will have to delay my trip to S and T and the geese until the week after. It's because of a scheduled meeting and the "high holy days" in our area. I'll explain later.

****

All right! I finally had a fairly decent week in that football contest. This week, my three teams totaled 90 points, and that was the 473rd highest score. That may not sound like much (and it isn't), but the week before I was #2073, and the week before that I was #2779.

One couple from our area finished with the fourth best score: 119 points. They won $50.

Next week, my three teams are the Atlanta Falcons, Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants. Those are three pretty good offensive teams.

So we all know what's going to happen: At least one of those teams will have a really bad game, and later everybody will be asking why. Only I (and you) will know the rest of the story.

Video: A new season starts

This last week was a very busy one, a very demanding one. As I neared the end of my work on Saturday, I looked ahead to finally getting some time off and watching some hockey.

The hockey season started on Thursday night, but I was covering girls volleyball. More games Friday, but I was gone at a football game. I finally had a chance to enjoy some hockey Saturday night.

I watched the "Hockey Tonight" pregame show on CBC while my wife prepared dinner. Then, two things happened, seconds apart: She called me, saying it's time to eat, and CBC started showing a video piece at the start of the actual "Hockey Night in Canada" telecast.

I knew what was waiting for me on the table, nice and hot: chicken parmigiana. It's a tasty meal. But I couldn't get up from the couch: The video piece that started was just so mesmerizing, so outstanding for someone who loves hockey.

Today, I found a video link to it. Take a look ...



Wow! What an outstanding way to show that the new season has begun!

Sometimes I think that if I were a young person just starting out now (in other words, if I weren't an old coot), I would really want to get into video production and learn how to make pieces like that. Who knows, maybe someday I'd get really good at it.

****

This week will be easier. It should be. It can't get harder, can it?

An idea zooms into sharp focus

Here's something I have been thinking a lot about lately: getting another lens for my camera.

Photography can be a pricey hobby, especially if you use Nikon cameras, but Sigma makes nice third-party lenses for Nikon, and those seem more reasonably priced.

A week or two after my mom died, I got a check from her insurance company. It was a bit more than the $800 or so I had expected. And all the funeral costs were paid years ago. So I have been thinking about what to do with that money, and I thought about my camera.

I fondly remember a few years when I used a 28-200 mm zoom lens on my Minolta Dynax 800si camera at work. That was a very handy lens to work with: It could handle both wide-angle shots and telephoto shots (as long as neither of them are very extreme). I enjoyed using that one.

But the Minolta was a film camera, which meant we had to develop the film in chemicals and then make prints using more chemicals. In 2003 or so, the company wanted to cut costs and started thinking about the cost of all those chemicals vs. digital cameras. No chemicals. That's about the same time we started laying out the paper on our computers. Maybe a little before, maybe a little after. It's been a while already, and I forget.

At any rate, they persuaded me to switch to digital to allow us to stop buying chemicals. Chemicals that smelled. Chemicals that we had to mix ourselves. Chemicals that got depleted and had to be replenished. Hey, we're a small-time operation with a small-time budget. This was an economy move. We were spending a lot of money and time on photo chemicals and lots of time in the dark room, developing and printing film. Believe me, never for one second have I pined for the good ol' days when I played with chemicals in the dark room.

But I did--and still do--miss that Minolta camera. Especially that lens. They remain together, in a filing cabinet near my desk. Once in a while I look at it. And at times I think about it. Like when I have to switch from my 18-55mm zoom to my 55-200mm zoom. And back again. Or when I wonder which lens I ought to pull out of my camera bag.

Wouldn't it be cool ... to have two cameras? Yeah, probably. But it would also be a headache. Which one am I taking along? Decisions, decisions! More bulk. More stuff to worry about and schlep around. Maybe that's not such a good idea.

But a tele/wide-angle 18-250 zoom lens? That could work very well.

Here's one other photo-related thing I need to think about: a new tripod.

My main tripod is a Vivitar model I purchased back when I was working in downtown Milwaukee. It was first hooked up to a Minolta SRT-101 camera. That tells you how old it is--nearly 40 years. It isn't in very good shape now--it's hard to convince the legs not to collapse on me--and when I go to a place like Best Buy and wander off to the camera department, I eventually look over the tripods.

Hmm, I think to myself, I really ought to get one of those someday.

Vandals in the garden

My wife pulled the plug on our garden Monday morning. When I went out to the car at lunch, I saw that the last vines of the tomato plants were gone, the sunflower stalks were down, and the marigolds have been pulled up.

All that's left now are the rhubarb and the asparagus. Those are perennials. But the first killing frost of the season early Sunday morning took care of everything else.

It was 25F (-4C) when I got up that morning. A thick layer of frost lay on everything exposed outdoors. The sunflowers stood tall on Saturday. Sunday, their heads were drooping. They got zapped.

But even though they stood tall Saturday, they looked pretty sad. Garden vandals had struck just a day or two earlier. After they left, the stalks looked as if mad loggers had attacked them, with a hack and a whack and a slash. Where big leaves had absorbed the sun's heat a few days ago, only stumpy stalks remained. The unopened flowers at the very top of the stalks still were there. But where had all the leaves gone?

Look at the aftermath ...



And look at this one ...



Despite the raids, the sunflowers that survived looked pretty healthy ...



... but that was the day before the killing frost.

What pointless vandalism! Why would someone just come along and cut all the leaves off the plant? What a heartless thing to do! Who could be so thoughtless and cruel and destructive?

Who would do such a thing?

I've got my suspicions, and they all center on this wandering nogoodnik and his pals, who have been casing out our neighborhood lately.

Yes, them ...



Look familiar? Our garden is just out of the frame, to the right.

The deer have been a headache on and off over the years. So have the bunny rabbits. But bunny rabbits can't reach very high.

My wife is a very amateur gardener, but this year she got more serious about it. She cleared out an area of our lawn. She planted rhubarb. She planted asparagus. She planted tomatoes. She planted sunflowers. And to help repel area critters, she planted some marigolds. When I suggested getting some spray-on repellent that is advertised on TV, she said the marigolds would repel the critters.

She placed a plastic border around the garden, and all summer I made sure the lawnmower would not create havoc. All was well until very early in August, when the vandals paid us their first visit (marigolds or no marigolds).

The next morning we went outside, and this is what we saw ...



The rest of the garden looked fine ...



See that big sunflower at the far end, behind the rhubarb? It was growing quickly, and it kept growing. Fact is, we had a nice summer, with warm weather, warm nights and above average rain. Area gardens had a very good year. Even ours.

The sunflowers attacked by the deer proved to be resilient, and they picked up where they left off. They grew and grew. This is how they looked on Sept. 1 ...



All the sunflowers were growing great guns ...



That tall sunflower? It had grown taller than my wife! It was as tall as me! Until, that is, the night of Aug. 31, when some strong thunderstorms blew through the western U.P., with thunder, lightning, wind and heavy rain.

When we came out the next morning, our tall sunflower was lying on its side. It had been broken off an inch or so above ground level by the wind. We held up the wilting plant late that morning, and my wife stood next to it one final time ...



A tragedy, sure, but our neighbor on the other side of the alley got it far worse. He had a huge maple tree growing in his back yard. For years. For decades. Then the storm blew through. The next morning, it looked like this ...



The wind broke off about half the maple and pushed it onto his garage. And the neighbor's garage. The next day, they did the only thing they could do ...



I love big maples. So this was a sad day for more reasons than the sunflower.