A beautiful late fall day

Sunny and relatively mild. High temps in the 40's and dry. We went for a long bike ride this morning and found the wind to be more of an obstacle than we thought it would be. Luckily, it was worst going out - south and east. So we quit after half an hour, and coming back took only about 20 minutes. Certainly brisk, but nice to be out in the sunlight. Saw some sort of small hawk, guarding its territory. Not sure what kind, maybe a marsh hawk?

Then it was time to do one more lawn cut and leaf cleanup to keep things from matting down the lawn. The big old willow still hasn't completely let its leaves go, so we will probably have to rake that area before the snow buries everything. And today we finally got everything off of the deck for the winter - planters stowed where the snow will cover them, trough moved to the side so we can shovel around it.

I cut the straight shoots out of the center of the Harry Lauters Walking Stick plant, and took off the supports that had been holding the recumbant stems up all summer. There is one nice new vertical branch that might become the basis of the plant I really want at that corner - we'll see.