Ah- sweet respite from the news. We took a walk at the arboretum today. I do so love the fall smells and colors, and the wind blew all the hateful news out of my head for awhile. We saw a pileated woodpecker, buzzards (whom I thought would’ve migrated back already), finches, sparrows. In our back yard are finches, nuthatches, little woodpeckers, those stripey-headed sparrows, goldfinches and warblers migrating through. We even had 2 black swallowtail caterpillars in October, eating the parsley that grew back after the last batch of their kind had eaten it, but they disappeared- we think the paper wasps who have a nest in the garage door recruited them to feed their queen larvae through the winter. Who needs spooky Halloween movies when you can just look at the life cycle of insects.