In Denial...

...well, not really any more.  I was enjoying the unseasonably warmer weather, but the cold has hit with a vengeance.  I guess this would be as good a time as any to go ahead and post some of the fall pictures I have taken as my wife and I have been taking the dogs for walks in our different forest preserves.

The pictures below are taken from Grant Forest Preserve over in the Fox Lake area.  It is a nice forest preserve that is divided by a subdivision into two parts.  We walked the larger southern loop this day (it was bout 3.6 miles) and there were a few fallish type things I found along the way to take a picture of.  I do have one interesting tid-bit, however.  We were originally going to go for a walk through the Chain 'O Lakes State Park.  We were pulling into the entrance when we were met with a sign stating the park was closed for hunting.  Now I'm glad they have signs letting you know that...but I really with there had been some other way to find out before we made our way all the way there.  The funny thing is was that it was closed for young hunters and those without licenses (or something like that).  Needless to say, we turned around quickly.

Anyway, here are a couple of the pictures I took:

This is a close up of a milkweed that has "popped."  Most of the seeds have flown, but I thought it has some interesting shapes in it.

It amazes me the different places you can find bird nests.  This was right among all the grasses and, obviously, not that big.

I think golden rod is pretty cool looking when it has gone to see, as well.  I like all the little white puff balls.

This is some grass that was there.  I liked the shape of it and the chunkiness of the seeds.  You can see the feet of my dogs and my wife at the upper left-hand corner. :)

I love trees with interesting shapes.  I thought this one had a cool shape, but it also had a lot of saplings around it.

This is just some nice fall browns.

I am amazed by how fast this year seems to be going.  Pretty soon I will probably be doing some winter picture posts...but until then, I will enjoy the rich browns of autumn.

Rock Cut State Park

Two weekends ago, my wife and I went out to Rockford, Illinois to help my in-laws with some different things around their house.  I ended up creating a dry-well for one of their underground drainage pipes to drain into.  It was not as hard as I thought it would be, because after digging a hole about four feet deep, I hit sand.  That was a wonderful surprise considering the fact that if I was going to do the same thing in my yard, I would have hit clay at about two feet deep.  I also moved some gravel and added it to different places.

While I was doing that, my wife went to a local orchard there and came back with a good six bags of apples (which later turned into several quarts of very tasty apple sauce).  When both she and I were done with our different activities, we were able to go to Rock Cut State Park and observe how fall was hitting the state just about and hour and a half west of us.  (Interestingly enough, they are in a different zone than we are for growing plants).  There were a lot of cool things that I saw there...here are some of them:

This is a fungi of some sort we saw at the beginning of the walk.  Perhaps the Nature Nerd, Chicago Gardener, or someone else will know what type of fungi this is.  It reminds me of that egg-shaped building in London.

The Rockford area was definitely further along in the autumn season than where we live was.  There were a lot more leaves on the ground than in the forest preserve by our house.  That being said, there were several trees like this one.  The colors of certain trees (usually maples it seems) have been amazing this year. 

I loved the shape of this tree.

It was really a day to see different types of fungi.  I think this is another version of the one pictured above.  Maybe after it has started to open, but I could be wrong.










There were shelf fungi all over the place.

Finally, to find this was quite a surprise to me.  I didn't expect to see flowers and berries on a tree.  They were really beautiful.  If anyone knows what type of berries these are...

All in all, it was a nice walk.  We saw a few other things, such as a mass of what looked like milkweed bugs all over a rusted railing.  We also found a path that was supposed to be a bridge turned into a ford of sorts.  If I had had my boots, we would have gone across.  Maybe next time.  Rock Cut State Park has a lot more to explore.