The Last Day of Summer

--Lannie

I was impelled to take a photos on this date not really because the autumnal equinox was near (only about fourteen or fifteen hours away, in fact), but because this date marked the twentieth anniversary of the day when I lost my dog Honey, who lived from summer, 1977 to September 21, 1992. 

Born as a mixed breed pup to a border collie and regular collie in West Virginia, she also lived in Missouri, Texas, and South Carolina. She ran and hiked with me from the Alleghenies to the Sangre de Cristo Range of New Mexico to the mountains of the western Carolinas. Her last major hikes were in Shining Rock Wilderness (west of Asheville off the Blue Ridge Parkway), the Big East Fork trail (accessible off U.S. 276 north of Wagon Road Gap and the Parkway between Brevard and Waynesville), the Foothills Trail (accessible off U.S. 276 north of Caesars Head, SC or from Sassafras Mtn, also in SC), Paris Mountain (Brissey Ridge, where I lived for eleven years but first hiked in the fog on Thanksgiving, 1964) and Table Rock mountain of SC (off SC Highway 11). She once tracked a bear with me up the saddle of Table Rock Mountain (between the "table" and the "stool" on a warm day in February, 1992), and, though she was very nervous, she never flinched or hesitated.  We never actually saw or photographed the bear.  She was a gem of a dog.

Here is her picture made with me (with the camera sitting on a rock) the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1977, the year we moved from Florida to Salem, West Virginia, where I got my first full-time teaching job out of graduate school:

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--Lannie

Here are the railings on the porch and stairs in the next block, well beyond the plane of focus.

--Lannie

Here is a section of the neighbor's house at left, closer to the focal plane.

Taking advantage of all 24 million pixels is a challenge, to say the least.  I made sharper pictures from my front yard on this day, but the overall color balance was more pleasing on this shot, in my opinion.

The most curious thing is how quickly the fading of green in the tree leaves has occurred over the last four or five days.  I do not recall having seen it happen that dramatically before (although it is still just starting), and others here have remarked on the same thing.

--Lannie