Game Day Sparkle - Missoula, Montana

It's Homecoming at the University of Montana - the downtown streets were packed this morning, and all the parade route storefronts are decked out with a little something extra. Nothing says "Go Griz!" quite like a little extra sparkle in your game day coiffure.  Stop in at Bathing Beauties Beads on the Hip Strip to add a little quirk in your day.

Lavender-ish Canopy - Missoula, Montana

Mid-walk through our neighborhood, I stopped and looked straight up into a magically-lighted canopy. All along the block, this one particular type of tree displayed leaves shaded red on the topside and gold on the underside. As the sun filtered through the gently shifting layers, it cast a glow almost lavender. 

The Best Husband Ever gets a gold star for patience, since I stopped multiple times to gaze upward. Times like these, it works well that I'm a speedwalker and he's a stroller - he continues on, and I just catch up!

(Note to self: It behooves one to keep one's mouth shut when under-tree ambling to prevent the inadvertent sampling of electric blue noseeums, and to avoid the subsequent and very inelegant expectoration upon a public thoroughfare. Ick and double-ick.)

(Mostly) Red Rungs - Missoula, Montana

"Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels."

- P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

Golden Poetry - Missoula, Montana

"The poetry of earth is ceasing never..."

- from On the Grasshopper and Cricket

by John Keats (1795-1821)

September Train - Missoula, Montana

"Then the long September cry rang from the thousand unseen locusts, urgent at the open windows of the train."

- from "Delta Wedding", page 4,  by Eudora Welty

Magical Mundane - East Missoula, Montana

"Listen to your life. 

See it for the fathomless mystery it is. 

In the boredom and pain of it, 

no less than in the excitement 

and gladness: touch, taste, 

smell your way 

to the holy and hidden heart of it, 

because in the last analysis 

all moments are key moments, 

and life itself is grace.”

-Frederick Buechner

(P.S. As promised: Saturday's what-is-it photo is of a big Blender; in environmental remediation, it might be used with a Delmag Drill in the ground to mix grout and contaminated dirt to stabilize. Like a giant milkshake mixer.  Kind of. Not quite as fanciful as other imaginings, but still very big and fascinating.)