Here's the house at 107 Dellrose with a snow on Christmas Day.  The babies went wild in the snow and didn't seem to notice their frozen hands and noses until they were forced to come in and warm up.  This house is close to the dead end of Dellrose, so very little traffic noise.  Really nice.

We are taking Harry's new boat and motor out for a spin on the Stones River.  It is really nice to have a ramp just a mile or so from home.  In fact we also have one at Lock Two Park even closer, but I'd rather be on the Stones than the Cumberland.

The Stones runs along some really spectacular bluffs on one side and on the other is what was once farm land and now is part of the Metro Greenway with a trailhead at Percy Priest Dam and another at Two Rivers Park.  With the completion of the greenway bridge over the Cumberland you can now walk or bike from the Dam all the way to downtown.

Even the small green tomatoes will eventually ripen given time and checked frequently so they don't go bad.

I think I mentioned the pear tree in the back yard of 107.  It really is nice to have a fruit tree.  The pairs get damaged sometimes when they fall, but none of them have shown any sign of worms.  We ate a lot and gave a lot away to friends.  If you want some next fall let me know.

Time to bring in the remaining veggies.  Got a great crop of bell peppers this year.  I love them stuffed and raw and any old way.  We always freeze what we can't eat for cooking with all year.

From what I can tell from Peterson's Guide, this is probably a red shouldered hawk.

I had to stop and get this photo.  Don't know what happened, but I'll bet Allstate wishes they had been kinder to this ol' boy.

This little blue bird was scarfing up the worms that crawl out onto the parking lot pavement at Shelby Bottoms.

This is a big hole upstream on Fall Creek.  A rare calm day on October 24th.

Here is Creek X in late October.  Fish are getting sluggish and moving  to deep water.  Water is very clear and you snag a leaf or two with every cast.

A little kestrel waits patiently for a butterfly or grasshopper or maybe even a vole or mouse, although those are pretty rough customers for one so small.

This is Travis and James' house being raised up 3 feet so they could build back after the flood.  Metro Codes has some really goofy rules.  One was they had to make drains in their aluminum garage doors, as if the water wouldn't drain out through the door openings s after the flood. Your government at work to protect you from yourself.

Here are the supports under the house.  One interesting aspect of this job was that they had to take all the brick off the house and then put it all back.  I'm told that when they put it back it came out exactly right.  Hard to credit, but true.

Yea!!  Caught this 20 inch brown trout on a Shad Rap I borrowed from Harry.  He is still kicking himself for lending it to me.  Not really.  One of the most generous and easy going bubbas I know.

This is my Shelby Bottoms special.  I like it because I can stop and shoot a photo without getting off.  And I can go a lot further without bothering my bad left leg too much.

This is the view looking down from the pedestrian walking bridge that spans the Cumberland River.  It connects the greenway at Shelby Bottoms with the one at Two Rivers which connects to the one that goes to Percy Priest Dam.. The boat with the crane is one the Corps of Engineers uses to remove fallen trees that threaten to break loose and create a river hazard.  They once pulled a big one out of our river bank and the river begin to eat away our band with  cave in and erosion until it just got closer and closer to our house.

  Then came the flood of 1967 which stopped 3 feet short of getting into our house.  It only got the half basement which had nothing much in it and soon dried out.  Still we qualified for an SBA loan and fixed our bank by pouring tons of rock on it. There's more to the story.  Get me to tell you about it sometime. So our back yard and river bank at 2213 is pretty much rock with a thin layer of soil.  Not a good place to dig a goldfish pond.  When I fenced it for Puppy I had to use a wrecking bar to break up enough rock for post holes.  

Mama Deer and her twins.  I saw them a lot at Shelby Bottoms when I made my morning ramble there.

Black crowned night heron taking a break from fishing in a nice sycamore tree.

Saw this snake going across the trail at Shelby bottoms.  Looks like he slept on a corrugated roof.  Strange.  

Anybody know what kind it is?

Early October, but the geese are already heading south--those that haven't decided to stay here all year, which is a bunch.

Still warm much of the time and this little dirty back turtle takes advantage.

At our temporary house on 107 Dellrose we put our bird feeder up and one day I noticed this dead humming bird.

Somehow he managed to get his head stuck between the cane and the metal.  Felt really bad about it and changed the setup so it couldn't happen again.

You know, I remember this dog swimming out to the kayak and trying to get in, unsuccessfully I'm glad to say.  But where and exactly when?  DK.  ("Don't Know" as we used to see on wires we got back from NUYAK in the old days.)

I do remember where I caught this nice bass.  Yellow Creek.  That's my blue tiny torpedo which did the job.  Right after that I cast and hit a rock and cracked it.  Another $5 down the drain!