Autumn Deer

Yesterday morning I was awake and up around 5:00.  I know it was a Saturday and it should have been a sleep in day, but I wake up between 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. seven days a week.  I don’t set the alarm, even on work days, I just wake up.   The Lovely Sharon is in Palm Desert so the Salt Lake house is quiet and even kind of lonely no matter what time of day it is. Even though we are no longer on day-light savings time, at that time of morning it is as dark as night.  I sipped a couple of cups of Dunkin Doughnuts brand coffee, I read several online news stories, collected my Salt Lake Tribune from the driveway, read it and then made breakfast. 

 

I finished eating my scramble eggs and homemade country style potatoes around 6:45 and as I stood at the sink rinsing off dishes and fry pans, I looked out the window down into our back yard.  I saw movement in the now dawn light and realized there were three or four large deer moseying through the yard near the creek bed.  I walked out onto the patio.  It was cold outside.  I walked to the patio rail looked down at the deer and whistled.  At the sound of a whistle the deer stopped walking and looked up at me.  I called down to them as they continued to look at me.  We were probably 40 yards or so apart.  I suppose they were wondering what I wanted and I was wondering where they were going.

It is not unusual for there to be deer in our back yard. In fact, as I was raking leaves Friday afternoon, there were a couple of them across the creek bed from me, seemingly paying no attention to me or my raking.  Still, each time I see deer in the yard, there is a sense of wonder about it. You would never see them so close in the mountains and they would not seem so unafraid of a human.  Sometimes I have been working in the yard and they have been grazing 30 or 40 feet from me.  Keeping an eye I on me but accepting of our coexistence in the back yard.

Yesterday was unusually warm for this time of year in Salt Lake City. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be even warmer.  Its 1:30 a.m. now and I need to go back to bed.  In a few hours when the sun is up, when breakfast is made and eaten and it warms up, I think I will go for a walk.  This warm streak will soon end and December is only three weeks away.  Any walk then will require a coat, gloves and a stocking cap. Today merely a light sweater.

 

A couple of backyard photos from last week

 

Look closely and you can see the leaves floating through the air.

 

Here are two photos from 2011

You can see the rock embankment of the creek in the left center background of this shot.

I take a great number of photos of the back yard every autumn and you cannot tell one year from the next.  But the compelling beauty of the change of seasons causes me to grab my camera and take a  few more pictures.  Maybe one day I won't be able to go outside and the photos will be all I have left.