Leaves, leaves, and more leaves

The leaves are down, raked, shredded, and spread around some plants and heaped on the compost pile.  Who remembers jumping into huge piles of leaves as kids? We had 2 large maple trees in our yard and an older lady, 2 houses down, also had 2 large trees. We'd rake all our leaves into a pile and then rake her leaves and somehow get them up to our house.  I don't remember how we accomplished that.  Do kids today realize how much fun a pile of leaves is? We'd spend days playing in them.  I also don't remember how the pile was ever removed from the front yard or where it was removed to.  Every year, I wish for a child to be around so I would have an excuse to jump in a pile of leaves and not look like I've lost my mind!  Just the smell of takes me back to those childhood days.

 Leaves surrounding and covering my alyssum.

 Someplace in here, look real hard - you'll see some impatiens peeking through.

 Mums and alyssum surrounded by leaves.

A Fall "Easter Egg" Hunt

Autumn is here and that means it's time for the squirrel's annual "Autumn Nut Hunt", similar to our Easter Egg hunt.  Everywhere I go in my yard,  discover beechnuts hidden in the oddest places.  Here are three pictures of hidden nuts. 
A few days ago, I was pulling down the dead morning glory vines and was rudely bopped on the head by a beechnut hidden in the vines.  These only stay hidden a few days, when the squirrels get hungry, they find them and make quite a mess scattering the outer layers as they get to the prize inside. 
(I had more, but they were in my camera program on my computer and my computer crashed. Don't ya' love these computers! I thought I had everything backed up, but forgot about all those pictures sitting in my camera program waiting to be saved to a folder. )