I wanted to get a shot of the beautiful blue sky and the pretty white clouds we have lately but I was a rather early at the pond on Saturday and there was still a lot of haze in the sky and shade on the banks.
It was a beautiful, cool morning though, with not a wisp of wind and only one early fisherman out.

This little bird was tromping through the reeds, on the hunt for bugs and other creepy crawlers:

                                           

At first I thought it was some sort of Rail or small Heron but I think it's actually a juvenile male (or even female) Red-winged Blackbird ... 

It actually almost felt a little like, do I dare to say it .. Fall?!
Many shrubs, like the Hawthorns and the Snow-berries are already loaded with berries and surprise, surprise I found a big cluster of mushrooms on the side of the path ...

                                                          

Closer to home this cute little fawn popped out of the shrubs and stood stock-still there for minutes when he saw me:

It's a fairly young one for this late in the season and I didn't see it's mother anywhere. 
I hope she's still around ..

James came home with these two, given to him by a client who apparently had a large vegetable garden and way too many of them:

                  

He forgot to ask what they were but I know the bottom one is a purple Kohlrabi. 
The other one is either a very large zucchini or some sort of summer Squash. 
Either way I think I'll just cook them up and we'll see how they taste.
They'll probably do well in a stew or soup, which is good news since I've declared the Saturday officially as a soup-day so they'll come in handy!

Lately I've made some new-to-me soups like this Carrot soup (on the left) with white beans and spinach and a Cauliflower soup (on the right) with sausage, sweet potato and Kale:

     
         

They were absolutely delicious and very fast and easy!
I've realized that you can make a soup of almost any 'normal' meal by just adding some broth or cream which makes for an easy and somewhat different meal than the usual way of eating it.

I also finally finished this insanely difficult puzzle by Jan van Haasteren, the dutch comic artist and illustrator, whose work is characterized by its high density of visual jokes and absurdities.

Not much else to talk about this week, just a nice, quiet 'getting-towards-the-end-of-summer kinda week. 
It's almost September, which for me sounds very much like ... FALL!

I know, not yet, but soon, it's coming!