Happy Halloween.

More Rendezvous- 08

"Hannible" sold knives, furs and such.



They didn't have hoop and stick yet...



The missing end of the card was shot off by this woman's musket ball. The skinny side facing her! Quite a shot, this one.



Blackpowder musket.



A trapper's bedroom.

Last summer I shot an assignment for the NY Times on a group of people that get together to reenact the ways of the fur trappers that settled parts of Minnesota way back when. It was an interesting job for sure. All around me people were dressing and acting like they were living a century ago. Kids threw hatchets, men fired black-powder muskets and ladies cooked over open fires. These are images that were never published.

Pears.

We try to grow as much food as we can on our little Minneapolis lot. We have a garden with over a dozen different things, as well as 7 hens (one laying blue eggs) that give us fresh eggs daily. We try to keep our foods' distance from our plate as short as possible - except for coffee. Mmm...

This summer we noticed that several neighbors had fruit trees that they did not utilize. We saw them picking up fallen, rotting fruit, but never taking the good stuff to use. So, I started asking if we could take some of the fruit off of trees if they were not going to. It pleased them all, and so we did. We got home grown apples and pears, which we either ate fresh or canned for later. The pears were especially beautiful, so I could not resist taking just a quick shot of them.

I'm told this was a great year for apples. It's not too late to find out for yourself. An apple a day...

NY Times: Home = happy foreclosure story

This last weekend I dodged rain and 30mph+ winds to finish my latest assignment. A little rosier way to look at the foreclosure mess our nation is in, was to pick a home that was bought cheap and made into a pretty sweet place.

If you want to read the article: NYT Home Section

View: Slideshow

The home was okay, but the real gem was the yard! The property includes the following: 2.5 acres of land within city limits. A large garden, and new fruit tree (pear & apple) orchard. It also had a view of both St. Paul and Minneapolis skylines, and a detached workshop with a bar (although not currently functioning as such).

So, the moral of the story? Foreclosure is not always bad. I guess.