Nor are the skies grey. But, maybe half the time blue, and half the time grey.Some leaves here
are red, others orange, and other leaves yellow. Or my punk rock leaf, that somehow turned deep burgundy almost black, with a lovely red circle 
on the bottom section. With little beige spots for contrast. Seriously one of the most interesting leaves I've ever seen!It's autumn in the
Pacific Northwest. It seems to have arrived early this year.And while Washington is known as The Evergreen State, there are plenty of deciduous trees with gorgeous varicolored leaves this time of
year. Plus the sun is at an angle that causes the afternoon sunlight to create a golden glow that diffuses the landscape, brightens the changing leaves, and even makes the air almost 
sparkle and shine.Yeah, I like October up here. Or at least the first half of October. By the third or fourth
week of the month, the winter rains usually arrive, along with the grey skies and chilly temperatures. So yes, we are making plans to 
move along. Before it gets really cold and really wet here.But our neighborhood supermarket seems to be getting into the
Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving spirit - check out the pumpkin display featuring the plastic calf model!!! I mean, when was the last time you saw a cow as part of 
Halloween? Too funny!!! Even if the weather isn't as warm as we'd like, the colors are gorgeous. And there are
always plenty of hot drinks, cozy sweaters, and fun socks to fend off the chill and drizzle.Oddly, there are also late season flowers. Our hotel's sunflowers
have decided to bloom, as have some random azaleas. The sunflowers and asters I can see - but I think the azaleas are just confused. They do make wonderful and 
unexpected pops of color, though, so I'm okay with their confusion.We had another trip to Seattle for a long weekend - we already had the hotel reservation from the weekend when I couldn't travel due to the stupid pneumonia, but the hotel was nice and was willing to just move our reservation
to another date. So we caught up with friends and had some more city time. And I found another pretty manhole cover. Seattle isn't known for the manhole covers, but I've found more and more interesting ones, rather than the usual blah industrial kind.
Richard is diligently going to physical therapy. But I finally 
decided it was time for a tattoo to cover up my knee replacement surgery scar. It's not so much that I'm a tattoo sort of person, but I'm an artist, and I didn't like the scar. It was about 8" long, not a straight line, and while 
most of it faded to white, there were some very red areas. So I 
wanted to turn it into something beautiful.I thought a stem of flowers would be perfect, since the stem could cover the scar itself. Couple of flowers (especially to one side, there's an area that's still numb). Just, pretty.
So I wandered into a tattoo shop, chatted with one of the artists, and asked for a stem of peonies. Pink peonies. We talked style, color, size, placement. Sketched, talked paint colors (he also paints), and came up with a plan. And scheduled an appointment.
Wednesday was the day. Now, for people who haven't gotten a tattoo, let me explain briefly: the work done over flesh is less painful. Needles impaling the skin and flesh, but less painful. Over bone? Yeah, that's a whole other ballgame. The equipment does the same needles drilling, but there's sort of an internal reverberation going on. On the other hand, I knew I had survived knee replacement surgery already. And once you've done that, well, you can pretty much do anything.
So I sat for somewhere around 3.5 hours and got my tattoo. BIG shoutout to Mikel K at Old School Tattoos in Bellingham, WA, for this fabulous design. The tat is still quite fresh, so the colors are a bit brighter than they will be when the skin is fully healed. But I LOVE it! It's exactly what I wanted! Similar to the Renaissance botanical studies by Basilius Besler, complete with shadows - but with an almost Japanese feel to the stylized flowers. (Yeah, the artists among you will know just what I'm talking about.) Bold yet delicate, detailed, somewhat lacy.
My tattoo artist commented that he's had quite a few "badass" women recently, who are getting large tattoos and sit quietly, without a peep, managing to tolerate the pain. So I'm happy to know I qualify as "badass" these days!
https://www.facebook.com/OldSchoolTattooandPiercing/
Keep posted for updates - we're looking at driving to our next destination, and we all know how much fun road trips can be!!!
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