We now depart from our regularly-scheduled commentary on reading and writing for a photographic interlude. Fall is probably my favorite season here in Montana, and I went outside a couple of days ago to take some pictures of the mountains, meadows, aspens, and beaver ponds in our back yard. The cats had to accompany me, of course, so I worked Lena into one of the pictures.
All of these, incidentally, were taken on our property near Red Lodge.
Please click on the images to see the full-sized picture. It looks like WordPress does a pretty crummy job of scaling, and the inline pictures got pretty fuzzy.
These rocks are known as the Palisades -- jutting up from the face of the mountains like spines on a stegosaurus.The aspens behind the house are in the midst of the color change. There's still some green, most is yellow, and there are touches of red here and there if you look for it.I love the contrast between the yellow leaves and the blue-and-white sky.There was just a touch of snow on the mountains when I took this two days ago. Today there's a good bit more. Look carefully for the cattle grazing behind the first row of pine trees.About a third of our property is currently underwater thanks to our friend the beaver. Here, we're looking upstream from one large dam toward the next -- significantly smaller -- one.From the same vantage point as the last picture, but looking downstream at the next pond.Whenever I'm taking pictures on our property, Lena manages to sneak into at least one of them. Here, she was posed too perfectly to ignore. I'm sure she's contemplating some kind of mischief. I'm just not sure what.
Gary D. Robson 
Hi Gary, Thanks for the post. Really beautiful country and your pictures show it off well. Carto.
Thanks, Carto!