Perfect autumn days

Yesterday was one of those days when I kept looking for excuses to be outside, a crisp and sunny day.  I hung some clothes on the line to dry, harvested lettuce from the garden for our supper, and just strolled about in general.
Now, if you're one of my Facebook friends who only reads this nonsense on Facebook, you're going to miss the pictures.  This entry is all about the pictures.  
Click on any picture to make it larger.
When Cliff and I were eating dinner, I asked him what he planned to do next.  He responded that he had one more little chore to do at the shop, and then he was going to go cut some "ole snags" and clear the trail at the back of the place.
An "ole snag" can refer to a dead or broken tree, or one that's just ugly in general.  Cliff points them out to me often when we're on our daily walk.  And as for the path, it's almost at the lowest point of our property, and is wide enough for a tractor of any size to drive from one side of our forty-two acres to the other.  A dead tree fell across it this summer, blocking it.
"Let me know when you're going," I told him.  "I'll go along."
I had two reasons for wanting to go:  first of all, it was simply a day to be outside for whatever reason.  Second, I worry when Cliff is wielding the chain saw back there.  He's quite skilled in cutting trees so they'll fall in the right direction, but accidents can happen.
First, we went to clear the trail.

    What a mess, huh?  All that pile has to be moved.  At least there's no danger involved in this particular task.

We're so close to the back of our land that you can see the railroad tracks in the background.

It looks like an impossible task, does it not?

However, once Cliff had the tree cut into more manageable pieces, it wasn't so hard to push them to the side.

I'll bet the whole operation took less than a half-hour.

Just up the hill, Cliff noticed an ole snag, dead and broken.

Down it went.
Then we went back up the hill to the point, as we call it, the grassy, cleared area where you can stand and look across the Missouri River.  Cliff had another ole snag in mind, one we walk past every day.

Now, this one made me nervous.  It's on a brush-covered, steep hillside.
"Which direction do you think it'll fall," I asked.
Cliff figured it would fall straight downhill.
I put my camera in video mode and waited (saying little prayers for Cliff's safety all the while) for the tree to show signs of falling.  I did get a video.  Unfortunately, I had the camera turned to include the whole, tall tree.  This makes the video sideways, so you'll have to turn your head way to the side to view it.  It's only ten seconds long.  I could crop it and make it viewable the proper way, but it cuts off the top and bottom of the video.  And let's face it, the top is what's important.
OK, lean your head way over onto your left shoulder and watch what happened:



Yep, that's as far as the tree fell... not downhill as Cliff thought, but sideways.  Hopefully with the next strong wind-storm it will end up on the ground.  

Cliff was near me, loading the chain saw onto the tractor, when I saw a young doe come into view, looking this way and that.  He's hard of hearing, and I was whispering, "Cliff, Cliff... LOOK!"  
I edged toward him, hoping she wouldn't notice the movement and flee before he got to see her.  I finally got his attention when my lips were about an inch away from his ear.  Now that I think of it, I was so excited that I was whispering into his deaf ear.  No wonder he couldn't hear me.  
The deer finally did glance our way, pondered for a second, signaled an alarm with her tail, and left.  

Just icing on the cake of a perfect day.