Clouds Like Sheep

[Edited to add: welcome to readers of Samurai Knitter's blog! And if you haven't been there, see? See? I'm not the only maniac devotee of 0000 knitting needles!]
Autumn in Michigan very often seems to come overnight, as if someone had flipped a switch. We get these clouds that look like a flock of gray sheep, with little gaps of blue so you can see the sun you're missing.

Sunday after I picked up my county fair entries, I stopped at a farm that had had a huge sale, 25 open trailers of stuff. The leftovers were on three trailers by the side of the road, free for the taking. We had gone to the sale, so I stopped to see what was left, and came home with a 1961 Webster's New Collegiate dictionary, a pair of little silverplate teaspoons, three tinned-steel pie pans, and a stack of books, mostly Agatha Christie. There was some yarn, but it was acrylic, so it was easy to stay on my stash diet. I can hardly believe I've been on a stash diet for over eight months!

Yesterday, Monday, I read mysteries and realized I was coming down with a cold. The day seemed to pass very quickly, and I didn't get any knitting done. Before I knew it, it was bedtime, and I was trying to go to sleep with an itchy, leaking nose. (I hate that!)

These are a sure sign of fall, New England asters or Michaelmas daisies. I rescued several plants of these when I saw condominiums were going in where they were growing. They come in shades of pinkish-purple and bluish-purple, but cameras always seem to register them on the pink side. This year I had a few plants come up from seed. Some of them came up in the lawn and will need to be moved so I don't mow them down.

Today I want to get up to town and do some grocery shopping. If that leaves me with any energy, maybe knitting after that.

And a few weird words about illness and behavior!

When I was a hort. student at Michigan State University, we learned about a disease of the onion fly. The disease organism would infect this fly, which normally landed on the ground at the base of the onion plant to lay its eggs, and change its behavior. Instead of crawling around at the base of onion plants, the fly would crawl up to the very tippy-top of a plant, and then die up there, still clinging to the very top of the plant. And then the disease would spread to other onion flies!

Have you ever noticed that people with colds do the same thing? "Oh, I feel terrible -- I better go to work." Or the store. Ah-choo! I think the cold affects our behavior!