Milkweed seeds stretched by a prairie wind.

After sitting in the prairie grasses for nearly an hour waiting for another one of those glowing red sunsets, I came away feeling pleased with the soft, muted beauty of the cone flower heads.

An autumn portrayal of Ardie’s Pond … where Rebecca and other friends of Ardie’s come to swim.

Mixing the colors of roadside prairie grasses with the reds of sumac in the background.

A whitetail buck peeking through the timber at Bonanza … Big Stone State Park.

Cloud “leaks” and a lone cottonwood …

Cottonwoods along Lost Creek … Yellow Medicine County.

Forestal etchings of autumn ….

A pre-dawn flight of geese through the shadows of Big Bluestem on our home prairie …

Rich, early morning light on the grasses and trees at Bonanza …

A pastoral early autumn hillside …

Layering of sumac and prairie grasses at Bonanza …

Layering of colors of Big Bluestem at the Big Stone Wildlife Refuge …

Oak and prairie grasses …

I love the strength of the burr oaks … with the accent of yellow poking through.

Outcrops in red … sumac and granite

The morning after a huge prairie wind had taken all the leaves from poplar trees along the Minnesota River near Granite Falls … leaving on the few on the treetops.

The morning after the corn was harvest adjacent to our prairie … our first vista since early July was a sunrise celebration.

Delicate … sunflowers in our prairie stand stark against pre-dawn pinkish clouds.

Technicolor Autumn at Bonanza …

Staghorn sumac delicately poking through Bonanza’s prairie grasses.

A tern fights harsh winds at the Minnesota headwaters …