Rule Breakers

Happy Holidays! 

Well, "Project Clean Up My Big Bunch O' Blog Drafts" went well when it came to reviewing and deleting, obviously not as well when it comes to completing and posting! Most of them turned out to require more time and effort to finish than my hibernating self has cared to expend, but here's one that was nearly done and that I had a lot of fun putting together. Hope it'll provide as many chuckles for you as it has for me! But should any of these tempt you to go forth and be naughty, remember: Santa's watching. :-)

No fair!

"Hell, there are no rules here. 

We're trying to accomplish something."

~Thomas A. Edison

Let's face it. Some rules are good and necessary, but some just seem made to be broken. 

Sometimes subtly...

And sometimes not...

And lest you think it's just dogs who are engaging in acts of civil disobedience...

Photo by Marcia M. Olinger, Caledonia, Michigan

Adding "please" and an emphasis on "not" doesn't always work either...

Then again, sometimes you're just better off complying...

Hitchin' a Ride

Happy December!

The Monday after Thanksgiving was usually the most demoralizing day of the year in our UPS household. But not this year! Pretty sure I have yet to see BW's feet touch the floor since yesterday afternoon! :-) I thought we'd be going all-out with our decorating and other holiday activities since this will be the first year of our married life that BW's available to truly help with and enjoy it. But I think we're both still decompressing, because neither of us feels inspired to go to all the trouble. So we've decided to enjoy a restful, simple, minimalist holiday season and spend some time on various de-cluttering and organizing projects. Thought today I'd begin with my blog, sorting through the ridiculous number of draft posts I never got around to finishing and/or publishing, and finally delete, complete, or post them as appropriate. 

So to start with, here's one that's been languishing in my drafts since May 2013! No idea what came along to interrupt my train of thought for a year and a half. :-)

•••••••••••••

When I first saw James Neiger's incredible prize-winning photo Great Horned Owl and American Crow...

I couldn't help but wonder if a similar sight gave NASA's engineers this idea! :-)

NASA's Space shuttle Endeavour riding piggyback atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, 

lands at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility in Southern California on 20 Sep 2012 

during the final shuttle ferry flight.

Photo credit: CollectSPACE.com/Robert Z. Pearlman

SkyWatch Friday: Winged Flight & Bing Wright

Okay, I admit it, I took some poetic license with my post title. But "Red-tailed hawk sitting on a lamp post in the mist" simply doesn't sound as melodious with "Bing Wright." :-)

A Pensive Pose

It was a misty, drizzly day and our friend repeatedly stretched out his wings like this;

whether to shed water or take advantage of a free shower, we're unsure!

"They went that-a-way!"

I took the above photos with my telephoto lens. Here's one with my regular lens for perspective…

Our skies have been overcast and dreary most of the week, so no colorful sunrise or sunset photos for this SkyWatch post, I'm afraid. However, I've been saving this treat for just such an occasion. In case you're wondering who the Bing Wright in my post title is, he's a photographer who often takes photos of sunsets reflected in shattered mirrors, making them look like stained glass...

See more of Bing's "broken mirror/evening sky" (and other) photos here: 

Photographs of Sunsets as Reflected on Shattered Mirrors by Bing Wright

And as always, enjoy more sky photos of all sorts here:

2014 Sheridan Annual Garden Tour, Part 1

As I've mentioned in a couple of previous posts, we went on Sheridan's 2nd Annual Garden Tour on July 19th. (We went to last year's also, in which our friends Al and Jackie's garden participated, but I didn't take my camera. This time I didn't make that blunder!

This year there were eight gardens (we made it to seven) competing in two categories: "Amazing" Estate Garden and "Amazing" Backyard Garden. It was a very bright sunny day, which made it difficult to get good photos, so I mostly concentrated on capturing the whimsy and beauty in the details, rather than taking sweeping panoramics of the properties ~ some of which were too huge to capture in a single photo anyway! I'll share them in four posts as time allows… so let's get started!

This garden, in the Backyard Garden category, belongs to a woman named Lauri, and is a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. It was an instant favorite and so gets this post all to itself because I took a lot of photos of it! :-) Lauri's backyard is fairly narrow but deep, and filled with treasures both hidden and not. She has a veggie garden and most of her plantings are from seed. She did all ofd the design and installation herself, and we loved its feeling of barely-controlled wildness and its mix of shady woods and open spaces. But mostly I loved all the whimsical touches! 

You know I had to get a closeup of that adorable birdie-hippie VW bus...

And this fun tent birdhouse! Look at all the great details. The birds in Lauri's back yard must be happy campers indeed!...

Lauri and I share (almost) the same first name and a love of birdhouses…

Anyone know what flower this is? (Thanks to Jackie for informing me it's a fancy clematis!) I thought they were really pretty…

She had a couple of gorgeous clematis plants (one a bit smaller than this gorgeous specimen was taking over part of the garage building)...

I loved the backdrop the neighbor's trees provided at the rear of Lauri's property, especially for this fun sunflower, which made me think of a sailor on watch in a ship's crow's nest...

2014 Sheridan Annual Garden Tour, Part 2

2014 Sheridan Annual Garden Tour, Part 3

2014 Sheridan Annual Garden Tour, Part 4

Thought while I'm at it, I'd share a few recent photos from our modest little front flower bed. It may be small, but it's been blooming like a big boy! 

The zinnias came from my friend Rose, who sent us a seed packet of them and one of snapdragons when we first moved to town. I didn't plant them at rental #1 because it was fall/winter, nor at rental #2 because we were building this place by then and I wanted to save them for our house. But in all the hubbub, I forgot about them till this summer! We planted them without high hopes, and though the snapdragon seeds didn't do anything, the zinnias have been amazing! I kept having to thin and transplant them, it seemed that every seed germinated. They just started to bloom this month…

I love the little yellow "stars" around the center of the pink one, which had vanished just a few days later when I took this closeup...

Good thing I got these photos when I did, because we had horrid winds over the weekend that frequently gusted to 50mph over the course of 24 hours, and by the time they moved on to ruin someone else's day they'd bent, broken, desiccated and denuded most of our zinnias. :-( Fortunately, quite a few were still safely tucked away in their buds, biding their time, and should be showing up any day now!

After my dental and haircut appointments tomorrow morning, we're off on our maiden voyage camping trip with the dogs and Girasole, spending the night at a state park campground about 20 miles away. It's been a really crazy week, but we purchased some more camper/camping gear and made some modifications to Girasole (like adding bed rails and slats; the "sleeping on a table top" concept just wasn't going to work for us) that should make things easier/safer/nicer, yet we still don't feel prepared. But the weather's supposed to be ideal, it's just one night, and not that far from home - what could possibly go wrong? ;-) We're not sure if we'll get another chance to "rehearse" before we all head up to Havre in mid-September for a much longer outing, but hope that tomorrow's experience will provide a good shakedown. Just not one that's too shaky!

Anyway, if I owe you an email (and it's probable that I do!), please bear with me - we didn't know BW's retirement would be so hectic! Our own fault for buying the camper. We thought you just buy one, toss in some food, clothes, and toiletries, hook it to your vehicle and you're off on adventures! We were SO naïve. Here's Girasole in her new home, undergoing a storage modification… can you spy BW? :-)

SkyWatch Friday: Ringside at Sunrise (+ bonus goodies)

As if the splendid "Super Moon" rising in the evening skies wasn't enough to take our breath away this week, our morning skies on Wednesday and Thursday seemed to be putting all they had into a Sunrise heavyweight title match to which we had ringside seats! Choose the winner (if you can!)

Ladies aaaaannnnd Gentlemen! In the east corner, in the orange, gold, pink, and purple trunks, Wednesday's "Tornado Cloud" sunrise...

And also in the east corner (awkward!), wearing… well, pretty much the same colored trunks but with more fluffy bits, Thursday's "Golden Glow" sunrise…

Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmble!!!

And now for anyone who's interested, here are some bonus, non-sky pics. I have not forgotten my promise to share photos from Sheridan's (relatively) recent annual Garden Tour, but since it's looking like a multi-post dealio, I wanted to first clear out some of these poor little stragglers that I never seem to get around to posting!

During our hot summer weather, our front porch is the place to be in the early mornings and evenings. When we were clearing out and organizing our garage recently (to make more room, for reasons that will become apparent at the end of this post), we found our pretty iridescent glass-winged dragonfly candle holder - a gift several years ago from my friend Jo. In the melee of moving 3x in a year, it had wound up stashed away rather than hung up and enjoyed! So we immediately remedied that - finding the perfect spot for it was easy!

Yup, easy as 1-2-3! :-)

Now his little doorbell brother has someone to talk to! :-)

Speaking of insects, here's a threefer, though it's a sad ending for two of them. Sitting on our back patio (the place to be in the hot afternoons), we watched this robin chase several grasshoppers along our back fence. We didn't think she'd manage to catch one, but she did! She then - with her mouth full, the feathered glutton - continued to chase the surviving grasshoppers around. This time we knew she'd never be able to catch a second one, not with her mouth still full of her first hapless victim - but again, she did! Beats us how, despite watching it happen. Aware she had an audience, she perched on our fence, turning her head to the left, the right, and straight at us repeatedly so we'd have ample opportunity to admire her grasshopper-catching skills. She did this for so long that I eventually fetched my camera, attached the telephoto lens, and took several photos of her before she flew off to those trees in the background - where she no doubt has a nest full of late-summer babies to admire her grasshopper-catching skills far more than we, her vegan audience, ever could. :-) 

Only when I downloaded this photo did I see that I'd inadvertently also captured a winged critter in flight…

And while we're on the subject of critters, here's a recent photo of a content and contemplative Tessa, watching the passers by from the shade of the front porch...

And now to our final critter, BW - who retired two weeks ago today and has finally learned to love it (haha!), posing beside our new T@B teardrop trailer!

It's a 2014 S floorplan w/wet bath "M@xx" model. Despite being teeny-tiny (it'll fit in our garage, yay) and so lightweight you can tow it with some cars (like the Subaru Outback) and even maneuver it around by those two handles you see, it manages to squeeze in a U-shaped sofa/dinette which converts to a queen bed, a wee kitchen (2-burner stove, bitsy sink, little fridge), a "wet bath" shower with commode and hamster-sized sink, a furnace, air conditioner, stereo system, and television with DVD player! All the comforts of home. Well, not really, but it's not really camping if you haul all the comforts of home with you! 

We got the T@B - which, in a nod to my Tuscan heritage as well as its cheery trim color we have named "Girasole," Italian for sunflower (gira sole meaning "turns to the sun") - so we can take our dogs with us when we go places. They are all canine senior citizens now, but still love going on adventures! 

Though we signed the purchase agreement on Girasole a couple weeks ago, we won't be picking it up at the Montana dealership till Monday because we took our 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee ("Otis") in for repairs and upgrades. He's got over 206K miles on him, bless his little 8-cylinder heart, and we needed him to be as safe and dependable a tow vehicle as possible before asking this additional duty of him. We spent the time he was in the shop, well, shopping! Getting such a late start on camping season does have one advantage - we're getting a lot of stuff on sale (including the T@B itself!), which is especially helpful since we have almost no camping gear (sleeping bags and a camp stove are about it), and have never had a travel trailer/RV of any type before. So we needed accessories - boring stuff like hoses and tire chocks, and fun stuff like a (backordered till October, sadly) matching yellow & grey T@B tent that attaches to the trailer's side (where the dogs will sleep and where we can stash some gear), some portable dog fencing, fun party lights (a necessity, you ask me!), and a pair of these reclining camping chairs. Which I blinged up for this photo with the sunflower from the bouquet from BW's retirement breakfast, plopped ever so appropriately in an empty Girasole wine bottle! :-)

SkyWatch Friday: Dawn's Early Light to Twilight's Last Gleaming

Happy SkyWatch Friday to my fellow SkyWatchers around the world, and Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans! 

Lots going on in today's post, so I'd best get busy…

It was not a good week here for sky photography due to a thick haze from wildfires in Alberta, Canada. But it started to clear by yesterday, when I took all of these photos ~ beginning at sunrise when I walked barefoot to the end of our street to finally photograph the Western Meadowlark (Wyoming's State Bird) who sits atop the corner streetlight every day, singing his sweet little heart out. I thought he looked especially lovely bathed in the "dawn's early light"...

I've always loved the Meadowlark's melodious songs and calls, and so was happy to catch a snippet while he alternately preened and sang (his version of singing in the shower?) :-)...

(Don't know what the annoying clicking from my camera is all about!)

I was also able to capture this still photo of him in full-throated song...

...but noticed that he was no longer bathed in the pretty golden sunlight. So I turned around to see what had befallen the rising sun and discovered it had been obscured by an ill-timed cloud. Still, it was a pretty sight, so I snapped it...

… and only after viewing it on my camera did I notice the silhouettes of the deer on the right! Since I had my telephoto lens attached, I was able to get a few nice closeups of this doe and her suitors (the one on the right, whom I also hadn't seen till I downloaded this photo, is clearly not a morning person!)...

After mowing and weeding, BW and I took a break in the shade of our front porch and enjoyed the view of this interesting cloud, who appeared to be responding to complaints about the increasing cloudiness with, "Talk to the hand." :-)

At the end of our busy day - and our first hot one (92ºF) in nearly a week - we enjoyed an evening bike ride, and then a final respite on our front porch to watch the sun go down…

BW sporting his "go to hell hat" beneath our festive star-spangled string of lights!

And what a sunset it was!! All of the following sunset photos are "SOOC" - straight out of my camera, which had captured the breathtaking magnificence of the "twilight's last gleaming" so perfectly that the very thought of trying to improve them through editing seemed both futile and arrogant…

Even after the sun had set, the show - and photo ops - had still not ended. By the very last of the day's light, a herd of at least nine mule deer paraded past in front of the school across the street, providing a delightfully perfect close to a day that had begun with a beautiful sky and beautiful deer... and because what is Independence Day without a parade? :-)

Click on the photos to enlarge, and please pardon their poor quality. I was surprised my camera was able to capture the deer as well as it did, given my distance from them and the lack of light! Though some of them had lagged behind to peek in the classroom windows and front doors (not kidding) and so didn't make it into the frame, the ones who did are more visible in this photo...

Again, I wish a very safe and 

to those who are celebrating it…

And please also enjoy a mindful holiday celebration...