SkyWatch Friday: September's Skies

I suppose it's obvious from my lack of posts and my outdated springtime blog header and background that my fickle Blogging Muse continues her lengthy sabbatical (no doubt on a lovely tropical beach where she spends her days drinking piña coladas while cruelly snickering about how lazy and useless I am without her). But at least several of September's skies inspired me to haul out the camera and so they, at least, have provided a collection of sky photos to share. (So take that, fickle Blogging Muse - and I hope you get sunburn and sand fleas!) ;-)

August's heat continued into the first part of September, bringing us some more dramatic thunderstorms, like this one on the 6th...

And even when the skies remained summertime-blue, they've contained some interesting clouds, like this tidy row of little puffer-clouds I spied one afternoon that made me think of the "..." at the end of an unfinished thought, like the sky was saying, "to be continued..."!)

And a while later, the row of dots had turned into these italicized exclamation points!...

Though I did take some photos of the beautiful Harvest Moon on the 19th, they didn't turn out as SkyWatch-worthy as I'd hoped. But I did like the look of these moonlit clouds in my Friday the 13th photo!...

And of course, I can almost always count on a splendid sunrise...

That same sunrise last Sunday also illuminated this peculiar cloud that was hovering over the elementary school to our west, looking like a fluffy pink spaceship preparing to land on the roof...

Even when your creative muse is on vacation, 

inspiration always awaits in the beautiful sky photos on display at...

Here's hoping you enjoy a wonderful weekend!

And now for a little personal update, beginning once again with my apologies to my friends and blog followers for my lack of blogging and visiting/commenting (and especially for not continuing my vacation posts as promised!) While I continue to lay most of the blame on my delinquent Muse, there are other factors. An old injury to my hip and back has been causing pain and discomfort since July. Unfortunately, sitting for more than 15-20 minutes is one of the things that really aggravates it, and working on those vacation posts requires many hours of sitting (I tried blogging while standing up, but that just moves the pain to my neck and shoulders! I need a much taller desk!) :-) I'd been unable to get a massage since June so I finally got one on Tuesday. But my regular massage therapist isn't trained in the trigger point therapy that I need, so I'm going to try one who is on Monday.  I also have an appointment with an orthopedic doc on the 21st, in hopes he'll confirm the pain is due to my old injury and not something worse, and that he'll order some beneficial physical therapy like he did so successfully for BW's shoulder. 

A happier factor in my lack of internet time lately has been the absolutely beautiful weather we've been enjoying once August's heat finally left us! Bike rides and long walks with the dogs (I go easy on the bike but walks are wonderfully therapeutic) have replaced blogging and other internet activities. I reckon the vacation posts will make a great project for winter ~ a season I'd like to think is still at least a month or two off, but there is snow in our forecast today! Our gorgeous weather gave way on Wednesday to rain and temps that were 20º cooler, but now today's high will only be in the 40's and the rain is mixing with snow. A half inch of accumulation is possible and we're under a Winter Weather Advisory with temps forecast to drop below freezing tonight. Which means we'll have to cover our herb garden if we're to have any hope of enjoying the fresh organic herbs we've been so spoiled with all summer! I took this photo of it on Tuesday before the rains came...

L-R: Italian and African basil, lavendar, mint, thyme, and rosemary, 

all guarded by a cheerful brigade of marigolds. :-) 

The basil, about half of which is outside the frame of this photo, is especially abundant, and there are also three pepper plants in there that yielded a total of 4 bitty peppers. It's been wonderful to just step out the kitchen door to pluck fresh herbs, or to enjoy the fragrance of the basil and lavender flowers wafting through the kitchen windows (along with the summery sound of the buzzing bees that love feeding on them), and we aren't ready to give that up yet. So wish us luck in our endeavors to help our herb garden stay alive through the snow and the freeze!

Speaking of stayin' alive, I hope you'll enjoy this very cleverly edited video as much as I did! I think it makes a fun way to launch the weekend! :-)

SkyWatch Friday: Skies for Jiroemon Kimura

On Wednesday, the world's oldest man in recorded history, Jiroemon Kimura, died of natural causes in Japan at age 116 years and two months. What does this have to do with SkyWatch? According to the article linked to above, "on his 115th birthday, Kimura told reporters he attributed his longevity to getting out in the sunlight." 

"I am always looking up towards the sky. That is how I am," Kimura said then.

So I dedicate this post and its variety of skies from this week to the long life and SkyWatching spirit of Jiroemon Kimura, and to all of us who make it a habit to look up towards the sky. :-)

But first, some perfect musical accompaniment as you view this week's photos: Kyu Sakamoto's hit song "Sukiyaki," whose first line (and Japanese title),"Ue o muite arukou" means "I look up when I walk"  and which hit #1 on Billboard's pop charts in the United States on June 15, 1963 ~ yup, 50 years ago tomorrow! (Told you it was perfect!) :-)


Given that Japan is known as "Land of the Rising Sun" (its name's Japanese characters translate to "sun origin"), I thought we'd start out with Tuesday's sunrise...

Lupine on a hillside blends with Sunday's cloudless Wyoming sky...

Can you see the wee bee in the upper right? :-)
(Click on the photo to see a larger version)

Some not-so-cloudless skies during this week of turbulent (and sometimes violent) weather...



Sunrise-lit storm clouds clear out after a night of wild weather...

Only to start gathering again each afternoon...

This cloud reminds me a bit of Underdog! LOL

Though beautiful, this is definitely not a cloud you want to see looming over your house, as this was over ours last evening...

This storm hurled ping-pong sized hail and did great damage to nearby parts of town ~ 

we were very lucky to only be grazed by the edge of it!

A striped sunset sky with an eerie red glow on the horizon...

And finally, a "cresting wave" cloud...

Seriously, this cloud looked just like a cresting wave when I first saw it, but by the time I grabbed my camera and shot this picture, its shape had shifted and blurred and a lot of its wave resemblance was lost. Still, I wanted to include it because its original shape reminded me of this famous painting by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (aka, "The Breaking Wave"), and I thought it was especially appropriate to include in a post dedicated to Jiroemon Kimura-san...

Look towards the world's skies at SkyWatch Friday, and live long and prosper!

Our saddened hearts and concerned thoughts are with the people of Colorado Springs, where I know at least two regular SkyWatchers live (as does my sister-in-law and her family). As they continue to grapple with dangerous, devastating wildfires there (for the second year in a row!), we fervently wish for everyone's safety and the end of further loss of life and property!

ABC Wednesday: Nimbostratus

I was stumped for a post for N week and had nearly given up, when I looked up and found the answer written in the skies. :-) As our weather has become increasingly volatile ~ normal for Autumn in Wyoming ~ we've had some incredibly photogenic skies as various fronts move through. I was curious to learn the name of these particular clouds, and as luck would have it they're Nimbostratus! So, I learned something new and my ABC Wednesday dilemma was neatly solved. Nifty. :-)

I took these photos on walks and bike rides Monday and yesterday around our neighborhood...

This one really illustrates our recent weather diversity

Our house is the 2-story green one in the middle.

Heading home on my bike from photographing fall colors,

I nervously made it just before fierce wind, rain and hail hit!

Do you ever notice images in the clouds? Did you know that the word for seeking and finding familiar objects within the shapes of clouds is nephelococcygia? I think this cloud looks like a spaceship coming in for a landing...

I'm a bit of a nephelococcygia nut, apparently ~ check out my hang glider cloud and my unicorn cloud! And naturally, never neglect to navigate....

SkyWatch Friday: Autumn Skies

You can't save a cloud 

like you can save a leaf or a flower or a rock...

clouds are now. 

~Terri Guillemets

Maybe not, but you can take photos of them, and in that way share the now that was then in the new now! (Huh?) :-)

Autumn has brought us some amazing skies, as the clear summer skies are replaced with Autumn storms. Here are a few of my favorite sky photos taken during the past week; I'll share the rest in next week's SkyWatch Friday post. (Click on them to see more detail)...

I took this photo from our back yard. 

This storm didn't bring us any rain, 

but it brought rain to someone somewhere!

(See the bird?)

A closeup of the same storm cloud.

I think it looks like a person's face above their clenched fists,

or the front of an airplane in flight, 

with the landing gear deployed below the nose of the plane

 and the engines below the wings on either side. 

What do you see?

Wednesday's storm that brought our first snow of the season,

moving to the south by that evening

During a beautiful sunset walk last week, 

some Canada Geese flew overhead on their way to a nearby pond 

for a night's well-earned rest.

I took this photo on the same evening walk, 

and just happened to be snapping a photo 

of the beautiful golden sunset over the mountains,

when three birds suddenly launched themselves from the prairie grass

and made my photo a million times better!

It pays to be a SkyWatcher!

SkyWatch Friday: All Moony-Eyed :-)

On Monday evening our telephone, television and computer connection went kaput. During the Olympics and everything! Turned out to be a neighborhood-wide outage that wasn't repaired by our service provider until about 5 the next morning.

But it wasn't all bad, because when two of our service provider's repairmen pulled up across the street and I went outside to talk to them, I saw this sky above our neighbor's rooftop. So I ran back inside to grab my camera and ran back outside to take these first two photos. The repair guys probably wondered why I wasn't competing in a sprinting event in London, because I was flyin'! :-) And good thing, too, because all the colors in this sky faded to dark gray-blue within moments of taking these...

The next evening, BW and I were at our new house inspecting that day's construction progress when we looked out the living room windows and saw this beautiful scene of the nearly-full moon and its wispy cloud companions. So I stepped out onto the patio and, using a sawhorse to hold my camera steady in the low light, snapped the best photo my little point-and-shoot is capable of...

Just a day shy of full

And finally, here are a couple of full moon photos I took on a bike ride Wednesday evening (this time using someone's mailbox as a tripod, which seems to work better than a sawhorse!) :-) This moon, appearing gold due to wildfire smoke, was actually a Blue Moon ~ the first of two full moons this month (the second one will occur on the last day of August)...

My dress is old, but the moon is kind.

At night I wear a beautiful moon colored dress.

~unknown

Looks like an Olympic gold medal! 

For more gold-medal skies, visit...

Have a great weekend, and Happy August SkyWatching!

SkyWatch Friday: Fire & Rain

TGIF! Not only because I'm happy to see a very trying week come to an end, but because it means it's SkyWatch Friday again! And I couldn't wait to share these sky photos with you.

On Tuesday night I had to pick BW up at work so we could get our Jeep from the mechanic. A big storm was moving in fast from the north and as we were on the Interstate heading to the mechanic's shop, a rip opened up in the thick storm clouds to reveal the sunset. We both stared at it, mesmerized, and despite having many reasons to just keep driving, BW took no convincing to pull over so I could get some photos. We pulled into the Sheridan Visitor's Center which sits up on a hill and provides great 360º views, and while I was there another car pulled up and disgorged a couple with their cameras who also started snapping away at this scene like people possessed! We get some phenomenal skies out here, but we'd never seen the likes of this one.

Just off to the right of these scenes there was also an amazing lightning show, but I would have needed an abundance of time and luck to capture a lightning strike too, so I didn't even try. As it was, the skies opened up just as we arrived at the mechanic and we drove home in heavy rain, so I was happy to have gotten these photos. Now, along with James Taylor I can say, oh I've seen fire and I've seen rain! :-)



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(click on for photos for larger views)...

For more sky-gazing around the globe, visit...

Summertime! "Beanwa" Burgers! Random Pics!

Happy Summer Solstice!

The first day of summer is being celebrated at Chez Laloofah with tasty, easy, vegan, low-fat, optionally gluten-free black bean quinoa ("keen-wa") burgers (hence my shortened name "Beanwa Burgers") that we've really been enjoying lately but which I failed to photograph. Oops!

Beanwa Burgers

(makes about 12-15 burgers)

Ingredients:

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed and roughly pulsed (one can at a time) in food processor
2 cups cooked quinoa (I prefer Inca Red)
1/4 cup + 1 TBSP whole wheat flour (or chickpea flour for gluten-free)
1/3 cup chopped soft sun dried tomatoes*

2 rounded TBSP minced garlic
1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 TBSP water (microwave for 20 seconds or let sit for 5 minutes till thickened)
2 tsp liquid smoke
1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 rounded tsp smoked paprika

Directions:

Stir all ingredients together (add a little water if the mixture is too dry) and form into patties.

Heat a dry, non-stick skillet over medium heat (adding the patties to a heated skillet will prevent sticking).

Place patties in the pre-heated skillet, press them slightly with a spatula, and cook for 5-7 minutes on each side over medium heat till nicely browned.

We make our patties about 3 1/2 - 4 inches in diameter and about 1/4" thick and get a dozen or more out of one batch of "beanwa batter." Your mileage may vary. ;-)

Store leftover batter in a tightly covered container in the fridge. Will keep for up to a week.

Notes:

*Since we don't use or eat oil, I use the soft, dry-packaged sundried tomatoes I can get at Safeway, which work like a charm. But the hard, really dessicated ones we get at the health food store work fine too, as long as you rehydrate them by soaking them in hot water for about 15 minutes before chopping them. You may want to add a teaspoon or two of the soak liquid (or just plain water) to your burger mix to add a little moisture so the patties will hold together better. (If the tomatoes packed in oil are all you can find, I recommend rinsing them well first).

Chilling the batter for 30 minutes or so sometimes helps the patties hold together better while frying, but isn't mandatory. We usually have no problems unless we've made our patties too thin or too wide.

We enjoy our burgers on toasted whole grain sandwich bread with the typical trimmings ~ brown and yellow mustard, dill pickle slices or relish, and some sliced tomatoes and/or lettuce. I also love to sauté Vidalia onions and Crimini mushrooms together to throw on our burgers. Yum!

The leftover mix stores well in the fridge, making quick and easy meals during a busy week! (Which has come in especially handy lately!)

~~~~~~~~~~

Since I've got no Beanwa Burger photos for you, and a blog post without pictures just isn't acceptable at Mehitable Days, here are some recent random photos. (I took the first three with my awesome new camera on our Father's Day hike yesterday)...

BW found this butterfly resting on this pretty rock with his wings folded up, and called me over to take a photo. I confess to gently prodding the little guy awake so I could get a photo of him with his wings open. I didn't know what they'd look like, but when he obliged my nudge by spreading his beautiful wings, I knew interrupting his Sunday snooze had been worth it!

There were interesting clouds in the sky all morning (prelude to some wicked afternoon thunderstorms), and so I was gazing up at the sky a lot while we hiked and was therefore able to notice and capture this beautiful cloud, sky and sun tableau...

Remember my lament in my Lupine post that I'd missed photographing a bunch of all-white Lupines because I'd neglected to carry my (old) camera with me that day? Well, yesterday I made sure to bring my (new) camera, and was rewarded with an even bigger and prettier bunch of white Lupines in an even lovelier setting! Thanks, Universe! :-)

Ever been mooned by a hummingbird before? Well, now you can say you have. (No need to thank me). ;-)

(Calliope (L) and Broadtail hummers)

And finally, my adorable (if sometimes goofy) girls...

The three of them had been lined up in a perfect row taking in the view, but just as I snapped this photo Willow flopped down in the grass to roll and bask. (Well, sometimes Summer just feels so good you have to give into its temptation to laissez les bon temps rouler!) :-)

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days...

~James Russell Lowell

Happy Summer!