Sunday P.M. .....

A yucca plant that was placed there over the summer is doing well. I moved it from the old place and I envisioned one in that spot for a couple of years. It will look great there agains the big rock.

Thanks for stopping by today. The birds are so busy at our place today.

Saturday's Showing........

I haven't had a chance to see this because of the clouds.  Then when it has warmed up a little I can now take a shot. The extreme cold just kept me from even trying when I was seeing others taking moon shots. It is a day moon and I was out on the deck grilling some burgers.  I could stand out of the wind and lean against the house to get the shot. I wore a sweat shirt to keep warm.

While I was out on the deck this guy was watching me. I zoomed in on him and he was busy looking over the territory. I can't tell if he is the same smaller one that I had on my deck earlier in the week. The sparrows and house finches emptied my hanging feeder quickly the past few days. I have been seeing robins since last weekends but the juncos must be moving north already.  It is too cold for them up there but I guess it probably is the light change that makes them migrate.

Evidence of the robins is this one bad picture that I caught this morning. You can just barely imagine the orange on the front of it. I have seen a lot of good shots of them but the camera was not with me at the times. When the gold finches start to turn yellow I will know that spring is on its way.

The very last spot of snow still on the ground is here.  It is shaded by the new deck and staircase. We do have a possibility of snow again soon.  It is March and the weather is crazy windy all month.

We are still healing up from our coughing flu that we started weeks ago. I am better and stronger. The funeral we attended set my wife back.  We stood at a sun-filled cemetery but the wind was blowing up the dell. We are home and not at the bookstore today.  I hope everyone is done well out there.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Final Day of the Week .......

Bright sunshine is out there with the deck reflecting all of the light and shadows.  I see I was too lazy to open the door to get a clearer view.  I guess I wasn't so sure that it would be a good shot.

When we returned from our trip to Israel in early November this cactus was in bloom. It had red buds on it for about two months.  I guess when we left and I let it get dry that it did bloom.  I did see buds on this after the Thanksgiving bloom but didn't expect it to do it again. I have had tis plant for a while but would have to look back on my blogs to see how old that it is.

The jade plant has really flourished sitting there next to the window and hear vent.  It is actually shiny as if it has been in a greenhouse for a while. I do think I over water it so the past months of neglect has caused it to be happy.  I broke a piece off of this by accident and it is doing well enough in the downstairs window to come upstairs now.

I added more water to my birdbath.  When it finally thawed out it was being visited a lot by the birds.  Now the last few days has helped to evaporate it. I was out looking at my trails made by my voles and I see that they came from on garden area not next to the house. It looked like they had been burrowed under and electric circuit box.  I will have to fill in dirt as the voles ate on the grass that was under the snow and also moved dirt away to make the burrow.  My neighbor said that he believed our yards were not frozen over enough that they could work under the large snow banks.  I did notice the voles tried to travel through the stepping stones area and they did stop them.  The backed out of the area and headed further north.

A junco did check out the feeder yesterday.  They have not been very interested in the feeder. I haven't seen feeding from it most of the winter.

Going on a grocery run this morning. I may bring back some McDonald's sandwiches and a couple of shakes too. It is crowded at noon bu I can figure it out.  McDonald's built in a place where it is difficult for cars to drive into their lot.  I thought they would have thought it out but it has a major grocery store the exits opposite.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a good day.

Funeral Day......

It is a spring sky showing out there. We are not so warm but this is good. The trees are not budding and yet my pussy willow tree is budded. It really is the first to do so every year.

Some of my southern blogger friends are seeing tulips popping up but that is too early for us. The front yard is still brown while the back yard is green. I can hear cardinals doing territorial calls and I did hear a song that sounded like a wren.  It may not have been as it seems too early for them.

I didn't destroy my bonsai. I do need to trim it again. It has one shape problem at the top with a branch crossing over another one. That is not suppose to happen.  I can go in now and trim more big leaves back as there are a lot of small ones on it.  It still bothers me that I don't know what the soil structure is and I can't judge what the root structure looks like.  I water it a little every three or four days.

Our neighbor Judy passed away and we attended her funeral yesterday. She has been the neighbor there since 1976 and a closer neighbor in the 90's.  Her husband died in 1994 and she buried him in the cemetery of a extinct coal mining town east of Woodward.  I never really understood why she had him buried there we were at the cemetery yesterday. 

I don't know the exact years of the town or cemetery but it was first established before Woodward was settled. (In 1879, Xenia contained a post office, a blacksmith shop, and a schoolhouse). The train stopped at Xenia first and they got water for their steamers there.  They did find it to be difficult for the steamers to stop there and they had real struggles to make it up the hill from a stand still.  Eventually they added a water station at the top of the hill and the trains could roll up the hill and stop there.  That was why Woodward, Iowa was established.


We have known Judy and Bill for years.  I had all of her kids in school..  The oldest graduated the year that I moved there. Judy was 80 years old.  She had battled a lot of different health problems and survived them but the lunIg cancer was too much.

The funeral was like a distant family reunion though, as Judy talked about all of her family members all of those years. We knew all about her kids and her grand kids.  We helped her through the loss of two of her sisters, the one passingjust a few years ago.  Judy lost her oldest son three or four years ago from cancer.  The one nephew that we had heard about was there.  Genetics is a strange system but we met the nephew who was like a twin brother to Judy's oldest son.  Judy had a grandmother who was full Lakota, Native American Indian. Judy's first son looked native American. Her sister's only son also looked like a Native American.  I really had to meet George, the guy with the Indian profile and a twinkle in his dark brown eyes.

It would have made Judy so happy for us to meet George.  George and his wife live at the base of one of the bluffs near Council Bluffs in Iowa. His wife is on television as PBS follows thire goat herds and the cheese making that she manages. They also grow large gardens along the base of those loess hills.

I have so much more to share about that early century cemetery.  All of the miners are gone, moved to Moran, Iowa in the early days, as the Zenia mine shut down. A lot of them were Italians and some other smaller European countries.  I will just share later.  It was cool, sunny, but windy out at the cemetery.  We both are home resting today.  Thanks for stopping by today. 

Tuesday's Things....

I thought it was a cardinal. It was so far away that I ran out of zoom. I didn't hear the call from it so I won't know.  I have seen robins do this, sitting in a tree for long periods of time.

The snow in the shade is still there. I have to finish my end of my patio so stray bricks are just laying there to hold up the board. I think I will ad two or three more rows, which means I have less grass to mow.  I hurried to get the pavers down before the hard freeze and snow. It looks like spring out there but it is not warm.

The end of the amaryllis.  It is now putting out large leaves. I will wait a few more days before I trim back things.  I guess cutting down the stem will help save energy for the bulb.

I having another slow day today.  I am hoping for a walk outside this afternoon to soak in some sunshine.   Thanks for stopping by today.

Monday Moments......

House finches are busy eating  right now.  I missed them all winter but they are out there now.

This is a twisted back view of the same bird.  It was busy watching for invaders coming at it to eat at the tray.

I still have the female cardinal coming it to eat.  The male must have found a better feeder to visit.  The birds were so busy eating this morning and now everybody is gone.

The female house finch really does not have a spot of red on it. The male and female really don't look like they belong together. I usually have to look closely to see which kind of birth that it is.  The pattern on the chest always gives it away.

The cardinal always has this streamlined design looking like an aircraft. I will be interested to see if another pair of cardinals will show up this year.

The snow continues to melt. Snow that is in the shade really isn't leaving quickly.  My neighbor has very little snow as his backyard is in the sum for a long time.

We are moving slow around here today.  I worked on my project this morning but I still have one more coat to do, on both sides.  I hope every one is doing well. We are almost over the virus that went around but its effects really do hang on.   Thank you for stopping by today.

First of March.....

The earth has been tilting back.  The sun was behind that roof of the neighbor's house and you can see it is not in that location now. The sun was so bright that I could not see the jet lines in the sky when I shot the photo.

It was a surprise to see the cardinals out the window this morning. I guess it is about the time to see them but I haven't had any of them there at the feeder all winter.

It was a bout a half hour later that the male cardinal did show up at the feeder. He was skididish and I didn't get a shot of him out there digging for sunflower seeds.

Then he returned so that I could get this one shot of his red feathers.

My last photo for the day is this landscape with a ghost bird.  I saw one of these in my birdbath yesterday and was surprised.  So today my camera decided to focus on the two neighbors' houses.  I bet you know what kind of bird that it is.

Thanks for stopping by today.