Update and Ramblings...

For those of you who have followed my blog, you probably remember the stories about my "wren family".  I am happy to report that I am seeing more wrens at my bird feeders; and what is even more interesting is that the wren house now has a new tenant!

If you look closely you can see a Leopard Frog in the dilapidated  nest.

After the baby wrens left, I watered the plant as usual with the garden hose rather than using the water globes, so therefore the nest had basically collapsed.  One day Dennis noticed this leopard frog had taken up residency in the old nest pictured above.

I continued to find tree frogs everywhere... this one was resting on top of the feeder.

I am known to set my sprinkler with a fine mist for my hummingbirds to cool off at their feeder.  One scorching hot day when Dennis came in from work he saw this hummingbird laying on the patio in the breezeway.

If you get past his dirty hands from work,
you can see that he picked up the tiny bird and held him.

He brought him in the house to show me and ended up holding him for several minutes.  I got my camera out and we went back outside.  I took a few pictures and then put some hummingbird nectar under his tiny long beak.   I'm not sure if this little guy was just hot or if he flew into the glass door and was dazed or what; but after a few minutes he did fly away.  I haven't seen any hummingbirds around lately, hopefully they have all headed to warmer weather in the south.  Only the old and weak stay behind.

We have gotten tired of eating Armadillo Soup! ...just kidding, but thanks to Dennis, we now have eight less of these guys digging around in my flowerbeds and yard.

I am thankful the gophers have not taken up residency in my yard!  I see mounds and mounds of dirt in the different neighbors' yards as I drive through our neighborhood...

I'm thinking word must have gotten out among the gophers
that we don't put up with digging in our yard!  They must be scared - Haa!

Dennis has trapped approximately 19 gophers at the Country Club... they have been a nuisance  on the golf course!  I'm sure he has not gotten them all, but there are certainly less of them now!

Late summer Ashley and I found another bicycle trail to ride

We have been busy and have not ridden lately, but hopefully we will get back on the trails some before winter sets in or for sure next spring!

On Labor Day, I thought as a farmer my vegetable garden was through producing when we ate the last of the tomatoes I had picked. But to my surprise, I continued to get a few smaller tomatoes up until the recent frost in mid October.   I had lots of blooms and actually had lots of green tomatoes still on the vines.

You can see the many tomatoes on the vines after the frost.

I had traveled out of state for a few days at he time of the frost.   When I returned I found the vines had been nipped but the tomatoes still looked okay.  We had some really pretty weather this past week, and while the tomatoes continued to grow some, they had not ripened.

Now, a week or so later and expecting the second frost, I decided to gather the remaining tomatoes, thinking I might have some "Fried Green Tomatoes".  Haven't ever fried them before but guess I'll give it a try.  I certainly enjoyed the juicy red vine ripe tomatoes while they lasted!

It was interesting to find one ripe tomato with all the green ones.

My last update and rambling -- Thank goodness the lines have been painted on the resurfaced highway.  Sure makes it easier and safer for my drive to see my brother and my precious grandson, Tully.  I do make that trip often ;-)

Now, if I could just get those bugs cleaned off my windshield!

My Gardens Survived the Scorching Summer...

Most of my flower gardens somehow survived the 100 degree heat.  Here are a just a few pictures I took towards the end of the summer as the heat was finally starting to let up.

We had an overcast day and the blooms on my Hibiscus actually
stayed lush long enough for me to take a picture before wilting!

This is the third year for my Hibiscus to come back.
Each year it gets bigger and bigger.
The blooms are approximately 9-10 inches in size.

This flowerbed is on the west side of the house and to my surprise,
I managed to keep it alive in the scorching sun.
It is a hodge-podge of plants

Celosia was tolerant and seemed to thrive in the heat!
This is the third or fourth year for it to come back from seed.

The Roses and Lirope were both stressed, but survived.

This area is at the end of my driveway and gets neglected quite often,
but thankfully I have plants that are heat tolerant.

The tall purple plant on the back right was new this year.  A friend gave me a small start and it thrived in the full sun.  It is supposed to come back, so I hope we have a good winter and that I see it again next spring!  The Redbud tree on the left has been through a lot and lost limbs during a winter ice storm and it was very stressed from the heat this summer.  For the most part my gardens are perennial.  I just try to plant things that bloom at different times of the year or plants that add color with their leaves or foliage.  One day I hope to put in a sprinkler system, but for now... I water the old fashioned way-- the garden hose!

As fall sets in I see things getting bitten by the frost, losing blooms and leaves, shriveling into a start of their dormant stage and producing seeds.  Pictures below are after the frost.

It was another beautiful summer even with the heat and for now... I will enjoy the fall and winter and await spring for new blooms.

What are the chances...

I was recently driving to Tulsa to see my brother, DJ, and my sweet grandson, Tully.  Anyone who makes that same drive on Highway 33 knows they have been repaving the road.  I was just thinking the other day how lucky I have been the last few trips and have caught the one-lane area just right and didn't have to stop and wait for on-coming traffic!  Thank goodness the one-lane part finally seems to be over... now, if they will just get the new asphalt marked for passing/no passing zones as well as the edge of the road.  I miss that edge marking during night-time driving!

While in route, I was in a line of traffic with about 10 cars, me being almost last in line.  I was  approaching one of those hills that has the extra passing lane, of which most cars are oblivious to because they are not marked right now... but, yes, I do know they are there!

All of the cars ahead of me continued to stay in the left lane, so just as I got to the second lane about to  pull into it-- one car pulls into the lane before me!  I'm thinking, "okay buddy, GO, if you're going to pull out there, we have about 8 cars to pass!!

To my disbelief, he started passing everyone!!  Thank goodness, because I was right behind him.  We managed to get around the whole string of cars.  He continued on a nice pace and I didn't feel the need to pass him... and for most of you who actually know me, I am not too good at following anyone!

We both turned onto the Turner Turnpike.  He stopped to pay his toll and I continued through the Pike Pass lane and zipped on.  This guy caught me about the time I was exiting onto Creek Turnpike.  He followed me for awhile and we rolled along at about 80 mph... just barely over the speed limit of 75 mph.

As we got closer to the intersecting Highway 75 he passed me; so I continued to follow him on in to Tulsa.  He exited at Memorial Road, which is exactly where I needed to exit... I thought, "how funny!"

But the kicker is -- we both turned right on Memorial and then immediately left into the "Bill Knight Ford" dealership!

We also both pulled around to the parts department and I'm thinking "no way!!!"  Of course, when I got out of my car I had to say something to him.  I asked him, "what are the chances that I would follow you all the way from Hwy 33 to this dealership?!?  He laughed and asked, "Are you driving that blue Cadillac?"  I told him, "yes!"  He then said, "Well, you are driving too fast!"  We both laughed!

I went in and got the part I was there to pickup for Dennis, and on my way back out to my car, I looked at the young man who was then shuffling stuff from his jeep to another car and I noticed he had a Florida tag... I asked him where on 33 did he come from?  He said that he actually had driven in from Wichita, Kansas!  I just shook my head in disbelief... honestly, what are the chances that we would both pull into the exact same place in Tulsa!!!   There are millions of places we could have each been going!

Funny things happen in life and we just have to enjoy the moments!

From the Past to the Present...

I was watching ABC World News and saw a story about this 22-year old, Taylor Jones, from Canada who has started a new web site of photographs.  He takes an old photo and goes back to the original photo site and then takes a new photo holding the old.  He states on his site:  "Take a picture of a picture from the past to the present."

*This is Taylor in one he did himself...
I am guessing that is him with his parents as a little boy.

You can see where the old pictures are placed just right and how they fit into the new picture.  This is the one of the coolest things I have seen!  I looked through all of his pictures that he has done and those that have been submitted by others and posted thus far... they are awesome!    You add a caption to each new photo.


Here is a link to his web site www.dearphotograph.com.  Look through the pics posted, they are great!!  You might have one you could submit.  He has a link within his web site called dp's Press; you can see all the publicity about his web site.  I think his site is only a couple months old.

I can just imagine the new album I could make with some of my favorite old photos!   I might be able to talk my brothers and sisters into contributing... could be a great family album to share.  Yes, it would be some work... well, let's say it would be a lot of work, but I think it would awesome!  Guess I would have to do it in my spare time, and now... I'm wondering where that spare time might be???  Maybe I should just do one of my favorite pictures and frame it and call it good!

Just a thought... but, this would be a great gift idea for someone.  So get to looking through your old photos...

Its Official -- I'm a Farmer...

I'm thinking if you have tomatoes sitting in your kitchen window ripening, that means you are officially a farmer!

This is two days of pickings June 29 and 30th!
A touch more of ripening and they will be just right!

Now some of you may not get excited about tomatoes, but I love a vine ripe tomato.  I planted four  varieties of them and they are to grow to different sizes and produce at different times.  At the time I bought the starter plants, I could only hope that one of them might survive if I got a variety!  I kept the little tags with each plant, but I have to laugh-- once I pick them, I have no idea which is which!!  I threw them all in the same basket and placed them in the window!  Only the bigger tomatoes in the middle of the window sill are ones that I actually know which vine they came from.

My first tomato harvest (see below) was on June 26 and consisted of four juicy tomatoes... I had not checked the vines in awhile and when I saw them, I thought wow -- they were ready to chill and eat that day! ...which I did eat one and it was delicious!

I also picked a couple more squash and had a handful of Blackberries!

While there is obviously not enough blackberries for a cobbler (which might be Dennis' favorite dessert)... I do still have some berries on the vines ripening!  If I'm lucky, I'll get enough for a tart (haa) before they quit producing.  I'm putting them in the freezer for now... so Dennis don't give up just yet.

This is just one cluster of the berries still on the vine,
I have several other clusters ripening as well.

A friend in the neighborhood told me they do not have any tomatoes or blooms... not sure what I did right, but I'm glad I am having success with them.   Maybe it was that early planting that I had to cover at night to avoid the frost - haa.  Here is a picture of one of my vines... all four varieties are loaded!  Ashley I'll have some tomatoes to give you soon.

...this is just one side of the vine that you can see

These are the only things I planted -- tomatoes, squash, and zucchini.  The blackberries I actually planted a couple years ago and they are just now producing.  Oh wait, I did plant one cucumber plant, but no harvest from it yet.

In closing this blog, I will show you what I had for lunch today...

Just a little salt and pepper, these veggies were certainly fresh and YUMMY!

As I view this picture, I notice the little chip on the plate on the left side and how irregular the blue willow pattern is on the plate itself... but I'm loving it's character!  These dishes were a wedding gift 36 years ago!  Maybe one day I'll buy some new dishes... uh-mm, maybe?

Happy gardening to those of you gardening!

Related blog:
I Might Be A Farmer

Evolution Of My Blog and Photos...

Morgan, your comments have inspired me to write this particular blog... I hope that you and others will continue to enjoy reading my ramblings about my family, critters, travels, or just watching my precious grandson grow.   I want to say thanks to all of you who have made comments via email, Facebook, or on my blog itself and for encouraging me.  I am certainly not a professional photographer and I am fairly new at blogging.  I'm really not sure what I am doing, but I am having fun sharing my thoughts and pictures.   For those of you who have followed from the beginning, you know my travels to South Africa was the inspiration and start of my blog in October 2010.  I knew I would not have access to my cell phone while traveling and this gave me a way to communicate and share photos with Ashley and friends throughout our adventure.

My daughter, Ashley, found a company to print a portion of my blog into a hardcover book covering our trip to South Africa and gave it to me as a surprise... I love it!

Dennis and I have 122 pages of great memories of a fabulous trip

After returning home from our travels,  I then ventured into posting a few random things and when Tully arrived, I had no problem of having enough pictures or things to share.

I am now compiling my first photo book of Tully on my laptop.  My MacBook Pro has a program called iPhoto and it has various photo book themes to select from.  I don't really know the maximum number of pages I can put in a book just yet, but I have 78 so far; so I will just keep adding new pages as he grows.  It gives me the option to place pictures with or without captions and has various layouts for 1-6 pictures per page.  The program is simple to operate but does have it's limitations.  The book will be hardcover with pictures on front and back.  It also comes with the loose cover and gives me space to write on the front and back flaps.  Maybe I can get a few months of Tully's life in this first book before printing it... and surely the number of pictures I take will slow down at some point.  They call them grandchildren for a reason and while I might be partial, I obviously think Tully is pretty grand!

I reflect back on the way I used to compile a photo book-- for me, starting in the 70's, first taking the pics on 110 film but eventually advancing to 35mm!  I got to select from all the great speeds of film 100, 200, 400, 800, etc... depending on the action in the picture!

I thought we had a nice camera...
I'm sure you can recall the flash cubes that attached.
And we were even known to use disposable cameras before we had this!

As you can see our 35mm camera was nothing fancy either,
but it did have a built in flash!

I would then send the film off to have it developed... "Owl Photo" was one of my favorite places to send my film to, they seemed to have the best prices; but later I could take them to Wal-Mart, Mays Drug or such places locally.  I used to put my negatives in my safe deposit box (well some of them, when I remembered) in case of a house fire... thank goodness that has never happened to us.

I do also recall when the Polaroid camera came out and within a few seconds it would spit the picture out!

We had this Polaroid at the same time we had the 110 camera

I remember waving the Polaroid picture in the air as it developed being careful not to touch it... as if waving it would really help, but within seconds I had instant gratification of seeing the picture!

We also owned 2 different versions of the movie cameras, I cringe as I think about the Polavision cassettes that we have, with no way to play them...

Polavision Camera

Projector for the Polavision
which no longer works!!

And I must not forget the infamous VHS Cam Corder we owned...

...for now we can still play these videos!

I guess I still have the great memories in my head!  I keep thinking that one day I'll find a place to have them all converted to... well, what would I convert them to?  DVD's... and when will those be obsolete?  There's just something about having an actual photo in my hand to look at.

Regarding my still photos, I would place my pictures in photo books; actually I placed them in photo books for a few years, but that fell by the wayside and now I have shoe boxes and trunks full of photos.  You may remember the books that had the little black corners you placed on the page and then put the photo inside those corners... then I graduated to the photo books that had the clear pages that you lifted the flap and then placed the pics on the page that had those sticky lines... which now over the years have faded most of my pics!  But, I also do have some of the photo books with those clear sleeves that you just slide your photos into... and some of those had a space to write captions.

I managed to complete a scrapbook of our FreeWheel Bicycle trip across the State of Oklahoma ending up in Arkansas; and have started a couple other scrapbooks on vacations to England and New Zealand... but those two are yet to be completed.

So now our simple point and shoot digital camera provides me a new way to keepsake precious photos and I think this has been my best way yet!  Maybe one day I'll spend the money and buy a better quality digital camera.

Ashley and John own a nice digital camera with various lenses,
but she told me the other day "while the quality is nice, Mom,
it's capturing the moments that count!"

I don't know why I was reluctant at first to change from my 35mm to the digital?  Just change itself, I guess.  But I am so glad that I made the transition.  Taking that tiny SD card on vacation is much more simple than lugging numerous rolls of film and fearing the x-ray machines at the airport!!  I had even bought the lead bags to place my film rolls in, but who knows if they really made any difference... and who wants to pay for the "lead" weight now at an airport!


In the digital world, we have all heard the horror stories of people losing all their photos because their computer crashed!!  So, thanks to my daughter, I do backups to an external drive and this gives me hope that I won't lose my photos.  Ashley is much more computer savvy then me.  I guess the key is printing the photos and placing the external drive in a fireproof location... our safe is as fireproof as it gets for me.  I have to laugh, because there is nothing valuable in the safe, only things we don't want to lose!


Who knows what the future will hold as to cameras, but for now-- my digital camera, laptop, blog, and iPhoto will help create and share my memories.  I will have faith that the photo pages in my printed books will not fade.   I hope that one day Tully will enjoy reading about how much he is loved and how precious we think he is.  I hope he will have great memories of spending time with Grammy and PawPaw.

...the best memories will be in our hearts and our minds!

I Might Be A Farmer...

As if I am not busy enough, in April I decided to buy a few vegetable plants -- squash, zucchini, and tomatoes.  The next decision was where to plant them?  I  knew I needed to have a spot that I could easily watch and water them.

For some unknown reason to me, I had lost a few of my plants behind the pool waterfall -- my 2 Dwarf Alberta Spruce's just died along with an Euonymus shrub that I had transplanted there several years ago.  The Euonymus was just old and got a disease; and I think the Spruce's were a lack of water by me during a harsh dry winter... I really don't know.  Even with that bad luck or lack of my green thumb, I decided that would be a good spot for my vegetable garden.  It gets good sun mid day but has late afternoon shade.

I managed to get the few things planted... but weather did not totally cooperate!  It was obviously too early to plant... I don't remember exactly when, but I think it was early April, and we had a nice spell of great temps, but it seemed that soon after I planted them -- every other night temps were dropping into the 30's!  So, I began to cover them each evening with a plastic ice cream bucket until finally the  temps were suitable.

The vegetable plants actually survived and began to grow...

Squash was first to have signs of produce

Then the zucchini

and now the tomatoes

Woo Hoo... can't wait for my taste buds to savor the fresh veggies!!   I actually have harvested two squash and two zucchini and have lots of green tomatoes.  I went out on a limb and got 3 different types of tomatoes, each are to harvest at a different time, so I'll guess we'll wait and see how this farmer does!

Ashley and John were here Memorial Weekend and we grilled the first squash, but I had two zucchini and another squash just waiting for us to eat...

Father's Day was a good day for grilling them...
They were yummy!

Now, I'm ready for my tomatoes; but they are not ripe yet.  Marge tells me it is too hot for them, that the  blooms on her plants are just falling off and won't produce.  I have lots of green tomatoes, so I'm ready for them to grow and ripen!  Come on... bring on those tomatoes, my taste buds are watering!!

Shop 'Till Your Soles Fall Off

I don't blog often, but on a recent shopping trip with friends I certainly added some laughter to our trip!   We were in for two long days of shopping.  The first morning-- I was walking along and felt like I had something stuck on the bottom of my shoe, like gum or tape.  I tried to wipe it off but to no avail!  I finally looked at the bottom of my shoe to find that I had a "small" hole in my sole.

This pic is by end of day and back in the hotel room...

The day started out with my soles perfectly in tact... then the "laying of a rubber trail began!"  When I first looked at it, only a small piece of rubber had fallen off, but as the day went on it grew to a big part of the sole gone!  I would walk and leave little pieces of rubber along the way.  We were all laughing hysterically.  I knew I could find my way home from the trail!

Other than feeling like a piece of gum was stuck on my shoe... our shopping was not deterred.  I bought these shoes to wear to London one year and have worn the tar out of them on long days of walking because they are so comfortable... but I think it's time to retire them and shop for  a new pair of shoes!

To add to the story, we stopped to eat that evening and found a shoe repair store next door...

Shame... it wasn't open!

By the end of the day, both soles were falling off... needless to say 2nd day I wore a different pair of shoes.

Now that's some heavy duty shopping!