God Has Blessed America!!

Thank you, Barack Obama.

Thank you, America.

It's wonderful to be home again!!!

It's wonderful to believe again.

Thank you World for being patient and for waiting for us to come back.

Many Changes

Hello. Did you think I'd dropped off the edge of the earth? No drop-off but lots of changes. GMom now lives in a lovely assisted living facility. She is much happier and has some control over her life again. She can come and go from her apartment to dinner or to an in-house movie or bingo or exercise or whatever. She is about 5 minutes from our NEW house location.

Yes, we moved. No more water view from our livingroom window but it is only 10 minutes away and it is a wilder view than we had before.



Knowing our lease was running out we snagged a much smaller house in another town nearby.



We dropped about 1/2 in square feet which meant we had W-A-A-A-Y too much stuff to fit. So, local charities got a call to come and pick up.

In May I had bought some veggie plants and put them in pots on our deck, so when we moved late June I was able to plant them in a little raised bed.



After a couple days you could see they really liked being in real soil instead of in pots.

I had never tried buying corn "plants" and transplanting into pots and then transplanting again into the garden. I tried it as a joke. Now after mid July, the still very short corn plants are putting out tassles!!



In case you missed them next to Goose's knee...



What a hoot!

We've had a very strange spring and summer. First, very cool and wet, now still very cool but dry and sunny. It still gets into the 50's at night and only hit 78 degrees F. once so far. Feels great to me, but plants don't like it so cool.

Toto2 who is 90% blind and deaf now has learned his way around his new house quite well. We leave the back slider open so he can come and go into HIS large fenced yard and he loves it.

We all like being here in the new location.

Rainbow March 6, 2008

This was incredible! The photo does not do it justice! It was so huge I had to take it in several parts. I spliced them together in photoshop but the rainbow itself in both halves is un-retouched.

A Breath of Spring, and a P.S.

This post is for all of you who are starved for signs of spring. All of the photos were taken in the gardens around our local Post Office. The crocus and iris have been in full bloom for a week and were hinting around at blooming for a couple weeks before that. The Daffodils are just starting.







P.S. Gooserock's brother and his wife are coming tomorrow. My b-i-l used to live in WA but my s-i-l-i-l (aka sister-outlaw) has never been here. They're coming to visit GMom and us and we're looking forward to it as we haven't seen them in some time. I'll let you know how it goes.


P.P.S. These photos were taken with my p-n-s. I still like it better for macros.

Another Face

Here is another of the many faces of the view from our front window. It had been a very gray day. Just at sunset a slit opened in the cloud cover and this gold bar appeared in the east.

Eclipse - A Magical World

Howdy All,
I too, took some pot shots at the moon during the eclipse. The first couple were when the moon was just rising and the eclipse is barely visible on the lower left of the moon. Mostly it was just pretty clouds that caught my eye.



Next is a wider angle shot showing a bit of the eclipse over the tops of Mountains and a bright "moon path" across the water.



Finally, here is my attempt at shooting the eclipse itself. I was having camera trouble because I've never taken the time to learn how to use it but out of 170+ photos this is the best eclipse view I got.



I think it's really interesting the different angle seen by Olivia as compared to mine. The pales part of the moon is upper right on mine; it is straight right on hers. Our latitude is about 48degrees. What is your latitude, Olivia?

A Vacation Day

Howdy All,

I am having my very own vacation day/evening this evening! Gooserock gave me a night all to myself in peace and quiet, sans responsibilities by booking me into a B&B Inn! Can you believe it?

Here's a photo.


This is his Valentine's gift to me. It gets tough taking care of GMom sometimes, plus an aging Toto, plus working with manufacturing in the craft business, keeping the medical and insurance papers in order and the bills paid and all the "etc" that goes with keeping a home going. I guess I was looking like I was running a little thin on energy, hence the vacation evening/night. AND he took the three of us out to a lovely dinner in an Italian restaurant. Yummy.

MY Valentine's day gift to me is this:



Not to worry, they are the one ounce sample size. :-)

Dinner is digesting, the gas fireplace is turned on (can't get used to lighting a fire with a light switch and no ashes to stir), the TV is turned OFF, I'm in my jammies sipping liquer (a vanilla one at the moment).

So, Happy Valentine's Day everyone. I hope you all have as wonderful a Valentine as I do. Thank you Gooserock.