When A Tree Looks Back

My twin brother was waiting in a parking lot the other day. He took a look around and noticed that this tree was looking back at him. It's the bark of a Eucalyptus tree.

I hope you'll click on the pic to get a look at that eye. You see it, don't you? It sees you too!

Just Waving Hello

 It's been pretty quiet here lately. So we thought we'd just wave hello and say how much we appreciate  you stopping by.

We noticed this charming skeletal chap when we were out on one of our walks. He waved at us like all of our neighbors do. Yes, we waved back. Wouldn't you? Such a nice friendly neighborhood. Now you know why we love it here.

Hope all is well for you, we're waving hello!

Two Days of Sky

I don't think I've ever seen so many different kinds of clouds or atmospheric optics all over the sky as I have these past two days. It's been a whirlwind of beauty in every direction. So I thought I'd share a bit of that here. 

Crepuscular rays just before sunset looking west

Anti-crepuscular rays looking east

A hint of iridescence

 

So many different kinds of clouds in one moment

Sky full of Undulatus in the morning

 

And then the sky did this Tuesday evening!

Two days of sky full of beauty.

A Very Weird Sunday

Sunday is our usual shopping day. We head out to the co-op at 9:00 am to buy our groceries and most importantly (because I am a bread-a-holic) two very fine loaves of locally made bread, a sliced Whole Wheat Bread and a Levain with Walnuts (yum!). 

So, we arrived at the co-op, got the bread into the cart, and then pulled out the shopping list to get the rest of what we needed. Headed over to the dairy section and discovered it was almost empty. There were very few containers of the milk we usually get and the ones that were there were one day away from their "Best Buy" date. That's never happened before. Then we went to get tahini so I could make some yummy homemade hummus. Uh-oh there was no tahini. Not a single jar. That's crazy. So, we did the rest of our shopping there and headed over to the local Safeway to see if they had milk and tahini. NOPE! No organic milk, no tahini at all. How is that possible? So, we went to the other little fine food market in town. Whew, they had two jars of tahini. Yes! I bought one. They had a few quarts of organic milk. Not nearly as many as usual there. It seems like our food supply chain has gotten very disrupted, and we have no idea why. It is quite unsettling because you know... we literally live on food. LOL. Are you noticing anything like this where you live?

In other news on Sunday we got some much-needed rain here. Not a lot, but enough to water the garden a bit and dampen the forests to lower the fire dangers of the season. It's unusual for us to have rain in September, but it was quite welcomed and with gratitude for no accompanying lightning. 

We haven't seen the skunks since that first night we saw them two weeks ago. We're sure  they must still be around, but not coming out at the times we might see them. We did see a very adorable young opossum in our compost bin. It was quite cute, and we were glad it had found some food. We're just hoping that it doesn't cross paths with the skunks in our yard. We've had those kinds of stinky encounters and really would prefer not to have another one. 

Oh I just remembered that I wanted to mention that a link to a blog that we have on our Blogs We Love To Read list disappeared on Sunday. Steve Reed's Shadows & Light no longer shows up in our list. The blog is still up and it is still listed in our settings, but on our blog links it's gone. How is that possible?

See what I mean? It was a very weird Sunday.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: You Can't Beet This

 We were out in the garden  cleaning up some of the grow beds and getting them ready for some new fall plantings. Roger was pulling the beets out, which we hardly ate any of this year. He pulled out one that was the biggest we'd ever seen.

Is that the biggest beet you've ever seen? We were so surprised. It's in the compost bin now, and it's going to make a lot of bugs very happy.

Recent Sky Views

It had been so long since I wanted to run outside with the camera to click a photo of the sky. For most of the summer it was foggy and then for a while it was just clear blue sky and sunshine. But lately, as the season of light changes, there have been views that called me out.

A sunrise on the morning of September 7th. Just happy to see that light and hint of crepuscular rays.

 

 

 And this sunrise on September 10 in a wildfire smoky sky. The sun looked like the moon.

This was an hour before sunset on the 10th, the sky had hints of crepuscular rays and the sun lit a few clouds with color.

 

Sunrise on the morning of September 11th. Still a bit of haze and smoke on the 21st anniversary of that tragic day. 

And then... an hour before sunset on the 11th, the sky filled with crepuscular rays again. Made me think of these lyrics from The Lost Words Blessings, "Look to the sky with care my love, And speak the things you see..."

On The Wall

I wanted to post this photo of the painting that Roger's daughter Indigo painted for him for his birthday. She has so many talents. She is a teacher, a farmer, a rider of horses, a dedicated mom, and a wonderful artist. 

 

 

Roger was going to make a frame for it, but realized that he didn't have the right type of wood for it. So, I found an old poster that we had never hung, but stashed away in a closet. I thought it was time to put Indigo's beautiful birthday painting on the wall, and luckily it fit right in. So, Roger put it over the old poster, and now it hangs out with our other favorite art and photos.

I call this photo "On The Wall" -- get it? LOL! (Please click on the pic so you can see the whole thing.)

They're Back!

 It had been a while since we'd seen our furry neighbors. We even forgot about them. Then they showed up in our yard Saturday evening about a half hour before sunset.

 There are two skunks in this photo. They were digging around and rolling around and playing with each other out there. They are really very cute as long as you stay out of their way. We hadn't heard them or seen them at all, so it surprised us to see a third one come out from under our shed. Wow. They're still shacking up under there. Well they have been very quiet and polite. No stinky stench from them at all. I thought  that the third one might have been an offspring and that these two were mom and dad, but my sister-in-law thought that these two are probably siblings and that the third one that came out was probably their mom. No surprise that they ignored her. 

I did a little online research about skunks and was so surprised to see how long these critters have been here on earth. Encyclopedia Britannica had this information on their website about them.

The oldest fossil identified as a skunk dates to 11–12 million years ago and was discovered in Germany. Genetic data indicate the family originated about 30–40 million years ago, with mammals that displayed skunk-like dentition dating back to the Late Cretaceous Epoch (some 100.5 million to 66 million years ago).

And here they are millions of years later digging up bugs to eat in our backyard. We're always glad to see them as long as they don't spray. They can be very stinky little things. The other downside to them as they are the biggest carriers of rabies these days. We definitely stay out of their way.