Friday My Town Shootout

This weeks theme is Sports, brought to us by Barry, who is, at this moment, having a luxuriously relaxing time on a weekend getaway!

The town where we live now has several huge sports fields, with the gigantic lights all around, but we've never seen anyone on those fields. Weird. But then maybe there are all kinds of things happening there at night when we are tucked in at home.

My real hometown, where I was born is San Francisco. So I thought I'd share our very favorite sport of all from there...


Sometimes when we'd walk in the gate, employees would hand out signs for us to hold up during the game. This particular game we played against those evil Dodgers!


Eventually, Hubby had to take all of these pins off his hat because it just got too heavy to wear!


We used to go to a lot of games. I loved that my kids enjoyed it almost as much as we did. What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon as a family!
Here's a couple of our favorite pins:




Sometimes we'd stand in line with the kids to get autographs of the players. You were never quite sure who would be signing until the very last minute. This is one of my prize possessions, a sweatshirt signed by J.T. Snow!!!


Just this year, we've switched from cable to satellite, so we'll finally get to see some games on TV!!!

"He hits it high! He hits it deep! He hits it Outta Here!"

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Friday My Town Shootout

Trees. I love them. What would we do without them? I hope we never have to find out. This is the theme this week for FSO, brought to us by GingerV!

I think I'll take you up to Ramsey Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains, that our town sits up against. The short drive takes us past various mesquite trees that have been trimmed up to create a canopy. This particular variety of mesquite is just beautiful.

This next photo is pretty typical of the area. They're trees, but don't really give me that tree feeling.

But once you get up in the canyon, it is FULL OF TREES! Ash, sycamore, cottonwoods! It's where I go to refill myself.





Follow me on over here, to see some awesome tree photos!

Hummingbirds Don't Like Snow

F

It gets in their way when they fly. I noticed some whizzed right through it, but when the flakes got really big, and the snow came down harder, they would stop and start, stop, and start. I brushed all the snow off the feeder so they wouldn't have to put their beaks through that.

It was beautiful waking up to all of the snow falling, you know how I love that, but I'm worried about all of my new flowers and new leaves on the trees.

Oh, trees! I forgot! Today is Friday! My town shootout....trees! Gotta go!

Uff Da

It's sunny, rainy, snowy, and Cold. Confused. Mixed Up. Crazy.

And the little house fell out of escrow today. And I'm feeling all of those things. Really, since the issue of the peeling paint on the roof tile came up, every day has had an underlying weight of worry, dread, expectancy, and anxiousness. Although, it was supposed to close in less than a week, I may feel a slight tinge of relief right now.

We're still talking to the manufacturers of the tile, and we'll either get those tiles replaced, or a whole new roof, even though the problem is strictly cosmetic. But today was the deadline for the buyer's inspections, and we don't have a letter from the company stating that in our hands yet. He wants us to promise him a whole new roof and to put that in writing.

So, we say, next?!!

Oh!

How I would LOVE to learn to paint this!
My roses are popping, and that means you'll see a LOT of them here for as long as we are still in this house. Not even any lookers here. Pretty disappointing, but we stay hopeful. As we move away from tax day, and closer to summer, we think there will be more people out looking.

Look at God's bouquet in the back yard!

Yes, we are enjoying them! I'd share if you lived closer!

Sometimes you have to just stop, to figure out which way to go.

And if we're going too fast, we miss the beauty of today.

The penstemen are coming up wild, in larger and more frequent quantities every spring.

Have a beautiful day!

Just Squawking Here

If you love someone, you don't try to make them feel bad. You don't threaten them. You don't set them up so you can make them feel bad again. C, you are a mean man. I'd tell you to your face if I could.

This is not someone that was mean to me personally, but personally enough.

Friday My Town Shootout

This weeks theme, chosen by Kerry, is "Things that make me smile." What a great, uplifting theme! To see what everyone is smiling about, go here!

I think the reasoning is obvious here. He doesn't have to do much to make me smile; he's just adorable, and will do almost anything to get my attention. I love those top feathers (we call them eyebrows), when they shoot up, give them such a comical look.
We took a trip to Tucson yesterday; a shopping day to Costco & Trader Joes. I was delighted to see that the desert is starting to green up!

This definitely makes me smile. Winters are very drab here, and not only do things look dormant, they look dead. Months of it is hard, like what I would imagine not having sun for months out of the year would be like.
Then we started seeing this:

Large stretches of wildflowers all along the highway.

I could almost break out in song!
I wish you all a week full of things that make you smile!

Chin Up, Move On

My wisteria is happy this year. It has exploded with blooms that just smell Divine! We're wondering, now, why we planted it so far from the back deck. True, it gets better sun where it is, and we wanted it to grow along the wall. We do still get a whiff of its wonderful fragrance when the breeze comes from that direction, but it is usually blowing the other way. The neighbors are very happy.

We're thinking that the escrow on the little house is going to fall out today. There is some fading of the roof tiles, and even with three written inspections stating that there is no compromise to the tiles themselves, the buyer wants a new roof. I'm not going to pay for a new roof when there is nothing wrong with the old one. I'm frustrated by this, but I can't let it get me down. If it's going to fall out, so be it. Move on. I don't want to waste any more time with it off the market. He has a week to decide if he wants it or not...

When Elephants Retire

Such a very sweet story!

Hooded Oriole

Some interesting facts from Whatbird.com

General
Hooded Oriole: Medium-sized, showy oriole with bright orange-yellow head and nape, and black back, face, throat, and upper breast. Bill is slightly decurved. Black wings have two white bars. Tail is black. Female has olive-gray upperparts and yellow-green underparts. Juvenile is similar to female; male may show black on throat.

Range and Habitat
Hooded Oriole: Breeds from central California, Nevada, central Arizona, southern New Mexico, and southern Texas southward. A few spend winters in southern California and southern Texas. Found in deciduous and riparian woodlands and human habitations, often near ranches or towns.

Breeding and Nesting
Hooded Oriole: Three to five white, pale yellow, or pale blue eggs with brown and purple spots are laid in a nest made of leaves and moss, lined with moss, grass, wool, hair, and feathers, and attached to the underside of a leaf or tree branch. Incubation ranges from 12 to 14 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding
Hooded Oriole: Diet consists mostly of fruits, nectar, and insects. Forages in shrubs and trees; uses its pointed bill to pierce flower bases to obtain nectar from agaves, aloes, hibiscus, lilies, and other tubular flowers.

Readily Eats
Suet, Jelly, Orange Halves, Raisins

Vocalization
Hooded Oriole: Song is a series of whistles, chatters, and warbles. Call is an ascending, whistled "wheeat."

Similar Species
Hooded Oriole: Altamira Oriole is larger and has orange shoulders. Bullock's Oriole has white wing patches and black eye-line. Baltimore Oriole has a black head; female is smaller and has shorter tail.

On one site I read that their nest is like a pouch that hangs from the branches of trees. But what was so fascinating for me was that they will puncture the leaves of the trees to push nesting material through; like sewing their nests to the leaves!

A Good Year for Pinecones

With all the rain this spring, our pine trees are loaded! I wouldn't want to be a little critter under this tree when they start to drop!

I'm beginning to think that this guy is staying the season.

The light in this one is all wrong, but I finally got a shot of the male & female together.

Ahh, spring...

This will be the first mow today in the south 40. Yes, things are greening up nicely. I'll be feeding all of the 25 rose bushes today too. Time to slather on the sunscreen! Yes, after a trip to the dermatologist this week, I've another precancer spot on my face. Way too many sunburns as a kid. Luckily, there's creme that will get rid of these spots, albeit ugly to look at during treatment, over a couple of month time span. To think I used to try to get a sunburn in high school, just to get a little color.

I am one of those very fair skinned people that don't tan easily. It was hard to see all of my friends in high school all brown, so at the time I figured red was better than white. What a knucklehead!

Friday My Town Shootout

This weeks theme, Country Roads, is brought to us by Gordon. I'm excited to see everyone's photos. Country roads speak to me of restful, unhurried meandering. I like that. Since this has been such a busy week. I had to pull photos from my archive for this.
Getting off the main roads, you often see homes with acreage large enough to have old wagons sitting around.

Driving the back roads into the mountain take you past this beautiful waterfall in the desert.

Here's a country road that takes you to a slag pit, dirt that was taken out of the Lavendar Mine. Once a year this area is opened up to the public so that they can go digging for turquoise.

This area, on the other side of the mountain from us, is perfect winery country. I do love the big, open skies here.

This is another thing you might find on our country roads.

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You Guessed It!!!

It IS a tarantula hole! It's pretty early to be seeing the holes open up. Normally, it's the monsoons (July & August) that bring them out. I can only guess that the increased rain that we've had this spring confused her into thinking it was July.

I didn't post a picture of her though, because I haven't seen her. And because last year when I posted a tarantula that was walking across my driveway, it was too freaky for people. I mean, they kind of creep me out too, but since living here, I've had to move several big females that had come into the house, and one from next door. Yeah, brave me, right? I must have been having some kind of out of body experience while doing it. My body was doing the carrying, but my mind was somewhere else, I'm sure. I have seen some really beautifully colored tarantulas though, like the one at my neighbor's house.

As far as the hummers, it is migration time again, when they go through here to their northern summer homes. The photo is pretty dark, but it was dusk and it's the best lighting I could manage.

She's Baaaaack!

Don't be scared. I'm not posting a picture of what lives in here! Any guesses?

Whilst doing a perimeter check on the south 40 fences, I came across this hole that measures almost 2" across. Because it's so large, I know it belongs to a female. As we work our way through spring, the south 40 will probably have many of these holes. The monsoon rains will flush them out, and she'll do a walk about until she can get back in. We usually don't see too much of each other. Thankfully.

Can you see the teeny little white flowers to the right of the hole? My yard is covered with them right now. The smallest flower I've ever seen in my life.

Blessings

Friday My Town Shootout

This week's theme is Bokeh, suggested by T, at Picture This. Check it out! I admit, I had to look the word up. Had no idea what it was. I think I have accidently produced bokeh photos, without really knowing what I was doing.

Okay, not great, but the backround is blurry, right? :)
I like this one; does it count?

Here's one. What do you think?

But, for me, this one is my favorite...

Not only did I learn something new this week, but I am so very excited to see what everyone has posted on this subject here!

Staged

Our realtor came over a couple of days ago to help us "stage" our house. I swear, she is like no other realtor I've ever dealt with. We thought she was going to come over and walk through the rooms to tell us what to do. No. She charged down the hallway, starting in the back of the house, and proceeded to jump right in, moving furniture, taking pictures down, moving things around. She's a dynamo!

About 4 hours later, the house was done. And I have to say, I really like the changes she made! Now every room is easily identifiable. My dining room before, didn't look like a dining room. So we pulled the patio table in there, draped a tablecloth over it, placed dishes & wine glasses, and voila! Dining room. If a piece didn't say "dining" it was out of there. Same with the master bedroom.

I will show you one funny thing she did. My bathrooms evidently needed some punch. She brought over black towels, and since I didn't have any ribbon or raffia, she used ties to set them off, and then draped washcloths over the window valences.

My bathrooms are pretty unforgettable now.

While I've been packing up personal photos and things, I've run across some things that I just love. Small little items that make me smile.

These are just little things that my family have given to each other over the years. I haven't really looked at them in a long time, but I know that when they get unpacked again, sometime in the future, I'll smile all over again.