swallows nest August 23, 2009

Earlier this spring I had a family of swallows above the door to my rock shop. About the time those babies were getting ready to learn to fly and leave the nest another young pair of birds started building a new nest right next to the original one.

The second pair were younger and slenderer than the first. I’m assuming they were last summer’s babies. The young couple worked tirelessly for probably a week, maybe more, patiently building the nest out of grass, mud, feathers and even some horse hair. The young mother finally settled onto the nest to lay eggs and incubate them. The expectant father brought her food faithfully several times a day.

Once the babies hatched both parents kept busy feeding the babies. It was cute when one of the parents flew into sight four wide open mouths appeared at the edge of the nest. Mom and dad poked food into the babies faces.

They are finally gone, flew away this past week but were fun to watch while they were there. Even if they did leave droppings on the door step. It’s a small price to pay for the entertainment. I do love to watch them swooping and catching mosquitoes in the evenings.

Check out the natural creativity the parent birds displayed in building this nest. Note the horse hair hanging down. There is a feather caught in it and even the bird droppings that have coated a couple of the horse hair strands. It looks almost like a dream catcher doesn’t it? Wish my creativity was that spontaneous and natural.

King and Queen’s crowns July 5, 2009

 

 

 

   I’ve added two more stained glass windows to my rock shop Kounting House located in king Hill, Idaho. The windows represent the king and the queen in the nursery rhyme “Sing a song of sixpence” and contain the king’s crown and the queen’s crown. The blackbirds and the pie they were baked in are on the front double doors to the shop. A picture of them is shown in the December 2008 post. Come by and check them out whenever you are that direction.

Grand Daughter’s Trip April 20, 2009

 

White House

 

 

 

Viet Nam Memorial

 

 

Revolutionary War Historic site.

 

I was right, the granddaughter was much too busy to email me photos while she was on her trip. However, she did bring her camera to me over the weekend, three weeks after she returned home, so I could download all her photos to my computer and print up copies of the pictures for her. She had nearly 300 snap shots — some good, some not so good. I am now sorting through them and will print up those that are worth making copies of and give her CDs of all them (good and bad included). Here are a few of the sights she saw.

Discovering The Old Is New February 2, 2008

New is a relative term. Just because something is new does not mean it is better. Nor does it mean it was just created. All it means is it was recently discovered by the beholder. That fact was reinforced recently when Hubby and I drove to Arizona for some summer sunshine in the middle of January. We’ve traveled the same route for ten maybe 15 years and although I always look forward to the tee shirt weather I always dread the stretch of freeway that goes through downtown Las Vegas. My husband is diabetic, lost his eyesight a few years ago and no longer drives so I am the official chauffeur in our family.
Locals call the city center’s intersecting freeways “the spaghetti bowl” and no matter what the time of day traffic is always snarled and congested there. Last year construction and confusing directional signs complicated the trip. I missed a connector, ended up on the wrong freeway headed toward the wrong city, got off the freeway, drove about a mile along The Strip, found an on-ramp, got back on the freeway and discovered it was the exact same freeway headed the same wrong direction. I got off again on the exact same exit, drove back along The Strip to the same on-ramp, then drove another block or so to another on-ramp and took it. That time I was on the right freeway headed toward the right destination. By the time we got out the other end of the city my hands were shaking I was so stressed.
I told friends about how I’d taken “the scenic route through the heart of Las Vegas not once but twice” and was advised of an alternate route through the city that everyone but me seemed to know about — a route along Boulder Highway that avoided downtown and the freeway completely. I tried that route this year and actually enjoyed my trek through Sin City.
When my children were little, my daughter came home from a friend’s birthday party once all excited about what she called “the newest fashion in theaters. … It’s a big building and you park your car in the parking lot and walk inside and sit in seats and they show the movie on the wall in front.” She explained. I realized she’d only been to drive-in theaters.
After this year’s pleasant trek through Las Vegas I discovered that it was the original route through the city before the freeway was built. Now I feel like my daughter when she discovered walk-in cinemas. Somehow everyone knew about my shortcut but me. It was the old route but it was new to me.