Kingdom: Animalia

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Family: Sciuridae ....is that not the perfect name for a little squirrel?...scurri-day...well, close enough

walk out back of the dog kennels, down the wooded incline to the path....

make your way through the umkempt, overgrown woods to the tree where the turkeys roost....

turn left, make your way over and around the downed pine...through the marshy spot and on to the big sugar pines.

Look waaaaay up at the top of the one closest to the path and you'll see a large, loosely knit ball of sticks and brush ....looks about three foot across.

It's a gray squirrel nest....many years old. This one has a domed roof and is used to raise babies....although I've seen simpler stick platforms...probably not to raise babies in

When our rain pours down and the chill winds blow I like to think of the little scurri-days all curled up together in their roofted home lined with soft mosses and hair and lichen.

their nests are called dreys....I have no idea why...I'll have to look that up.

We have a scurry of these Western gray tree squirrels... I love to watch them. I've read they are the largest of the tree squrrels, and I think the prettiest....

Their tails are as long or longer than their bodies and banded white, black and gray. The tails on the largest and most furry are beautiful....the mamas use the hair to line their nests.

These squirrels are being displaced in California...our border state some other type of squirrel.....In Washington state grey squirrels are considered "threatened" and in Oregon, "sensitive".....I guess these are warnings on the continuum that leads to endangered.

We have dozens of them in our yard, scurrying around, busily getting food and burying it....chasing each other through the spring sun and the bright yellow forsythia.

spring rainbow in southern oregon

taken by a friend and neighbor, a neighbor if you are a flying crow

FIRST 2010 PICTURES OF MY SPRING GARDEN

TA DAAA!

My new Allium

I want to try drying them for bouquets

yellow rose buds and pinks


new poppy buds with raindrops still on them

Bekka checking out the rhodie newcomer

hostas and pinecones

Sally

come on....let's go in...it's sprinkling again

I woke up with a headache that waxed and waned all day....along with the rain showers...I kept thinking if they would get in sync I would be able to dash out and check out the garden....but nope...ain't happening.
I'm spending too much money on my garden. This isn't something you're going to see on a garden tour....you're not even going to see it if you drive by because I live deep in the woods....You're not even going to see it if you are the occasional visitor unless you go to the back of the house and peer to your extreme right out of a window....so what on earth am I doing!
Not only that but I'm not a garden designer...so someday someone is going to buy this house and look at the garden area and say OMG and yank the whole thing out. But...for right now, it's mine and I love it like my new BFF.
It's the only exercise I keep at for more than two days. I do wish I had started gardening younger when my back was young and strong....I never know if I'm digging my last shovelful or not.
Right now I'm digging up a small plot to plant giant sunflowers and birdhouse gourds....I haven't even shook the seeds out yet but I'm anxious to post pix of the coming wonders.

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I had my 76th birthday this week. The marching song, 76 trombones leads the big parade has been flowing through my head all week....and that's how I feel...like 76 trombones leading a big parade....I feel as good on this birthday as I did bad on my 40th....

(what a waste of time to feel bad on your 40th....haha)

but as the old saying goes youth is wasted on the young
Speaking of sayings...this from my granddaughter.

"If a cop in Arizona says papers and I say scissors, do I win?"

Just a Flutter By
colored pencil on hot press

blow down
The tree is more than twice as long what is shown....a long, tall pine
destroyed by the pine beetle infest killing our beautiful trees.
the two dead trees behind it were taken out as well
Our big Cband dish is showing...I loved to watch it slowly turn, scanning the infinite starry skies, looking for......

my soaps...haha
(It searched for aliens, too, in its spare time)

wild and windy today....Very often our weather is like coast weather....many clouds caught in the hills surrounding the town....sun and wind....we're really not far from the coast, if we were allowed to drive straight through the wilderness area instead of looping down through California.
I've been digging in my garden......and every spadeful turns over earthworms and snails. This wasn't always so.......When we first came here the soil had no humus and was hard as a rock....nothing would grow but trees...not even rhododendrons which thrive in the wild here in the NW. But, after years of spading in whatever mulch I used, the earthworms and snails moved in.
They say snails are a good sign and means the soil has plenty of calcium...it helps build their shells.
Yes, I like healthy snails to come out every morning and chomp on my plants. I can't put out snail bait because of the dogs.
But lately the dogs haven't been allowed in the garden because the blown down tree smashed so much of the fence.
We had the tree hauled away, along with 14 other dead pines, but the fence isn't dog proof yet.

pencil sketch

Bekka

checking to see if the grass is ready to be mowed

if you like casual, we're ok

if you like spiffy, let me know when it's done...I'm busy drawing cats and googling on the side.

Why am I drawing cats? I'm just scratching an itch. I've given up thinking I'm going to do anything with my drawing...now I just indulge.

why am I googling? Well, just go look yourself up on Spokeo.com and be surprised at the most tell all "find a person" site yet...yikes....and yes, our house does have central heating no matter what you read.

Your wants subside as you grow older. I was surprised the other day when I made a list of new goals....The only thing I could think of was.

1. Don't fall again.

No more 1. Write a book. 2. illustrate a book. 3. Get skinny. 4. Be a brain surgeon.........Nope, no more of that pie in the sky fluff...just, dearlorddon't let me fall down again ever. I'm living the simple life now....

just trying to keep my toes turned up.

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Who knew that pretty-in-the-fall burning red bush was going to take off growing like crazy in its fourth year, and shadow the yellow rose on one side and the blue veronica on the other.

Bekka knew....she told me not to move the veronica there....

"Don't move it! she yapped. "In exactly four years time that bush is going to take off like a running turkey."

Bekka is the real gardener...she can hear plants.....She cried....long low wimpers when they cut down our tree, and she laid for hours by the iris I stepped on.

But you know how it is when someone talks ALL the time....all the time yapping at me. Shut Up! I told her....go count your freckles and leave me the heck alone,

and I went right ahead and moved the veronica.

Now I have to move it again....oh, you should see the smirk on that retired, know-it-all-dusty old pointer....aaaggghhh

decorating the woods

pencil on hot press watercolor paper

Spring is Bustin' Out All Over!

Garden time! and my writing juices are flowing right along with the waking buds. I bit the bullet and went on a wading foray into my little fishpond. I hate to ever do it because of damage I may cause but it has to be done at least once...maybe twice a year. I built up the rock sides that the nightly raccoon knocks down in his fishing ventures. I fished out a bucket of pine needles, oak leaves and algae. I trimmed the dead spikes of reeds and yanked out hands full of pond greenery to open up more spaces for the fish.

Lots of fish wintered over well...orange...black....and orange and black....love em!

I have a little less than a million snails and their eggs, and yards of frog eggs.

Then I went to the teeny pond and started fishing out the oak leaves when I noticed they were covered with snail eggs....oh drat....I destroyed them in the larger pond...all those poor little babies I threw away.....one can only hope the mamas laid eggs on the rocks, too.
I've been weeding and raking in the beds and was sure I was keeping up with things when all of a sudden, two days of sunshine caused an explosion of greenery.

Spring is like my granddaughter...far ahead of me....has more energy than I do..... younger than I am..... waaay cool....and pretty,too

This is an amazing picture

(not taken by me)

A butterfly, early in the morning,

covered with dew.

Browsing through the library today, I bought a book of animal photography for $2 just to have this picture.

Poppy Dreaming

water color for a note card

shadows are from scanner but I'm pretending I was clever enough to paint in shadows from surrounding flowers

I have two computers and they both crashed within days of each other...this cannot be!

My laptop's virus protection, (free Avast) downloaded it's latest definitions, rebooted and my laptop expired on the spot....the tech said the OS was destroyed...$120 to fix.

The PC was too slow...almost five minutes to boot up...tech said the hard drive was dying...(seven years old)...

Soooooo....money being paid out for opinions and tech help...and the decision must be made what to do.

You know where all the answers are, my friends...in cherry vanilla ice cream...bet you didn't know that...or maybe you did...

On another subject....continuing from the last post as a movie critic, I went to see Sherlock Holmes and left in the middle. As far as I could tell it was one long, loud bashing fight with a little dialog sprinkled in between bouts....and an implausible plot. On the other hand, my daughter and granddaughter liked it...... go figure. (It's been tested and proven that whatever movie my daughter likes, I don't go see...haha...the movie gene was lost in the crossing)

can't sleep so will blog about Avatar, a science fiction movie set in 2154, which I saw earlier this evening.
I want all of my movies in 3D from now on, thank you. I'm being cheated for accepting less.
An avatar is a personification of an idea...and the people in Avatar, humanoids called the Na'vi, are the embodiment of our higher selves.....and they clash...go to war... with the worst of us...the military who go into foreign countries in real life and bomb the ecology and humanity to smithereens.
I want to be a Na'vi and ride a pteranadon, which they clumsily rename a Banshee.....a giant flying reptile from the dinosaur age. The setting is on Alpha Centauri's moon, Pandora, where the humans want to mine for unobtanium, a precious mineral.
The actors wore skull caps with little cameras in front taking pictures of their facial expressions, which were then digitally transferred to the digitally created characters.
In Avatar, a human's intelligence could be transferred to one of the Na'vi...so a few main characters bounced back and forth between being a human or being a Na'vi. Sigourney Weaver from Aliens played a main role.
I won't tell any more of the plot in case you are going to see the picture....the plot is secondary in a way...the magnificence of the movie is the special effects. Forget the 3D glasses of the 50's.....the audience actually gasped when it began and some things were right in front of your eyes....I thought I might reach out and grasp the little floating jellyfish.
I'm waiting for the industry to make a second screen to fit over the main movie screen so we don't have to wear glasses....and I'm waiting for all movies and tv to be in 3D.....and I'm waiting for humans to evolve into the Na'vi.

If you can dream it, it can be...(or did I just make that up?)