I am rushed this mroning.

I am rushed this morning.  Today is dog grooming day and their appointment is for this morning.  Also, I need to complete a card that needs sent out today.  My wife and I make cards.  Actually, my wife makes most of them and I write the rhymes.  If everyone was as rushed as I am this morning the guys would have to use the drive-thru window at the whore house (grin).  OK, I know I shouldn't have said that, but I thought it was funny.  You know, my sense of humor gets me in a lot of trouble.  Of course my wife says I can never get out of trouble.  Instead of being called Dizzy Dick I should be called Trouble.  What do you think TROUBLEnTX?    BTW, she is one of my followers and visa-versa. So, I am apologizing for my short and not so sweet blog post today, but wanted to let you know I am OK.  Now you all go and read some interesting blogs, like Hermit Jim's on toilet paper and have yourself a relaxing and nice day, you hear?

My congratulations to NASA

"Mars rover Curiosity safely lands on Mars" was this mornings headlines. I read all about this large rover a couple of months ago. It is the size of a compact car and has the ability to study all kinds of things. If it performs as designed, we will know more about Mars than ever before and if it lasts as long as the last rovers did we will get enough information to keep scientists busy studying the data for years. The hardest thing it had to do was land unharmed and it accomplished that with a very soft landing. I told you about this rover back on July 13th on my blog Wondering About Curiosity, so I will not go into any more detail here. I am sure the news is full of it now and we should be hearing a lot more about its discoveries very soon. At least I hope so. Congratulations America! I don't have anything more to say today, except that you all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering how to cool off.

I have to admit, the heat got to me yesterday morning when we were walking around at the flea market.  That made me feel poorly for quite awhile after we got home.  So, I got wondering how to cool off.  Well, I drank lots of cool water, turned on the ceiling fan, and stayed indoors to be in the AC.  It sure did take some time to get feeling better and didn't get the dogs' yard cut until almost sunset.  Anyway, I started to remember the times in the past when I was cool;  not cold, you hear, just cool.  Then I remember a trip I took in March a few years back when I had my class-C motor-home.  We had stopped in Gallup, N.M. to visit with my wife's cousin and then headed to Stanton, Arizona for the G.P.A.A. group outing to hunt for gold.  We exited I-40 at Holbrook, AZ and took 77, 377, and 260 to Payson where we picked up 87 to Phoenix.  Along the way we went over a chain of mountains and at the higher elevations there was still some snow.  So I thought that some of these old pictures may help to cool you all off a little.  This first one shows how deep the snow was in some spots.  We saw cabins buried where only the upper half of them could be seen.

The further down the mountain we went, the snow got less and less deep.

It was a beautiful drive and it was the first time we had seen snow for many, many years.

There, did that cool you off any?  Sure do hope so.  Now you all have a cool Sunday and take care of each other, you hear?

Wandering around my place, again.

I haven't walked around my place for awhile, so did so yesterday.  I didn't move very fast because of the high humidity and the heat but stayed in the shade as much as possible.  I like to see what all is growing or dying, blooming or fruiting, or anything that has changed.    There were a lot of wild flowers and the path was overgrown by all of Mother Natures quick growing vines, briers, weeds, etc.  I will have to cut the path and clip back all the limbs.  I also noticed that some more trees and limbs have come down.  Some, I understood like the ones that died during last years drought, but some (the living ones) I did not understand because we have not had a bad storm through here for awhile.  I guess we have had a few gusts of wind but nothing that seemed strong enough to bring trees down.


Like I said above,  there were a lot of wild flowers blooming.  My previous blogs have shown some of the wild flowers, but today's blog is going to show some that are a little different.  The first pictures are of wild flowers but the second set of pictures are of  the fruit left after the insignificant blooms have disappeared.  Nature sure can pull out all the stops to make something beautiful:

And a close up:

A picture of the fruiting plant:

And a close-up of this one, too:

These pretty purple berries must be poisonous, because nothing eats them, not even insects.  I was once told that deer eat them, but I have never seen signs of that on my place or anywhere where deer are abundant.

I hope you enjoyed coming along with me for my walk around.  I bet you did it sitting in a nice cool house or RV, right?  Now don't forget to take time to smell the roses or just take time to really look for beauty that Nature has placed all around you.  Please have a very nice day and I want to thank you all for visiting my blog.

Wondering about nature's two sides.

Nature has many sides; stormy and calm, hot and cold, low and high, wet and dry, ugly and beautiful, etc.  I could spend hours talking about all the opposites it has thrown at us, but will not today. Yesterday (Thursday) Hermit Jim showed us one of the ugly things of nature in his blog.  If you didn't see it, go back and look at it now.  (You can click on the highlighted word "blog" at the end of the last sentence.)  That is some ugly dude he has pictured there.


Well, yesterday as I was carrying the garbage cans down to the road for garbage pick-up day, I saw some tiny specks of color.  Upon closer examination on the way back, I could see that they were pretty little flowers.  So Hermit, if you don't mind, I am going to offset the ugly creature you showed us with some flowers.

Today, Hermit Jim took us on a trip to 9-Hells.  It is a hellish place with all the steaming, muddy, crocodile infested, boiling, colored bodies of water all in one area.  I didn't see anything scary on my walk down to the road and back, just these tiny little purple flowers:

They are so intricate.  Kind of look like your hair when you first get up in the morning, except for the color.  Then again, maybe some of you have hair this color.  Now a days, who knows.  Why just the other day I was lucky and surprised to see a woman with natural colored hair (grin).  Well, I made that last part up. . .  Now, all you wonderful people out there in blog land, have yourself a nice day and try to stay out of 9-hells.

Wondering about rednecks, flowers, and tent worms

Remember my blog about my Redneck Horn?  Well, last weekend when I was walking through the flea market I saw a lot of Rednecks, here is a picture of one of them:

I took a walk around my place the other day and saw that this year everything is growing, blooming, or fruiting.  I suppose a more normal year of rain right after a drought caused everything that survived the drought to try to become more proliferant.  A small patch of blooms:

After my walk around the place, I noticed that a tree right outside my backdoor and the dogs' yard was the only tree on the place infested with tent worms.

Sorry about the quality of the picture but I took it this morning and was looking east toward the rising sun, but you get the idea.  This is no special tree, just a Sweet Gum.  Got too many of those trees around here.  Of course if we didn't have those down in the south and the chestnut tree in the north, we couldn't show the youngens what a porcupine egg looks like, right?  OK, I got to try and finish up my paying job, so you all have a great day today and don't forget, if you enjoyed the full moon last night there will be another one this month, also.  They call that a blue moon.  You know the phrase, "once in a blue moon" don't you?  That is because it doesn't happen very often.

Wondering about what is happening now.

Did you ever wonder what is happening right now; right at this very instant?  Well I have but I wonder about a lot of things and sometimes I just wander off (grin).  I am going to tell you that you will never no at the time what is going on at that time.  Did that make sense?  Sights and sounds take time to get to you and even your nerves take time to transfer a signal to your brain and in my case, my brain runs a little slower now than it used to.  Maybe I can give a couple of examples.  Let's start with sound.  We all know that sound waves travel a lot slower than light so when we see a flash of lightening we count the seconds between the flash and the sound of the thunder that the flash made.  That tells us approximately how far away the lightening strike was.  Since that information doesn't have to be exact I just count off to myself "one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three, one-thousand four, etc, etc.  I divide the number that I get to when I hear the thunder by 5 and that gives me a rough estimate of how far away in miles the lightening strike was and comparing more strikes I can then figure out if the storm is coming closer or going away.


When we look up at the night sky, we see sights that used to be.  Astronomers have seen things that are millions and maybe even a billion light years away.  Talk about ancient history!!  That is the one extreme, the other is the closer stuff.  Since light travels pretty dang fast, the delay in what is happening a few feet from us until we realize what is going on a few feet from us is very short.  Except for some people, they can't seem to see what is going on right before their eyes.  Since it takes time to know what is going on right now, maybe I should hurry up and finish this blog post; I may already be dead. . . .(pause). . .  No, I would have known by now.  You all have a great day even if it is a little behind, you hear?