Orange Flowers at Summer's Past

Jackie and I made a trip to Summer's Past and I took a few photos. This time of year the place is still beautiful and a great visit. She had coffee and I had wonderful iced tea. After the visit we stopped at a little Italian place on old 80. I love the pizza there.

Valentine Dotolo

Haven't written for awhile. I've been working on the Find A Grave website...looking for family and making some memorials for family too. We took a trip to Greenwood in San Diego where several of my family members are. Val Dotolo was my Uncle Tiny. He was born on Valentine's Day and named Valentine. Uncle Tiny was my mother's half brother. When he was young he used to tear up his sisters stuff and they got mad at him. He joined the Merchant Marine when he was sixteen along with a school friend from Auburn. They were waiters and kitchen workers. They were on a ship in Dutch Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanize during WW2. On his last voyage he worked as a cook.

He was a lot of fun when we girls were young. There was six of us but usually only four or five were together. My sister and me and my cousins Joanne and Valerie lived in the same house the summer of 1949 with Uncle Tiny too. We were in Auburn Washington. Uncle Tiny used to let us girls tie him up on the lawn...he always got out of the ropes but finally we gave him a scare. It took him longer to get loose and after that he wouldn't let us tie him up anymore. He would walk us scruffy girls to the store and buy us soda pop. We had a pretty good summer there. At the end of summer our Mother brought us back to Lakeside California.

Years later when Uncle Tiny was married with three little boys he came down to our house. They stayed a while and then he got a job and they got their own place. It is funny how things work out. Uncle Tiny was a truck driver and he went to work for my Dad and Stepmom driving a dump truck. After awhile he went to work as a heavy equipment operator on a scraper. That is a big earth mover. When things got slow, Uncle Tiny went to work for another contractor. He was working on I-5 when he was bounced off his scraper and broke his jaw. The last time my mother and I saw him we were in the drug store in El Cajon and he was there telling us about what had happened and that he was going back to work in a week. My mother and Uncle Tiny had been on the outs for awhile and hadn't talked. They made up and talked for a hour or so. Soon after he went back to work he was again bounced off the scrapper and this time the rear wheel ran over him. He was 39 years old. His youngest son was born six months later.

My husband and I met when my husband came down to see his sister after Uncle Tiny was killed. She was Uncle Tiny's wife, Penny. It took over a year for Penny to loose everything and after we had our first child we took Uncle Tiny's youngest son to raise. Later we adopted him. The older boys went up to my Aunt Grace and her husband in Washington state.

Lots of years have gone by since then. It was nice to see his marker and to take the photo but sad too.

Sunset Pano

Took this last evening because of the clouds. Our afternoon sky was clear blue then a few wispy white clouds drifted in. Then towards sunset these clouds showed up. The news said chance of rain. No rain. Today was mostly overcast but still no rain. This pano was made with five photos. I took seven...didn't need them all. I don't have a program to put these together so just do it the hard way in Photoshop.

 

Easter

We had a lovely dinner with the family. I had bought lilies last week. The trick to buying them is to pick ones that are not open yet. By Sunday they were starting to bloom and looking really pretty. So yesterday I got my camera and took a few photos.

Time Change

Time change! URF! I hate the time change. Actually I do like the summer savings time the best but I would like standard time OK if only they would pick one and keep it there. I have read that the time change causes traffic accidents for a few weeks after every change. Getting up an hour early causes tiredness and stress. Not good. Then in the fall getting off work and driving home in the dark when not used to it is not good. Now they are saying that we go through this twice a year for mostly nothing. No gain and lots of pain. Did I say I HATE the time change...

Rainbow

Yesterday morning the sky was blue with white clouds and raining too. The rainbow was over my palms. I took some photos and realized that my polarizing filter was preventing the rainbow to be photographed. Turning the filter let the rainbow show up very well...something I will have to remember for the next rainbow.

Two of a Kind Sort of

The theme challenge on the group that I was booted from was Deuce...two. So these are the pictures I posted plus two I was going to post for the theme challenge. Also I tried to opt out of the miserable ads but they are still here. URF.

 

 

I Was Booted Off

A photo group I joined a couple of months ago has theme challenges. When posting a photo for the theme the name of the theme needs to be posted too. The winner of the theme is determined by likes recieved. One photo that I really liked got the most likes. The theme was song title. The photographer wrote a song title but forgot the words "song title" With a warning she could have changed that in seconds by editing the name on her photo. No one noticed. The group owners could have warned her but they didn't.

They put another photo, which was posted by the other group owner as the winner...which I didn't think was very fair anyway. I made a comment about the situation only saying that another photo had more likes. I really didn't say that much, but the owner wasn't happy that I even mentioned it so he deleted my comment. Dumb me...I thought I had forgot to post it...I've done that before so rewrote the post.

URF I was booted off. I think that he knows that he did the wrong thing about this and was over sensitive when I brought it up. He claimed that he wrote to me twice before booting me off the group, and he did write two long messages that I read after I posted the second time. His second message was written after I was booted...said that they were sending me to the cornfield. He suggested that I needed a time out. My granddaughter laughed at that! I'm not going to rejoin the group.

Hummingbird in the Kitchen

No new photos lately. I missed a great photo op the other day...didn't even think about it. A hummingbird was trapped in my kitchen. She was trying to fly out a window so opened up the next window over and tried to guide her to it but she flew the other way. She was against the window near the back door. I opened the back door but it wasn't possible to get to her over the built in nook. So Dave brought me a broom and I tried to guide her to the door with the broom. She landed down on the broom and I thought good I can just lift her to the door. She flew back up to the window. So tried again. She sat on the broom with her wings spread out touching the broom. This time she let me move the broom to the back door and she flew. I know I should have gone for my camera but I was so worried about the hummingbird that a rescue was more important.

Morning Sky Show

Yesterday morning the changing sky was so beautiful. I grabbed my camera and caught these.

 

I posted these photos in the same order that I took them. There are more but I try not to post similar photos as it is so easy to just snap away with digital cameras. Not like the old days when I counted the exposures on the roll of film and thought about the cost.

 

This morning it was overcast and foggy. That did burn off and we had a lovely sunny day...just no morning sky show.