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.

Another Sunrise

Woke up this morning to a beautiful sky.

September 11

My parents could remember what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My young life was touched by the war. Not in a serious way but growing up at a time children were silenced when the radio news was on and knowing our parents were upset over something we couldn't understand. They talked about ration stamps and things they couldn't buy. Being scared by the noise when tanks drove down our road seems silly when children in other places were close to or in the fighting. They had a true reason for fear. I remember the day my first stepfather drove us to San Diego with the car lights on and he honked the car horn and we were told the war was over. We didn't really know what a war was.

 

My mother was again divorced and married to a man that had gone through the worst of fighting in North Africa and then in southern Italy. Now they would say he was PTSD. Then he was just angry. My mother didn't know that he had married right after the war and had terrorized his wife by holding a gun to her head. Being married to my mother didn't help. After she left him, he came by where we were living and pulled her into his car and took her out on a narrow road in the woods and beat her up, threw her out of the car, and then tried to run over her. Some people drove down the road and saved her. My Great Uncle Burt had fought in WWI and came away with his own troubles. He talked about the war to us as we got older. We grew up knowing that war didn't help anyone. Uncle Burt left his medals in his suitcase and never went back for them.

 

Looking back it seems that there were a lot of wars in my lifetime. My cousin was over in Vietnam and suffered from agent orange and a smashed up back from a chopper crash. He died recently. I remember him as a lively two year old and now he is dead.

 

I was still managing the storage when the planes hit the towers. I had Hailey ready for school and was getting ready to leave to bring her up here when I saw the burning tower on the TV. I had started Hailey in school up here because we would be moving up here when the storage was sold. E.R. fed her breakfast and took her to school and I went back down to open the storage. That day I needed to turn off the TV but stood there and watched in disbelief as the tower burned. The news people were not sure just what had happened yet. The second tower was hit just before we left the house. I felt stunned. I felt stunned for days afterward and still when I think about 9/11 will always remember that hollow dreadful feeling. I can't listen to the voices or watch the movies of 9/11. It is just too tragic.  I can listen to survivors tell their stories. And be glad for them that they made it through. I am getting old and think that I need to think about peace and something good happening in this world.

Changing Sky

The sky was blue yesterday. In the aftertoon a few whispy white clouds brushed across the clear blue. By late afternoon the sky was changing as clouds from the southwest blew in. Close to sunset the sky looked like this.

We stayed out with coffee and watched the humming birds fight over the feeder and all the while the sky was changing. Looking at the driveway palms we could see the changes. These photos are not edited...just as is from the camera.

 

 When the sun sets a few minutes makes lots of difference.

Sky Show

Evening before last they began as white puffy clouds and then as the sun went down they took on sunset colors.

This morning we were treated to a pretty sunrise.

The sky lightened...

Neighboring palms. 

Bright Orange Cloud

It is sad that people around New Orleans are facing flooding again. People sometimes want to ignore reality and pretend the natural disasters will never happen again. No one can stop weather from happening. So levees are built and dams are built and people claim land that doesn't belong to them because it really belongs to rivers and oceans and wind and rain. When the water goes the building starts all over... The same happens in forests and dry lands that face raging fires...here we are hoping it never happens to us...

 

This evening my son, David, saw this wonderful cloud and told me to look...I got my camera...what else would I do?

 

The moon isn't full yet...Darn!...it still makes a good picture.

I walked accross the yard for a different view of the cloud and the palms.

The cloud is fading soon only the very top would show bright color.

Yucca

My mother had a beautiful yucca in her back yard. It took a few years before it ever bloomed. She painted a picture of it...I've always wanted a yucca growing in my yard and a few years ago on a trip over to Borrego Springs we stopped at a plant nursery and bought one. There are almost fifty kinds of yucca and I have no idea what kind mine is. We planted it and watched it grow. More plants grew and now there is a clump of them crowded into the space. One shot up quite tall and this year it bloomed. I still don't know what kind of yucca it is. I've looked at photos on the net and can tell what it is not...

http://www.dotcombs.net/desert/desert6a.html Photos of wild yucca taken in 03.

 

The sun was setting so the light became golden. The hummingbirds love to sit on the yucca and watch over the feeder. They zoom passed us as we sit with our coffee in the mornings and afternoons.

 

 

Looking at information on yuccas reminded me that the Joshua Tree is also a yucca. I was a child the first time I saw Joshua trees. We traveled up US 395 on our way to Washington state. The route goes through The Mojave Desert. Somewhere I have an old black and white photo of my mother standing next to a Joshua Tree. The great thing about digital is that I can remember a certain photo and can pretty quickly go find it. At first I numbered my digital albums starting with the number 1. That worked great for a few years. Then I had to invent my own system. It got hard to remember where to look with so many albums. Now I put everything into albums named for the year and then into folders named for the month and day plus a description of the photos. So if I want an old photo I can go back and find it.

 

My old print photos are not organized. URF. I was going to scan my negs and old photos and keep them on the computer but so far haven't...that is for another day...