The Maple leaf forever

The title of the post could actually start me off on how much I dread hearing the national anthem...such as it is. It's boring. And it's confusing or at the least not clear. We're standing on guard and watching thee rise ... who, exactly or where.

Why yes, I do think the other choice may've been a better one.

But no matter; although I do think maple leaves are nice, we don't want the blog to turn into a pumpkin, you know, with a point and all.

And I have documented quite clearly why a person shouldn't decide to blog her thoughts at the time of night when trashy magazines should be acting as a sleep aid. Clearly.

And before I forget to mention it: enjoy the cool photo of the leaf. Even I like this one. If I do say so.

Bowling, of course

As you know if you've been following the bouncing ball for any length of time in this blog, this is one of my favourite flowers - well not this one exactly, but favourite type then.

How boring would it be in here if we actually went back and edited ourselves, placing proper sentences where they should be instead of just blathering. Why, even the title of the blog should contain the word blath....oh. Yeh. It does.

So, seriously now - or as serious as it gets anyway - just look at the centre of that flower. Is there a more perfect specimen of holy cow on the planet? I think not.

Tonight's festivities may be blog-worthy - we'll see. Apparently it is an important milestone birthday for one of the folks "up the road". They've hired a live band. I'm interested to know what that means here. Where we came from it would mean no sleep 'til Monday and even though they are a fair jaunt from our place (I'm in the boonies now, don't forget) there's "always a breeze"© here so I'm certain the sound will carry.

Stay tuned for true blather from no sleep or a short post relating how they got blown away and not in a good way, but literally, by Mother Nature.

They're not all pretty, you know

Yes, another hummingbird. This is to show that, as the subject line suggests, they're not all gorgeous - hey, just like people and let's not get into the oh we're all lovely in our own way type of musing, okay? Okay.

In actual fact, I'm fairly certain he is gorgeous but unless they have determined there is a reason to be, ie trying to find a mate to drag back to their cave..erm, nest...then they don't bother cocking their little heads and being all showy. Gosh this almost turned into a post with a point and we certainly don't want that.

I don't have any current photos of pumpkins, after all.

ixnay on the ummingbirds for a bit, yes--I heard that!

So, how does this go again?

"So if you want to...", she said.

"But I have absolutely nothing new in my life, nothing to talk about", I replied. "I LIVE IN THE COUNTRY NOW!!"

"Errrrr, you've noticed the NAME of the blog over the past few years, right?", she admonished.

So here we are then - at least you and me. She, being the owner of this space, is off somewhere doing something or the other ... so she said.

I fear she has plunked me down here, metaphorically speaking, just to prove to you that my brain is empty. Oh, look! A bird! It was a grey and misty/foggy day .... no, seriously. It was. But he's a pretty bird ..... squawwwwwk! A pretty bird!

Um, yeh. I did mention not much is happening on a daily basis now that I live in the COUNTRY?! Nope, not much at all. No traffic. No smog. No noise. No stress from dealing with idiots on the roads, in the shops, walking the pups. It is precisely the way my life was meant to be lived all along, I suspect.

I even know already that after the pups are over the rainbow bridge, there will be cats in my life again and I will finally fulfill my destiny of being known as "oh you know who I mean - that odd woman up the road with the house full of cats" .... as opposed to the phrase "cat house" being used in a sentence referring to moi. That would be just wrong. Or, you know, certainly by then it would just be wrong.

And yes, I DID try to see if I could make the labels for this post longer than the post itself. Thank you for noticing!

Hard to believe, isn't it

What's hard to believe, you may wonder. Apparently I take enough pictures of this sort that when I tried to save this one and began the file name with "fungus" the little alien inside my computer said "files with those names already exist". For the record, I wasn't that geeky when it came to this type of thing until I met .... her.

Oh don't get me wrong. The subjects of my photography have always been geeky, just not fungus and spider geeky... necessarily.

Man, I'm glad I cleared that up.

Sorry about the noise in the above shot. It was actually taken with my phone and transferred here. When you hear me muse how that is even possible, it's clear the manufacturers of electronics and gadgets are making me feel like a geezer as well as a geek.

Pretty darned humid, that's what

And yet for you, gentle readers, I schlepped down the road to take these photos because - well, because they're pretty. And it's Autumn already. Notice I didn't say "Fall". Fall has many negative connotations for me; some of those connotations even include weather and/or change of season as opposed to the kind that includes chiropractic care.


And so, have another. I'm feeling generous today.



These flowers are on the same five-foot-high shrub and if you look realllly carefully, you can see the top one off to the right of this one, thus proving M'Lord that they are indeed one and the same shrubbery.

Hey. Cool name for a blog maybe.

Oh and this flower has a cream-filled surprise!

Really, now. If you didn't get that obscure reference, you don't watch enough animation.

Er, was going to edit or add a comment but on second thought, Alberta will get the purpose of these photos ... you know, with your obsession with patterns and blah-di-blah. ;) Really I should just delete this stuff in small print then, shouldn't I. Yeh.

Why, yes, there does seem to be a cat theme

Okay so Smudgie loves the garden - twice a year tops, so clearly on her own terms - but sometimes a girl just has to hide behind the air-conditioning unit in the corner apparently.

Ironically that's dogwood off to the right in the photo. I have mentioned that I rarely choose plants that are just green, haven't I?


Smudgie's birthday was July 1st and she was nine years old this time around. I think I'd choose to be 28 several times in a row if I had the chance; it was a very good year (cue Frank Sinatra)

Anyyyyyyway, as you can plainly see, this blog is truly living up to its original intent. I have nothing else to go on about or say but this is a seriously decent photo of the cat so there ya go.

LY,S

You can stuff those

... and in my imagination that title line just produced a great spit take in Alberta. And if it didn't, don't dash my vision.

These are really quite unusual to find as late in the season as they were. Oh, but I think I may have mentioned the cloudy and darkish days with rain and humidity. I could check back in the archives but I'm almost sure I mentioned those weathery-type things. Just to confirm (or recap - ha! I kill me!), though: have I mentioned the humidity?

Of course, the fungi were turned over on their backs; no, no - not so they couldn't get away, silly, but to show the OLF the - say it with me - patterns on their bellies.

Oh they do so have bellies. And there was a spit take.

And this is the end of the post.

As perspective is everything in most things (relax, I'm not going to get philosophical at this hour of the night), I had to come back to mention that the top one is/was the size of a softball so Uncle Ben would be very busy indeed.

Odd pair

This makes me wonder which the critter was attracted to: the black and white so he could sit awhile and rest, camouflaged, or to the appearance of other critters on the sandals themselves.


If one were high enough or drunk enough - or British because the Brits can find humour in all things (and how's that for a sweeping generalization) - this could be quite the conundrum to roll around in your mind.

Ommmmm ... k, that's enough of that.

I'm going back to watching mindless pre-recorded blather on the t.v. now as I just can't wrap my mind around watching the Olympic games for such things as BMXing and ping-pong and no, I don't care if it is called table tennis these days.

This morning's paper mentioned that in order to get the rest of the world interested in that latter-mentioned sport the females have been urged to steer away from the baggy clothing, switching to mini-skirts of some sort and tighter shirts. What sort of Olympic sport is that, exactly, she wondered aloud. In some places, that would most definitely not be selling just table-tennis.

/end of pointless rambling - at least for now

Was going to say pointless ... but it's neither here nor there

And so here I sit with absolutely nothing (shut up) on my mind; that could primarily be that it took a bit of effort to shake my cellphone to get this photo from it on to the hard drive of the computer to upload it to ... oh, you get the drift.
The preceding paragraph was meant to be in English but since it turned out the way it did, I can wait a second while you go back and take another shot at making sense of it.

Okay, ready? And .... five, six, seven, eight ....

Thinking back, kids, you can put one and one together and figure out how this useless photo rounds out yesterday's bordering-on-the-insane rantings of the owner of this place.

All said with the appropriate amount of respect and affection. Yes, sir, the measured and appropriate amount.

The funny thing is that if you stare at the sky portion long enough, you can ever so faintly hear "manamanah ....." and swear a little green guy is skipping over the hill.
To those paying attention, yes, that was a mixed reference and if it caused you a sense of unease - well, my job here is done. Life ain't fair you know and the sooner you learn that ... oh, sorry. Forgot where I was for a moment.


Okay. Seriously? Neither of us uses any substance that makes us go wobbly - well, nothing illegal anyhow and this blog is still what you get. Yet you keep coming back. Hmm, yet we keep coming back.

Well isn't life funny sometimes.


As to the labels on the post, well I just wanted to set some kind of record today. I guess the Olympics are getting to me. They're going on now, right?

A pleasantly uneventful day

I mean how busy a day could it be if I was laying back in my comfy chair in the yard and had a chance to pass the time while he moved, allowing me to take three angles of this same critter. Seriously.

And yes, if you rolled your mouse over the photo and saw the reference at the bottom ... I do believe sometimes you're the windshield (or screen), sometimes you're the bug.

It's a lovely evening here in the Big Smoke so I am going to go enjoy it. Outside. And no the computer cables don't reach that far.

See ya' .

Not purple, not yellow

Not a lot of things, really. Not a toaster, either; nor a bar of soap.

As you can see my eye has caught the hues of the flowers along the way in the blog and yes, I am that rebellious to post something white. Of course at my age and stage, this is about as rebellious as it gets.

Do you know when I was younger, though, I'd have positively set you on your ear. Why, there was the time when ... oh, drat. The nuker just beeped at me to come get my very late dinner.

Another time, then.

Oh and yes the rebelliousness also leads to things with grey or purple stems and leaves as opposed to the every-day green things. My gosh, I am wild, aren't I.

One of those

Oh I know what she's thinking. Any post that starts with a subject line like that generally has the Alberta contingent filling in the blanks because sometimes I take what I think are worthwhile shots of things that I can't quite put a name or even a species to.

Well ha and ha. Tis a red-winged blackbird. On a telephone pole. In a parking lot. Miles from marsh or any sort of ... well, damp land, as I can't really say wetland in this part of the city. Oh and I like the telephone pole. I'm just sayin'.

And may I say it most certainly has been damp land of late. Enough with the precipitation already but do leave it at these temperatures. Um, whomever is in charge.

Palm trees, tide coming in

And of course none of the visions one immediately perceives from the subject line of this post are in this post.

Ah, no, friendly readers: that's still the white stuff you're looking at. And I don't mean Bermuda sand. Pretty though, isn't it, all patterned and all.

I'm about to tell Mother Nature what to do with all that prettiness.

Maybe I should go back to hibernating instead. It's not as healthy for my mental health but it is much more pleasant in case anybody is really reading this.

Yep, toying with the camera ~ and a dog this time

Well some days I just have to amuse myself somehow. The photo is not cropped, no. It just is.

Maybe tomorrow you'll get her left eye. Er, tell me you won't look just to see if you do.

Even with the little bit of her that's visible here, you get a fairly accurate depiction of the animal. Labs are pretty laid-back you know. Well, okay, this Lab is pretty laid back.

Bailey's photos often have a bit of a blur in them. Different stock.

Yes, we learned a very valuable lesson with this set of pups as opposed to the first two we adopted. Background checks are definitely an asset and when you're told by the breeder that a pup comes from "working" stock, really do take that seriously and realize that a breeder's definition and your definition of "working" may be a tad different. It doesn't just mean they want to fetch the morning paper. Sometimes it means they want to run four hours a day or they get cranky.

Then there's the ones who pass the tilt test. Ah, yes, I have devised a most scientific test to determine if a pup should be taken home to live with me - not that this will ever come to pass again BUT if a pup just lays in your hands as you tilt her away from you, she's pretty darned docile and turns into a Duchess. Her sister squirmed and tried to right herself. I'll bet she turned into another Bailey.

The tilt test. You heard it here first.

Pointless plate photo

Considering the Province in which I live, where did I see the license plate, you may wonder.

Why was I even AT the mall today - and no you didn't miss the explanation about the car. I assumed your mind just followed the bouncing ball.

Well I had finished my preliminary shopping but then something happened that changed all that. Oh, no, don't try to force it from these lips ... er, fingers. I would never complain. That would be petty ... and indicate one who dwells.
No, no, no. Let's just say I had to be at a mall today to do something important and happened upon the cool license plate.

What do you mean how can a piece of tin be "cool"? You haven't even clicked on the photo yet have you.


Wait a minute.


The Alberta office didn't tell me anyone actually reads these entries. I thought everyone just came here to check out the pictures.

Ah, no matter then. At least I don't have a single point to make about anything and so with a swirl of my cape I leave the blog intact; no point made, no pumpkin.


Oh and yes I do always carry a camera with me. But there's no real point to that either.

And he walks with me and he talks with me ...

.... no, no, no, not the hymn, silly people; the snail the camera failed to capture. Well, okay, so one cannot blame an inanimate object for one's own failings. Well I could .... okay, and have ....

As you gathered, I meant to plunk the snail's shell with all those pretty striations off to the side to make the photo slightly imperfect which is a new hobby - but plain and simple, I goofed. Goofed at making it imperfect yes.

What you get instead: Columbine. These are supposed to be found in woodlands, meadows, that sort of thing and apparently also in my backyard. In abundance.


As to today: well it's misting as opposed to out-and-out raining. I prefer a good solid rain as it matches my personality; my comfort level of feeling all cozy and cocooned on the couch, under a throw whilst reading the morning paper and having that first dose of jet fuel by intravenous. Of course, I also have been known to settle on said couch just to mock the rest of the world who must go out in all sorts of weather.


Enjoy the pretty flowers. You could have gotten a photo of the pups in their new plastic baby pool instead you know. Yep, Mr. Turtle® bit the dust; or rather, Duchess dug at the plug on the side of Mr. Turtle.


I'm not even going to take this opportunity to whine about having to walk two dogs through the muck that is still springtime in the woods and park. Nope, not me. No whining here.

*sigh*

I ....

.... drove to take this pointless picture and by ~insert deity of your choice here~ it's going to be included in the blog today.

Lovely blue sky, artsy-looking wild grass. The last bit of snow fighting against the sunlight to stay.

Darn near poetic. Not intentionally but there ya go.

Two paths diverged ....

Or ~ how to drive a person with two dogs crazy.

This is what I do when I'm not in my right mind, under a throw on the couch, reading. Now my reading can go from important current works on the economy or world occurrences to total trash to ease the mind and put things in perspective, ie: people are weird. I may have mentioned that belief of mine before.

When I venture out into the world which matters - and that would be my world of course - I take a camera and two dogs. Often one of the two would rather stay in her crate, thankyouverymuchbuthaveagreat time .... ah, but no, she's made to tag along so we don't have to make a complete day of finding me at the park. I mean I like 'em both and all but ....

Oh and if you want a debate on the use of crates don't bother me with it. As I look to my right, the pup in question is STILL curled up with her pillow. The pillow's name is Phil. The name Phil came from the shape of the pillow and I'll leave that as a puzzle for you to work on rather than discuss crates which are irreplaceable. The POINT - and sometimes there is one - is that the door remains open; she just likes cozy quiet time with Phil.

So, yes. This photo was taken Thursday jusssst as the toonie-sized flakes were abating. I'm sure you can look up "toonie" if you've a mind to. It's early. I don't link this early. Why, I rarely type this early if avoidable.

In fact, I think I'll quit now.


You're welcome. But do come again.

As opposed to "come again?!" yes.

Turn your back for a minute ....

.... and the whole darned blog moves.

The pointless photo of the day comes to you via a freak snowstorm that made these cones either a lesson in macro-photography or a nifty Christmas card illustration ... or you know, just pointless after all.









I do rather like the water droplets though.




I wonder if the man looking out the picture-window to his backyard is over wondering who the oddly-bundled-up creature was, taking a picture of who knows what, from his angle. I mean I'd certainly wonder if someone was pointing a camera in the general direction of my patio.






On second thought, no. More likely, I'd just accept people are weird. They are, you know.

I think the previous blog proved the point and heaven knows, this one is well on the way to reinforcing the notion.

Erm, not a judgement you understand. I'm just sayin'

Why, yes, it is time to walk the pups. I'll just be going now.


oh and clicking on the second one actually shows you what I'm on about with my new toy camera