Cool, Breezy Autumn Day

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to my dear blogger friend, Merle, at

Merle's Third Try for this award. I am supposed to pass it along to 8 other deserving bloggers. Here they are in no particular order.

Blah, Blah, Blah, blog nikkicrumpet

Riau Daily Photo
Don't Feed The Pixies
The Fishing Guy
Nature Trail
Libs Private Paradise
OLD LADY LINCOLN
theVintageNest

The house in the previous post belongs to my friend, Nila. These Watusi cattle belong to her next-door neighbor. The calf is so cute!
The Watusi are originally from Africa. They all have very long horns. I'd sure hate to get on the wrong end of those! LOL
Strangely enough, I'm not exactly sure where I was when I shot this pic, and it was only a couple of days ago! It's on the way between here & my mother's house, but can't remember exactly where. I'm so bad, now I remember where it is. It's out near the 4-H fairgrounds, heading east on 100 North, just after passing Mill Street. The only way I would be able to get a better shot is if I go onto their property.
This is just a shot while I was driving my mother around the other day. Looking at a woods over a soybean field that's almost ready to harvest.

No, this isn't Taffy. This is a juvenile, about 4 months old or so. There are two of them, but I didn't know that until they woke me up at 4:00 in the morning Sunday morning. They knocked the food dish off the step and the noise woke me up. I wasn't about to get the camera at that time of morning. With my luck, I was so tired, I would have had the camera turned on myself! Thursday night was the last time I have seen Taffy, or any other of the adults. The babies started coming around Friday night. I love them at this size, or at any size, for that matter.
A different field, but the colors of the turning leaves turned out better in this shot.
This was also from when I was driving my mother around the other day. It's about a mile north of her house. There is a newer house to the back and right of this old building. It's so far gone, that I'm not sure if it used to be a cabin or some kind of storage building. I think it's neat, though.
The rare occassion that two squirrels will sit together anywhere. They are usually very territorial. In a different shot I took of them, it almost looks like a two-headed squirrel!

I got 2 of my pics published in the local paper, Hartford City News-Times, on Friday. There are viadocks from the old railroad. They are over 100 years old and very delapidated, so they are removing them before they fall down. I took some pictures of the top-side of the viadocks, a couple of the workers and some of the machinery, and turned them all in to the newspaper. They chose the best 2 and put them in the paper. I am now what they call a "stringer". I don't work for the newspaper, but I submit photos.

I guess that's all for now. I'm sorry I have been so bad about posting!

I made a batch of grape jelly a little while ago. It turned out pretty good. I'm as bad as a kid. After I got all the jars filled up, I lick the pan with a spatula just like a kid with cake batter! YUM!

TTYL

Love Ya

Lisa

Just Another Day

I am so bad about keeping up with this! I have been working at the school cafeterias on call when somebody is going to be off. I worked at the middle school all last week and will work there again this Friday. Yesterday and today I worked at Northside Elementary, which houses only 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade. Southside Elementary houses headstart, kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd grade. There used to be 6 elementary schools in Hartford City.
The picture above and the picture below are obviously the same picture.
My friend, Nila, just moved into this house out in the country with her husband, Neil. They used to live just 3 blocks from me. They now have 2 acres of land, but no farm land. Nila said she got woken up at 4 in the morning Saturday by a coyote howling. I went out and took pictures of her house before they had their closing, and she never knew it. I made these 2 pictures along with a colored pencil filtered picture, and gave them to her as a house-warming gift.

I had never seen this church before. I only recently saw signs pointing the way to it. It's simply called the Old Country Church. I have no idea what denomination it is.
This ugly guy was in our sitting room tonight when I went out to close and lock the front door for the night. He was hiding against the baseboard near a glass-top table . Salem found him after I got the camera. I think it was a wolf spider, but I'm not sure. He was brown, hairy and with his legs extended he was probably between 2 & 3 inches long. Salem started biting at it, and somehow it ended up on Salem's shoulder! Salem got him off and the spider ran under the recliner. It eventually came out and I killed it. We have had a real problem with spiders this summer. This is the first time I've had one of these in this house. I used to get them all the time when I lived in Florida. I even had one in the shower with me one night! Talk about getting freaked out! LOL
I still have some hummers. It seems like more have been around lately than all summer.
This is one of my mother's neighbor's cows. They have an electric fence around their meadow, but they always manage to get out once in a while. The last time was on Father's Day. They got out and destroyed about an acre or more of field corn. They have destroyed the front yard, and gotten out on the road. Luckily, it is not a heavy traffic road.
I thought this shot of Taffy was hilarious! She was chewing her food, but it looked like she was snarling. Last night and tonight she has surprised me. She may start heading for the yard, away from the food, and I'll just say, "come here, Taffy", and she turns around and comes back up on the step. She has done that almost every time I have called her. Not even Salem comes when I call!

My friend Glenna currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska. Her son was killed last summer, and she couldn't stand being around the house any more, so she left. He was found in the bean field out near the woods behind her house. Nobody is living in the house, and hasn't been for several months. She and her husband split up way before the incident. She asked me to go out there and see what was left of her belongings, and bring them home with me. Mostly pictures and such. The place was a wreck. I also took pictures of every room, except the kitchen and dining room, and e-mailed them to her. Her estranged husband is the one who destroyed the place. I could say more about the situation, but without proof, what can you do. The boy's death was automatically ruled a suicide, but there are strong speculations going the other way.

Okay, it's 2 O'clock in the morning, so I'm taking my tired carcass to bed! I am still up because I was cooking down some concord grapes for juice to make jelly. I ended up with enough to make eight batches of jelly. I had a bushel of the grapes. My mother came over this morning while I was at work and picked the grapes off the stems so they could be washed and cooked. I have purple stains everywhere! Thank goodness for bleach!

Everybody have a good day. I will visit your posts in the morning!

Love Ya

Lisa

Mom's Class Reunion

This is my mother, Myrna. She had her 50 year high school reunion Saturday night. She has been feeling a little better. The swelling in her feet has finally gone down, except for in the evening, but it doesn't get as bad as it did. She had planned on wearing a pant suit or skirt, but since she has gained a little weight, the elastic was too tight. So I gave her one of my old dresses to wear. See, it does pay to hold on to clothes you know you'll never wear again! LOL
No, this is not the entire class. This is about a fourth of who showed up. I didn't take a group photo because another photographer came out specifically for that purpose. He didn't come in until 8:30, but didn't get the piccture taken til almost 10:00. My mother was exhausted yesterday. She usually goes to bed around 7:00!

A couple of people brought in their senior chords for decoration. A couple of the men actually wore their in.
A school penant and a couple of sport team photos.
The old Hartford City High School yearbook. Hartford City High Shool saw it's last graduating class in the spring of 1969. Blackford High School opened that fall. BHS houses the entire county's high school kids. It's a very small county. Maybe around 15,000 for the whole county, I'm guessing. The yearbook for BHS is Reflections.
No, this guy wasn't part of the class reunion! He was sitting on a utility pole on my way out to my mother's Saturday morning when I went out to take her shopping.
I wish I would have brought the camera when we came back into town. The same hawk was sitting on the same post, this time with his snake lunch clutched in his talons. I always miss the good shots!

Gonna go for now. I have to go get groceries and cook down some grapes to make jelly. My uncle gave me a bushel of concord grapes. It is very time-consuming to pick the grapes of the stems. I spent 3 hours on it yesterday, and only got half way through the basket!

I attempted this post last night, but as soon as I hit publish, I lost my internet connection. Isn't that always the way!

TTYL

Love Ya

Lisa

You Knew It Was Inevitable!

Okay! I know I get carried away, but, what can I say. I LOVE raccoons! I know the first couple of pictures aren't raccoons, but I had to put a little something extra in there! LOL

This little opossum has been coming around almost every night for the past week or so. He's camera shy, so I can only get one picture at a time, then he takes off for the rest of the night. Most people think they are terribly ugly, but being a nature lover, I think he's cute!

These crazy raccoons are constantly acting like little kids! They always try to nudge each other away from the food dish. If that doesn't work, which it never does, they start fighting, but that soon ends and they go back to eating again. I love just sitting inside my door watching them. They are so funny to watch. Taffy is the one with more gold to her color. She just came and visited me a little while ago, or I would have already had this posted and I would now be in bed! That's okay. She's worth it, although Chuck sometimes gets a little agitated with me for it. So, it's off to bed for me. Everybody have a good one. I'll hopefully see you tomorrow.

Love Ya

Lisa

OMG! I Have Internet Again!

Yay! I'm back! It really drove me crazy not being able to get on the internet to do my blog, or just surf the web. almost a month! And believe it or not, as many people that tried to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, including an Air Force computer person, it was my teen-aged son's best friend that fixed it! Fifteen years old! Can you believe it?
The picture above is our courthouse clock tower. I did take a lot of pictures while I was without the web.
This is Grandpa's old corn crib. He only uses it for junk storage now. His fields are farmed by somebody else.
A Downey Woodpecker, male, I believe. They have started coming around a lot more lately.
This Blue Jay really looked depressed sitting in the bird bath. He sat there for quite a while. I got the shot by standing on the side of my bath tub and shooting out the top section of the window, to avoid the screen getting in my way.
This Sharp-shinned Hawk loves to try for a squirrel breakfast. So far, I haven't seen him catch any.

The funny thing is, if he knows I'm watching him, he'll just sit still. He won't chase the squirrels, even if they are on the same tree branch as he is.

This is an Argiope, or a garden spider. I accidentally stuck my hand in her web one day while I was picking tomatoes! Thank goodness, the spider wasn't near where I stuck my hand!
This was the first and only time I have ever seen birds eating out of the cat(or raccoon) dish. There was almost a dozen of them out there all at once, of course, I didn't get a shot of all of them.
This Red-tail Hawk is sick to death of me. I end up chasing him from one utility pole to the next trying to get a good shot of him. I'm sure he recognizes my car by now, and just stays hidden! LOL!
This is the courthouse again. Taken the same day as the antiqued shot above. I have been experimenting (playing) around with the different filters on Photoshop. These 2 are both under Render, then Lighting Effects, Then Blue Omni, then everything else is just adjusting the scales and color variations. I love the way both of them turned out.
This clock from the courthouse is now my computer wall paper.

Mom is feeling better. She was in the hospital for a couple of days a week or 2 ago. They gave her 2 pints of blood, and it has seemed to give her a little more strenth. She had her 4th chemo treatment yesterday. She is starting to lose a little of her hair, but not a lot. Lyle brought her over to my house this morning, even though she knew I would be working at the middle school cafeteria for lunch. So, she sat here and cleaned a bag full of concord grapes that I got from my friend, Nila. She just moved out to the country this past weekend. She has several apple trees, a pear tree, a peach tree, and a couple of grape vines. When Lyle came back to pick Mom up, he brought me a gallon of fresh pressed apple cider and a bushel of more concord grapes from my Uncle Dee's. I have been canning tomatoes, and last night, did my first batch of tomato juice. You talk about trashing a kitchen! I got tomato juice and seeds EVERYWHERE, including all over the little throw rugs that I just washed a couple of days before! Never fails!

Oh, I almost forgot. This Saturday is my mother's 50 year high school reunion. She wants me to come out and take pictures. Her friend, Patty, told her that there was already going to be somebody there to take certain pictures, but that I could come out to do some candid shots.

Gonna go for now and visit your posts.

Everybody take care and have a good evening/morning.

Love Ya

Lisa