Wordless Wednesday: Faces In The Woods

How many faces can you see in and around this old tree trunk? Sometimes my eyes seem to play tricks on me.

Hope you didn’t miss the black dog with the huge paws.

 

Unmundane Monday: Feathers, Fish and Flowers

This past weekend was a very wet one here in Florida and  we didn’t even venture out of the house, preferring to cook at home and keep ourselves busy. I knew that as soon as the sun shone again, the plants around our pond would be absolutely sparkling. Of course, the goldfish did get a little wet, but didn’t seem to mind as long as they got their breakfast. Naturally, hubby got press-ganged into going out in the rain to feed them.

The Bromeliad which had been flowerless for some time, has suddenly sprouted three splendid purple spikes.

The pots of impatiens are positively glowing and my white butterfly orchid is looking set to pop a few more blooms.

The loving pelican pair look very happy in their winter home as they bask in the Florida sunshine. All in all, everything in the garden is lovely.

Wishing you all a great week.

 

 

Silent Sunday: Forsaken and Forlorn

Decrepit old girl

Neither use nor ornament

Dies alone unmourned

Hard to believe that this rusty old wreck was once someone’s pride and joy. Now here it stands, decaying, forgotten and abandoned. Not a very dignified end, methinks.

Wishing you all a peaceful Sunday.

Feathers On Friday: Mr Yellow Legs

Yesterday, on our way back from grocery shopping, we decided to stop by our local wildlife sanctuary. As usual, we saw many contenders for my blog post today, but the clear winner was the tricoloured heron who nonchalantly sat on the guardrail of the boardwalk. He let me get so close that I could have reached out and touched him and he never batted an eyelid.

I spoke to him softly and commiserated with him that he seemed to have only one leg. He listened patiently and then magically produced his other yellow leg from deep in his undercarriage. ” Tah-da! There you go. No worries.” 🙂

I was so relieved to see he hadn’t lost a leg, but still marvelled at how he could manage to stand on one leg for so long. When I do my ‘Golden Rooster’ pose in T’ai Chi, I can only balance for a few seconds. Maybe he could teach me a thing or two. For one thing, I’d love to learn how to take off from standing and soar up into the air. Just imagine how impressed all my friends would be.

Wishing you all a perfect weekend with lots of fun times.

Wordless Wednesday: Silent Conversation

These two fearsome creatures in the Navarro River Redwoods State Park were created either by a lightning strike or a localised forest fire. They looked to me to be having a very intense discussion.

Happy Hump Day. Hope your week is going well.

Redwood Country

Travelling along the western stretch of Highway 128 after passing through the rolling hills of beautiful Anderson Valley with its many wineries lining the route, we suddenly entered the Navarro River Redwoods State Park, and drove along an eleven-mile-long avenue of these impossibly tall and magnificent trees.

We found a place to park and walked a few yards into the forest.

Looking up through the branches, they seemed to reach way into the sky. Redwood trees are the tallest trees in the world, standing between 280 and 325 feet tall. Thick reddish brown bark covers the tree’s trunk which can span as much as 8 to 20 feet in diameter.

Look how small I am against this giant of a tree trunk. I hardly reach up to its ankles.

I have a few more photos taken at this place, but will post them later this week.

Feathers…and Scales on Friday

Daisy, Danny and Dolores Beakley calmly watch as Alli-Baba glides slowly by.

How did they know that he didn’t fancy duck for lunch today I wonder? I’m sure that if I decided to go for a swim, he wouldn’t be so picky.

Wishing you all a splendid weekend.

Lunch with James Dean.

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” ~ James Dean

As we travelled to San Jose after an overnight stay in Paso Robles, hubby remarked that soon we would be crossing the San Andreas fault line and also would most likely drive through the road junction where James Dean met his untimely death in 1955 at the young age of twenty-four. I kept a look out of the window and was fascinated by the way the hills over to my right looked almost like undulating velvet. My shot through the car window is a bit blurry, but I’m sure you can see what I mean. “What a desolate but beautiful place,” I thought.

I was so intent on looking at the hills and thinking about the fault line, which actually crosses the road roughly midway between where the road accident happened and James Dean’s memorial, that I almost missed the spot where his fans come to leave their strange miscellany of tributes. Almost missed it, but not quite, as I must have pressed the shutter just at the right moment. Yay me!

Apparently people leave all sorts of objects there, from Chesterfield cigarettes, playing cards and beer bottles, to intimate items of women’s clothing hanging on the fence together with an assortment of American flags.

Just after the junction where the crash had happened, we saw a diner with a few motorcycles parked outside. It seemed like a good place to stop for lunch and the official memorial was right there too.

Inside the cafe, the walls were adorned with memorabilia pertaining to the young icon. At a table in the corner where most of the photos were displayed, sat three elderly biker guys chatting animatedly about the times they’d been pulled over by the traffic cops and what their fate had been. From the snatches of conversation that I overheard, they mostly got away scot-free with their misdemeanors. When they left, I got up to take a couple of photos and noticed one of them had left a jacket on the back of the chair where he’d been sitting. I was about to pick it up and take it outside to him, when he reappeared and we had a very friendly chat about where I was from and where we were headed, after which he offered to take my photo before retrieving his jacket and rejoining his friends.

The whole corner was filled with photos of and newspaper cuttings about James Dean, together with photos of the wreckage of his Porsche 550 Spyder, which he nicknamed ‘Little Bastard’.

Ironically, James’s last autograph was on the speeding ticket he’d collected on the same day he died and only two hours before his fatal accident.

Here is the newspaper report of his death. As you can see, the entire front page was devoted to him.

“ If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.” ~ James Dean

Although it seems as though the name ‘James Dean’ has always been known to me, only now, more than sixty years later did I think to find out more about him and how he died. If your curiosity has been sparked, here’s a fascinating article about the circumstances of his accident and what happened to his Porsche ‘Little Bastard’ afterwards. https://allthatsinteresting.com/james-dean-death

Beauty on a grey day.

Red-shouldered hawk

Happy mid-week to you all.

Tulips On Tuesday

The pot of pink tulips in the kitchen is a lovely sight to see. Through the window, can be seen my favourite orchid just above the fish pond. This faithful Vanda blooms every few months and the flowers last for a very long time. What a bargain it was when we bought it about three years ago. I know the tulips won’t last very long, but they’re gorgeous to look at right now.

What are your favourite flowers to have around the house?