Filed under: Art, Home, Mailart | Tags: Art, Blogging, Cats, Global Community, Home, Liberate Your Art, Mailart
Clockwise from top left: Svengali, keeping cool in the aloe; Stripey, waking up from an afternoon nap; Google, sunning himself on the futon; dove perching. It’s the dove! Did you guess it?
So we’re getting into that time of year where my posts might be sort of lame…the heat can be a deterrent to getting “out there” shooting much. But there might be a staycation or 2, or a roadtrip now and then, or an imaginary vacation, a midwestern visit, some murals, or some pretty birdies and flowers around so keep dropping by, please…
ANYONE WANT TO SWAP?
Remember a few weeks back when I mentioned the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap and I showed you the postcards I received? I also did some side-swapping but, since that post, I received another postcard from Diane Schuller. Diane lives in Canada and does stunning photography, as evidenced by the below photo.
So if you would like to do a side swap, let me know. I have 2 sets of postcards, this one, and another one. If you specifically want the desert scene, please indicate that. Otherwise, I’ll send you the “surprise” one. You don’t need to send a postcard…if you have a little print, that would be fine, or something you can print off yourself on your printer…anything will do…you can even send me a regular postcard from where you live or somewhere you’ve been…sending and receiving mail is fun. I can do at least 5 swaps, possibly more.
I know…it’s all very boring, especially to a cat.
Back in January, I blogged about McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale. I was mostly interested in the vintage railroad cars there but this park has several other points of interest and recently, I stopped there again on my way home from work.
The beautifully carved and meticulously restored Scottsdale Charro Carousel was purchased by the Scottsdale Railroad and Mechanical Society with significant participation by the Scottsdale Charros, a local service group. “Completed in 1950, it is registered with the National Carousel Association for the preservation of antique carousels. With 30 horses and 2 wheelchair chariots, it is a child’s delight!”
The horses look a little anguished to me. Must be the heat…that’s how I feel.
The Merci Train (the other side of the box car is in French) was a train of 49 French railroad box cars filled with tens of thousands of gifts of gratitude from at least that many individual French citizens. They were showing their appreciation for the more than 700 American box cars of relief goods sent to them by (primarily) individual Americans in 1948. The Merci Train arrived in New York harbor on February 3rd, 1949 and each of the 48 American states at that time received one of the gift laden box cars. The 49th box car was shared by Washington D.C. and the Territory of Hawaii. Parades and ceremonies of welcome were conducted in the state capitols and major cities of almost all the states.
So, this is where Arizona’s box car is. Have you seen any others?
I wish they didn’t have to have these iron gates around half the stuff in this park but I guess that’s the only way to protect it. Kinda makes it hard to take photos.
My little hummer friends are always around. By the way, did you know that hummingbirds have eyelashes? This photo below is not mine and I don’t know where it came from as someone on a hummingbird group sent it to me but there they are!
Amazing, huh?
Well, we all know rock pigeons…and we have plenty of them.
This is a thrasher (above), I think, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Our 2 Harris’ Hawks drop in frequently. We usually hear them before we see them.
And I think this is a brown-headed cowbird (above). They’re lazy and lay their eggs in the abandoned nests of other birds.
I’m finding my new camera unbelievably frustrating, especially figuring out the autofocus. There are way too many options so I experiment but then I never remember what I did on each photo.
Well, there won’t really be many summer blooms here in a few more weeks. It’s heating up and it’s hard to keep most flowers alive during the Arizona summer. My hibiscus is doing very well after an early spring pruning but, soon, it will be a struggle to keep it going. It needs to be watered and sprayed daily and, even then, it usually looks pretty ragged for most of the season and barely hangs on until fall.
So I took a trip to the nursery the other day and bought a few heat-tolerant plants, including basil, vinca, plumbago, and penstemon (below), which hummingbirds are supposed to love. We’ll see…
If these plants survive, I’m sure you’ll be seeing photos of them throughout the summer when it’s too hot to go anywhere other than our yard.
These are in my neighbors’ yard, Mexican Bird of Paradise, I love them, they seem to bloom almost constantly year-round. I always forget to buy one, though. 108 ° today, and so it begins…
Take a peek through the trunk…with me…
WTH?????
Eeeeek, that is a freaky-looking heron! It’s a mutant!!!!!
Oh, wait, it’s only got the requisite number of legs, that’s a relief! I don’t know what that metal thing is; this is a flood control area in Scottsdale that I’ve written about before so maybe that is part of the control system. It’s the place with the horse gargoyles, Water Mark.
So it turns out Gilbert isn’t the only place around with Great Blue Herons. Lately, I’ve seen them at this lake when driving home from work so I stopped the other day and walked over. Too bad the “contraption” messed up my shots…and then the heron got annoyed at my closeness and flew away.
