Got Ballz?????

I was intrigued by an ad in Gaiam Living's Harmony catalogue for some Dryer Balls. It said that they are not only eco friendly (no more dryer sheets in the landfill) but also are kinder to your skin and reduce the time needed to dry clothes. So, I found some at the Bed Bath and Beyond that has opened up near us in Gainesville. Here they are:

I'm takin' them for a spin today and the results thus far: clothes do feel invitingly soft, there is no static cling and I actually think that the drying time may be reduced a bit. My appliance repair man will be so proud of me! On his last couple of visits, he has checked out my lint screen and said that although lint-free, it had a very large build up of residue from the dryer sheet chemicals and he would spend quite a bit of time scrubbing that junk off. He reminded me that I too could do that, thus decreasing drying time. But, ya know, I never remember to do the screen scrubbing. Now perhaps I have found the perfect solution for a number of problems!

On another fiber note, I was busy last night making more silk fusion. The first sheet is from some pre-dyed soy silk roving that I purchased from Joggles. I added some Lion's Mane glitter to the medium and it really made the fusion sparkle.
This second piece is one that I dyed myself with some turquoise and chartreuse...also adding a bit of the Lion's Mane.

This stuff is so addicting!!!!

It's another lovely day here in the Southland, and I may even get out to do some weeding and fertilizing in my flower beds. Waaaay to pretty to stay inside...even if to dye!

Have a great day.

Weekend in Review

C and I had a wonderful couple of days in Atlanta! We were having so much fun on Saturday that I thought I had actually persuaded him to spend one more night at the condo and drive home early for church on Sunday. However, "Mr Sensible" got a grip of his senses, and we left the city at about 6 last night, which made for a very late dinner at home. But Elsie, our kitty cat, was most appreciative of our return.

Saw this bumper sticker in Midtown yesterday, and thought you might enjoy it:


We waddled on over to MetroFresh to pick up soup for lunch yesterday noon. Here's the view from outside, as Barker and I waited for C to appear with our lunches:

We got tired of waiting so walked on over to the site of the soon-to-open Midtown Trader Joes. While he was buying soups, Craig learned from Mitchel at MetroFresh, that the target opening date is actually March 24th....not even a month!! WooHoo!!!! I leaned up against the window and was tres excited when I spotted this sign:

OK now, use your imagination and squint with all your might, and you may just be able to pick out the red shopping carts all lined up and ready for use...neat reflection in the window, huh?!!!


After lunch, we walked up to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to catch the "Orchid Daze" exhibit. It was really fabulous. This year's addition of all of the sculpture by Frabel adds a whole new dimension. I've uploaded a bunch of my pics to Flickr. Let's see if I can show you just one here:



Now I really must go................we got halfway through "Half Nelson" last night, and C is waiting for me so that we can finish it! Bye Bye!!

24 Hours in the City

For some strange reason my beloved Blogger has decided that tonight is not the night to post photos with captions to JudyintheDyes, but bear with me and I'll see what I can do to get through this minor techno-crisis!
C and I (and Barker the ever watchful watchdoggy)departed "home" in Gainesville just about 24 hours ago and headed for our second lovely home in Midtown, Atlanta. I had taken my very first sock-knitting class from my friend Angie and was well on my way to One Sock Heaven. Somewhere below you can see the photo of my partially knitted sock....don't ask me where since all I can see is computer gibberish (my son-in-law would just cringe at my lack of techno knowledge here, but bear with me, Dave!).

Last night we enjoyed a terrific dinner at Einstein's, just down the road from the condo. It's so great here because we can walk everywhere...enabling us to even enjoy a glass of wine with dinner if we so desire!

Today our Silk Artists of Atlanta group met at the Chastain Art Center. Forgive me now, as I don't know what pieces are appearing where, so I can't give credit where credit is certainly due. I love this group! We have the most awesome "show and tell" and every month there is so much sharing that goes on!!!

The piece with the feathers is a wonderful silk scarf that was created by Katy Fenlon, who drives all the way down from Clemson, SC to meet with us.

I'm also showing a beautiful silk painted piece by Sue Wierzba...this one is of ocean
life. Sue is new to silk painting, but has been a water color artist for many years. Isn't her piece gorgeous!!

There is also a bamboo scarf by my good friend Martha Andreatos...another gorgeous piece by Martha!

Gail Racy presented our program on painting on treated silk. She had even gone so far as to record her various results of painting on treated silk at different humidity levels, using different ratios of gutta to naptha. She also brought along several treated pieces of silk so that we could try out the technique. I have included one photo of Gail painting on a piece of treated silk.

I apologize for this huge techno glitch, but Blogger has really let me down here! This is just seat-of-the-pants blogging!

After our Silk Painters meeting, I mosied on over to Fiber On A Whim for about an hour of bliss as I shopped around Jan Girot's wonderful shop, picking up various and sundry embellishments. Then I battled the ungodly gridlock from from Sandy Springs over to Decatur in Friday afternoon Atlanta traffic...what was I thinking???? I arrived at Creative Spirit and spent a wonderful hour with my friend Becky Sizemore. She is showing several of my silk scarves and silk pieces mounted on canvas. WooHoo!

So that's my 24 Hours in the City!! Thanks for bearing with this techno-disablon!!

Silk Fusion Synchronicity

As I think I wrote in one of my last posts that I'm taking a silk fusion class via Joggles and Sue Bleiweiss. I am having THE BEST time!! Yesterday I finally had enough time to play with the soy silk roving. After laying it all out, fusing it, and ironing it, here is how it looked:

Isn't it yummy!!! Sue instructed us to do a bit of embellishing with machine stitches, so I decided to put some batting underneath and free motion quilt it with slither. Then I added a few of those wonderful Swarovski crystals...just happened to have some in that pretty red violet that is in my batch of silk fusion.

I found some remaining red violet silk cording that I had dyed last year for another project that worked wonderfully as a little tie around some lovely little red orange antique buttons that I came across in my button stash. There was a bit of remaining prefused deep red charmeuse in my silk draw to use for lining, and then I added some gold and red violet beads to the tie. I left the edge of the top flap, which is difficult to view in my photo, raw-edged and rather wispy...it appears blurry, but isn't. Here she is:

It's bright in my sewing room this morning, so the photos look a bit washed out, but you get the idea. Here is the inside:

A couple of things I would do differently next time: cut the batting about a half inch smaller all the way around, so that it wouldn't peek through at the sides, and make my piece of silk fusion the exact finished size that I wanted it, so that the side edges would be wispy like the top flap is. I love that wispy-edged look!

Last night C and I enjoyed our romantic Valentine Dinner, which had been postponed for several days due to various and sundry events. He had purchased a very nice bottle of Champagne and a lovely tenderloin of beef, from which he sliced two yummy filets. Delish! That and candlelight with the man you've adored for 36 years....what more is there to life?

Afterwards, we watched "Hotel Rwanda", which is a rather disturbing movie, but necessary for us all to see. If you haven't seen it, do! Where was I and what was I doing in 1994 that caused me to turn my back on the 100 days of hell suffered by the people of Rwanda? It is a truly moving film.

On a brighter note, the day has dawned cold but sunny here. When we walked Barker at 7:30 it was a cool 27 with a windchill of -500, so my husband the weather prognosticator says! We are off to Atlanta this afternoon, for a bit of recreating!

Enjoy your Sunday!

Red Roving, Red Roving

Actually this is called "flame" but it is soy silk roving and it arrived in the mail today from Joggles. WooHoo!!! I can hardly wait until tomorrow when I get to play with it!! Life is definitely good!!I am slowly but surely emerging from the deep, dark, depths of my cold and feel about 100% better. My nose is still stuffy but I don't feel like someone has injected my head with thick wads of soy silk roving!!! While I was miserable, I did some mindless paper pieceing (I'll show you a pic in a few days when the top is put together, but I'm waiting for more fabric to arrive..."measure twice, cut once" my Mama used to say, but whoever listened to her????) and was entertained by Mary Higgins Clark's "Remember Me". Since it takes place in Chatham on Cape Cod, the town where much of my family has lived for over 50 years, I found it very interesting. I finished the last cd at almost exactly the same time that my fabric ran out....timing is everything, so they say!

C and I watched a very interesting documentary the other night, and it has really stuck with me. The title is My Architect: A Son's Journey, and it is about Louis Kahn. Some of you, especially anyone who has lived in the Philadelphia area, may recognize his name and recall some of the buildings he designed. (Diane, I'll be you are familiar with him.) The documentary is about Nathanial Kahn's search for information about his father and his life. Kahn had three families at the same time, and none really knew about the others. It wasn't until his death that all three families were together at his funeral, but only his legal wife and their one daughter were listed in the obituary. Fascinating story.

OK, the heat is on in the studio so I'm off to do a bit of dyeing before it is too late! Enjoy your day!!

Red..............

seems to be the "color of the day"!

Here is a pot of lovely tulips from our friends Dick and Rosemary Freeman. Aren't they gorgeous...and such a welcome on a cold and blustery February day.

And below are the lovely roses from my Sweetie:

However, what's given me the most pleasure today is this:

Rayna whet my appetite with gelatin plate printing at John C. Campbell Folk School last Fall, and I've had time to tinker a bit and ponder a lot, so this book came at just the right time!

Happy Valentines Day Everybody!

Lake Views

It was incredibly warm for February today! When we walked Barker early this morning it was in the high 40s. This afternoon it rained, the harbinger of our next cold front, and then take a peak at how serene the lake looked:

You can see the bank of clouds coming in from the west, bringing our colder air. I love the reflection on the water. I was sewing away and just happened to look up to catch these views, and knew that I wanted to share them with you. It is quite foggy in the top photo, and then the breeze picked up and blew the fog away. When I took the second pic, the sun was just beginning to come through the clouds, but it was also almost 6:00 PM, so it was setting.

I have a miserable cold, so I puttered around most of the day, sewing away on a long overdue project. I have mixed feelings about it at present, but if I grow fond of it, I'll show it to you. It has been waking me up at night, so it is time to put a lid on it!!

After snapping the pics of the lake, I wandered on over to my flower garden by the pool to check on a few things. Asters, floxgloves, rose campion, Russian sage, and a few others are beginning to poke through. And look, here are the very first of the iris to bloom:

They look like dwarf crested iris, but they're not. I got them free with some other bulbs one year, and I thoroughly enjoy seeing them....but they only bloom for one day, so if you miss them, forget about it! Many of my daffodils are in bloom, as are my snowdrops and the wonderfully fragrant Daphne Odora. It is too early for Spring....our cold weather returns tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Eat'N'Run

Well, we are surely making up for the few meals that we served at home over the weekend! Last night we ate at Sala, a Mexican dining establishment in Virginia Highlands. It was great...the Margaritas were excellent and the food was terrific. I had a sore throat, so the very spicy Tortilla Soup went down nicely...as did the Tequila!

We gave Barker a short walk around Midtown this morning and then walked across the street from the condo to The Flying Biscuit for a yummy breakfast. We don't think that the biscuits are quite as light as the name implies, but the food is definitely very tastey! On weekends, the line goes a long way around the corner pretty much all day, with folks waiting to be seated, but this morning we just walked on in and had our pick of tables at about 8:30. I love their decor:
And here's what I had:
turkey bacon, a flying biscuit, two eggs over easy (only ate one, I swear!) and the yummiest of grits! MMMMMMM I was reading the newspaper and celebrating the fact that my Dixie Chicks did so very well at the Grammy's last night! WooHoo!!!!

We headed home late morning and found it necessary to once again stop to eat. Here we are at:

There seems to be a Chipotle around every corner in Atlanta and its burbs now, and the nice thing is they have little outdoor eating areas where we can take Barker. Here he is being ever so patient while C is inside ordering our burrito bowls:

and here's lunch:It was 65 degrees outside....another lovely day! My weather forecast says that the high here on Thursday will be 38, with the low a chilly 19, so we are enjoying this weather while it lasts.

One of our last stops was for this:

I wish I could have included the lovely aroma of these roses. They totally perfumed the car. Isn't C just as sweet as can be!!!!

Spring in February

The entertaining is over and now we can return to life as we know it. Poor Barker received so much attention over the past couple of days that I am sure he will go into withdrawal tonight with no company around to rub his tummy and tell him how gorgeous he is. Why don't you come over and join us? Oooops, sorry.............we're at the condo! Well, join us in Atlanta then.

I think both evenings were a success, and we enjoyed hosting a variety of friends. Last night's chili and cornbread were quite yummy, and the cranberry creme brulee was a big success. I'll have to do that again!

It was cold this morning: 28 when I went off to early church at 8:00 AM. I love that service - so quiet with only a bit of organ music and the beautiful Rite I from the Book of Common Prayer.

After lunch we threw a few belongings, including Barker Baby, into the car and headed for the condo for a brief bit of R&R. When we arrived, the car thermometer read 59. We unpacked, put on our walking shoes and headed out to Piedmont Park. Look, the daffodils are all in bloom:



There were so many people out walking, playing bocce ball, tennis, soccer, volley ball, and just enjoying the pretty afternoon. What a treat for February, even here in the Southland. Look at the pot bellied pig, out for a walk in the park with his master:


Here are the new playing fields, finally completed and open for the good citizens of Atlanta to enjoy.

Tonight we are trying out a new restaurant...................yummm: check out the Margarita!!! I'll let you know how it is.

Take care!

Dude..............

I gotta Dell!

WooHoo, my new laptop arrived on Thursday afternoon and I am loving it! I firmly believe that my old one was the very first one off of the assembly line (it is so old I cannot even remember when it arrived on the scene), and a lot of it was no longer operating. We decided to wait until the Microsoft Vista program came out to order my new laptop. (C has a desktop in his office and he seemed perfectly satisfied with it until Thursday evening, when suddenly he said that he thinks he also needs a new computer!!) Since I'm not the most computer literate person on the block, I cannot even begin to give you all of my new baby's stats, but suffice it to say that she is wonderful! She is so much lighter than my old one, which is a huge factor in that she travels with us back and forth to the condo on a weekly basis, up and down three flights of stairs.
Here she is opened up and ready to blog:

she is so very eager to please her Mama!! So, the only bad part about this new laptop is that she arrived on Thursday afternoon, and we were/are scheduled to host two back-to-back dinner parties here on Friday and Saturday nights. Thus, my alone time with her is severely limited...as is my time to blog! I cannot wait to discover all of the new ins and outs of Vista, but give me some time.

Last night we entertained our former neighbors who have moved to a retirement community "up the road" and another delightful couple from our church who live in the same community. They did not know each other well beforehand, but now I feel sure that they will become fast friends, not that either couple needs more friends - they are both very sociable. It was a nice, low-keyed evening: a roaring fire in the fireplace (baby, it's cold outside!), comfort foods (C's Mom's Ham loaf, butter peas, roasted sweet potatoes, tossed salad and molten chocolate cakes for dessert), and scintillating conversation. Tonight we are hosting the last of four dinners for our church's Foyers group. We have gotten to know and grown to love the other three couples in our group, and this will be a bittersweet meeting for us. I've made up a huge pot of chili and will put together a pan of cornbread and a salad later on. These are supposed to be uncomplicated meals with an emphasis on getting to know one another and not attempts at pretentiousness...easy for them to say! For dessert I've already whipped up some Cranberry Creme Brulees...all they need is a little torching and they're ready to serve. YUMMMM!

Now on to other matters. Here are a couple of pieces from my work sessions earlier this week:

This is a batiked silk sarong....another teaching model for my March class at Intown Quilters. You may notice the "Rayna signature" potato masher in there in a few places!! (oh Gerrie, I'm green with envy that you're going to have a week with Rayna!!) By the way, huge congrats are in order to Intown Quilters, as my favorite quilt shop has been chosen as one of the 10 featured quilt shops in this Springs Better Homes and Gardens Quilt Sampler magazine! WooHoo!! Way to go Sarah and the rest of the gang!!! You'll be able to pick up a copy in a local quilt shop in early May. I'm sure I'll be reminding you.

Below is a piece that I've been playing with. Actually, it is a stonewashed silk scarf, but the technique is a bit different, in that I'm using water soluble gold resist, but really diluting it. The gold remains, and only a hint of the resist....let the dyes do their thing! It's fun.

OK, I'm off to reset the table and do a bit of picking up.

Have a terrific day!

More On

Cinnamon

My Swedish cousin Eva read my blog on cinnamon the other day and had these comments to pass along:

Your coffee mixture sounds very good and tasteful. Home grind coffee beans, chocolate and cinnamon, but be careful though! Cinnamon contains coumarin, a substance which can be harmful in bigger quatities and damage your liver. It has also been very popular here in Sweden with all kinds of cinnmon products. At first everybody praised it to the skies, but lately it has been warnings against it because of the coumarin. (The investigations of the substance coumarin came from the German authorities). Cassia-cinnamon, from China, contains more coumarin than the finer Ceylon-variant. I don’t know the exactly amount of cinnamon you can eat a day, but from the articles I have read about the danger of eating to much cinnamon, they just recommend cinnamon in normal doses. Like when you spread it over your morning porridge and so on. Here’s an other example: If your weight is 75 kilo, you shouldn’t eat more than 7,5 mg coumarin a day. But who knows how much cinnamon you have to eat before you get that amount of coumarin?? I’ve tried to find that kind of figures, but it seems impossible :-( Well, I don’t think you have to be afraid to eat your cinnamon, but do it with moderation ;-)

So, I went to my friendly Wikipedia and looked up Coumarin - there, I've saved you the trouble. Anyway, it sounds to me like coumarin is the anticoagulant drug I'm used to hearing called Coumadin. Interesting that its scent is the sweet odor we recognize from newly cut grass. It's also a common food and tobacco additive, although both have been banned in many countries for quite some time. That said, it sounds like the tobacco industry keeps trying to slip it into those dreadful cigarettes! Interestingly enough it is a potent rodenticide, and is still shows up in pipe tobacco.....ummmmm, that nice sweet smell, eh?

Well enough on that!

My thanks to Pixie for helping me get my Artful Quilters Web Ring logo back up and running. It seems that when I switched over to the new and improved blogger (notice how new and improved my blog appears! Ha!!!) I lost all of my added templates. Slowly but surely I'm getting them back, but it takes someone like me who is pretty much totally computer illiterate many long hours to accomplish this, and there are just so many other fascinating things to do in one's day!

As part of our Wednesday night program at church last night, I retook the Myers Briggs Personality Test. I'll get my results back next week....and we'll see how they compare with the my results from the online test that I took a month ago.

On that note, I'm off to work........catch you later....and don't forget to monitor your Coumarin intake!!

Happy Birthday Dave

Today is our son-in-law Dave's 30th birthday. He has been a most wonderful addition to our family and I am so very thankful that he and Kristin found eachother. I cannot think of anyone better suited to her personality, or a more helpful, loving and understanding mate, for that matter. She is one very lucky young lady. Hope your day is a happy one, Dave.









So here I sit enjoying this:

My Laurel Burch mug is about as old as the hills. I am a real packrat and happened to find this gem in my pantry a couple of months ago. I don't know if I bought it or some thoughtful soul gave it to me, but I do know that I also have the lovely red cat earrings to match. Now that LB has found her niche in the quilting arena, I feel very much in vogue! Ha!!

Workday dawned rather chilly here...about 28 when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and took Barker for his morning constitutional. I turned the heat on in the studio, had some breakfast and then headed out to work. I'm dyeing a series of silks and will show you the results when they are all done. I'm also preparing some charmeuse for a wall hanging for my friend Bobbie....what fun!!!

Yesterday I batiked this:

It is one of Dharma's rayon sarongs. I am teaching a soy wax batiking class at Intown Quilters in early April and this will be one of the shop models. I'm going to do another one in silk tomorrow. I like the way these colors came out...will make a great sarong, don't you agree! Kristin and Dave went on a cruise over the holidays, and she told me that sarongs were everywhere, as bathing suit coverups, skirts and dresses. I had batiked her one last Spring when I was just learning from Rayna, and Kristin took it along and said she wore it constantly. Think about it, it's lightweight, easy to pack and oh so versatile.

Here are two more of the Sowz Earz - almost completed. I ran out of the silk cording for the shoulder straps, so have to wait 'till I go back to Atlanta to get some more before I can put the finishing touches on them. Bummer, huh?

So that's it for today........hope yours has been as nice as mine!

I'm in LOVE!!

Over the past several months my soon-to-be 90 year old mother
has begun to have issues with Type 2 Diabetes. That is difficult enough,
but add to it the fact that: (1) she lives in an Assisted Living Facility that doesn't seem to want to cater to too many special dietary needs and (2) she is confined to a wheelchair so doesn't get too much exercise. I read a great article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's food section the other week extolling the virtues of cinnamon, especially in regard to lowering blood sugar levels. For the next few days I tried adding a bit of cinnamon to my coffee (very chic, non?) and then it seemed that the cinnamon was adding itself to so much of our diet. When I felt very sure of myself, I visited Mom, armed with a jar of Penzey's cinnamon. She was a bit leery at first - after all, she's my mother! - but she gave it a try and now she is sprinkling it on everything too! C and I grind our own coffee beans and use a cute little coffee press, so I just sprinkle the cinnamon over the beans before I grind them. Right now I'm sipping on a cup of Starbuck's Extra Bold French Roast with a sprinkle (or 2 or 3) of cinnamon and a spoonful of Ghiradelli hot chocolate.....now this is to die for!!!! TRULY. You can go here for more info on the wonders of my new love, cinnamon.

I am now "working" in the mornings from about 8:30 'til noon. I've found that I am sharpest and most productive then, so why not take advantage of it. In the afternoons, Barker and I walk, I do my desk work, visit my Mom, and putter around the house...sometimes "working" at my fiber stuff then too. So far this new scheduling seems to be a good thing. Do others of you have "work" schedules too? I'm curious. I'm just so thankful that I don't have to go out to a real job...I'd be too tired to do my fiber stuff in the evenings.

Gerrie asked to see a shot of the Sowz Earz lining, so here it is:


I've got two more purses almost ready to line, and will include some pics when they are done.

So long for now..........and go have some cinnamon!

Sowz Earz

Last Fall I began toying around with some ideas for evening purses made from silk. I've purchased a few patterns and looked at various ideas. In the mean time, I had decided on the approximate size and shape I wanted and had embellished a few pieces of silk. For some reason I just got the urge to proceed this past week and I finally completed the first one this afternoon. I tried two different techniques to achieve about the same results on the piece of black Habotai for the purse front. One was with foiling and the other was by simply painting the design on the silk with gold paint. I much preferred the latter, so I used the formed (foiled) piece for my first experiment in sewing up the purse. I got some black silk cording for the shoulder strap, an antique "gold" and rhinestone button for the closure, plus myriad and sundry gold beads to highlight the gold foil fireworks centers. While I was rummaging around in my silk drawer for a piece of black habotai for the lining, I came across a wonderful piece of tangerine and fucshia silk that I had dyed and never used...so that went inside!I finished this first one midafternoon, took Barker for a walk in the freezing cold and windy air, and then came home and started putting the finishing touches on the next one. I'll show you that one when I'm finished...maybe tomorrow?? In the mean time, here is a closeup of the first "Sowz Ear".

You may be able to tell that there is a bit of quilting around the fireworks, done with black sliver. It adds a subtle little touch. I also quilted the back...but no fireworks, just quilting with the black sliver.

We're not huge professional football fans, so tonight we're catching up on the local newspapers and maybe starting a movie.

Go have fun!

Photo Catchup - I hope!

Here are the two postcards that I sent off for the Heart-2-Heart fiberart postcard project. I used some of my very first hand dyes (it was a difficult decision at first, as they are pretty dear to me!) and then embellished them with hearts that I applied with the help of some Sulky Solvy and metallics. It was fun....I had forgotten just how much I enjoy making postcards! Thanks to Karey for giving me that opportunity to play again.



Thursday morning we woke up to the stillness that can only accompany an overnight snowfall. The weather people had forecast a winter storm for our area and I was eagerly anticipating seeing our trees laced over with ice. Not so! Apparently it was just a little too warm for that, or the upper atmosphere was too cold, as the precip came down around us as snow. By the time we got up, it was beginning to rain however, so the snow didn't last too long. Here's our front walkway before we took Barker out for his morning walk:

Our Hellebores (Lenten Roses) on the right above, can't quite figure out what is going on with the weather. They began blooming several weeks ago, which was certainly before lent, and now they have snow on them! My Daphne, which is just across the walkway, is also blooming...about a month early for her too.

Below is our front yard looking up towards the street. Ahhhh, beautiful virgin snow.....even Barker hasn't made footprints in it yet! It was a grey, grey morning.

This is our view out through the diningroom sliders.

Fortunately C is a good soul and had made up a panful of his special suet recipe for our feathered friends the day before the snow. They let him know when he is not delivering on time! We've had some wonderful migrating waterfowl this winter: Ring-necked ducks, Pied Bill Grebes, Buffleheads, and of course more and more Canadian Geese. I love to watch the geese, but unfortunately they love to walk up in our yard and p__p everywhere. Barker has become quite proficient at bounding out of the door and chasing them back into the lake, barking all the while. There's never a dull moment around here! Our resident Great Blues are always stalking fish along the shore, while the mallards and wood ducks dabble around for bits to eat. We also have a wonderful Kingfisher who flits along the shoreline. It will be a sad, sad day when we leave this place!

Speaking of which, we are in the city for a second day. We went to Dave's birthday party last night at Taco Mac...a lot of great young people there. It's nice to see your adult children with such a wide and varied circle of interesting friends. I brought along my camera, but the photos didn't turn out...could it have been the photographer and her beer???? I just don't know!

Happy Day!!!