Little Bluff cabin cam June 29 - a DELIGHTFUL morning to begin the new week - HAPPY MONDAY ALL!

Journal updated on the 25th, 26th, and 28th, and 29th!

TWO DAY PRINT SALE (June 29th & 30th) - coneflowers and moonset over Flanagan Prairie - click here

My 20th picture book - IN STOCK AND NOW SHIPPING - order here! (See the new online gallery here.)

06/01/20 I left Colorado at 5:01 yesterday morning and got home at - well, you'll have to look below for the time since my eyes are kinda blurry this morning - long day on the road, and I never set foot outside of the anti-virus mobile...

06/03/20 - a few Godbeams to start the day!

06/04/20 They sent out two different severe storm warnings at the same time - different storms going in opposite directions and headed for each other - both headed right for US! “Oh, that can’t be good!” my lovely bride said. No kidding. We huddled in the prow of our cabin and watched an amazing lightning and cloud show - the view from our place looks out across many miles of country with a 170 degree view - in fact it’s one of the very best spots anywhere to watch cloud movement.

Anyway, those two storms did indeed meet in our front yard, and by the time they moved on an hour later we’d had more than THREE INCHES of heavy downpour and just a little bit of dime-size hail. It was kinda LOUD inside our prow!

A couple hours before, I was sitting on the back deck munching on my veggie-turkey-gherkin wrap for lunch (I’m adding 3-4 small sweet gherkin pickles now and oh my goodness what a little pleasure they give to each bite!). We’d had a little storm roll through in the morning but only .04” of moisture fell. Yet I could HEAR the river far below us - we never hear the river here (always heard the Buffalo River at Cloudland, but it was after all right THERE in front of us, or rather just below us, but almost always making music). Henson Creek is 1,000’ below us here and not very large, but there must have been on heck of a tiny cloudburst upstream and around the corner - in the Low Gap area - to produce so much thunder coming up from the creek.

And then we got 3” on top of that - Henson Creek probably was a pretty good kayaking river for a little while, although all of it is private property.

It was getting dusky dark when I made a trip up our driveway to walk off a mile of steps that I needed to complete my “circle” for the day. Clear skies and just a hit of moonlight above. I didn’t notice the moon until I saw my own shadow on the ground. It’s a magical time when you are that the moment when daylight fades to night. All was quiet, except for our own little creek that no doubt was raging too from the heavy rain. But what caught my attention in the faint moonlight was our driveway - first time since it was built a couple of years ago that it had been flooded and some of it washed away. Oops.

Temp is 70 this morning with a brisk breeze and LOTS of bird music. Funny, but I haven’t seen a bird yet today, only heard them - they are hanging back in the trees waiting for things to calm down I guess. There has been some color in the east now for a while today, but the sun is rising so far to the north at the moment that we don’t get a direct view of sunrise, only if there is color in the clouds or sky to the right of sunrise - that’s what you see when I take a picture to post here - in fact I need to go find my phone and take that picture, make my morning smoothie and get myself to work!

Oh one thought for the day. We don’t pay too much attention to the news these days here - far and away most of it is dramatized by the media to fill the 24-hour news cycle and competition for clicks, likes, tweaks, chirps, and views - which all only adds up to how much they can charge for advertising - much of it really has little to do with our daily lives. But we do see and feel the widespread depression and gloom and doom that the news produces. When folks moan on about how terrible life is and how they already wish 2020 had never happened and we could skip to 2021, I’m more inclined to reference the quote that was said towards the end - and potentially most destructive and damaging moment in our country’s space program as Apollo 13 was plummeting towards earth and to certain death - “I do believe it will be OUR FINEST HOUR!!!” There will be continued hardships in our personal and professional lives in 2020 and beyond no doubt, but if we press onward with the attitude that we will prevail, I think it will be a great year - do what you can to educate and protect yourself of course - but take the news with a grain of salt, and were gonna need a lot of salt shakers this being an election year...

(After my bride read the post above she stood up and danced around the room to this Taylor Swift video... I'm married to the right woman!)

EVENING UPDATE. We’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary on The Dust Bowl - I’ve been amazed how little I know about it, especially the fact that we drive right through the epicenter of it all on our way to/from Colorado - the Oklahoma panhandle, and Boise City in particular. Wow, tough times and even tougher people. We are very spoiled these days.

It was after dusky-dark when I left the cabin for an evening hike, out of the cool blue shadow of our cabin and into the forest that was bathed in warm moonlight. Warm moonlight? We usually think of moonlight being blue, but it is actually the same sunshine that hits the earth, just reflected off the moon. I must say I’ve never really seen it as being a warm color like tonight though. When I turned back to look at the almost-full moon it had already risen in the southern sky and was pretty white.

And as a point of reference, I saw the first lightning bugs of the season, and they were showing off very warm light! Moonlight and fireflies...

06/05/20 I made it up and out onto the back deck this morning before anyone else got up - the only sound was that of the wind, and just a hint of the murmur of rushing waters rising up from Henson Creek far below. At times it was more like soft ocean waves and breezes.

The scene was kinda surreal, with the now full moon hanging low in the southwestern sky, and beaming that warm glowing light not only across the landscape as far as I could see, but also casting long shadows on the deck and even longer shadows of tall trees across the yard. The moon was so bright and huge and still, and yet, perfectly silent. The light so soft.

And then the first neighbor got up and began to sing - a whippoorwill in the distance, whose music drifted over on the breezes. Lately a summer tanager has always been up and in tune long before the rest, not really calling out to anyone in particular, just wanting to spread his music far and wide and bring a smile. He must be sleeping in a little this morning.

Turning my attention to the left of the scene, there is a glow in the east that signals the approach of dawn. The faintest of color along the horizon, rising up to a darkened blue-black of night sky, but with a slit of almost white sky in between - that’s where the sun will appear in an hour and a half or so.

Oh there he is - the tanager - he just burst into song loud enough to be heard over the wind that’s now getting stronger. It’s as if he knew he got caught in late slumber, and wanted to explain his tardiness. But it’s OK, even a tanager is allowed a few extra minutes of rest.

One note of so many that I’ve been too lazy to write down I wanted to share before it was gone forever. It was actually back in late April I think, when Fireman Jeff spent a day working here. He literally had just told me a few days before that in order to protect myself from the plague I needed to be wearing not only a face mask but also eye protection. And so the day he came to work outside here I was all masked up and wearing sunglasses, which I often do anyway since my eyes are so sensitive to bright sunshine as it was that day. Anyway, one of Jeff’s chores was to attempt to break up large rocks in the yard that were too tall for a mower to go over, and too massive to move or dig out. So he used a sledge hammer/maul to thump and chip away at them, sometimes successful, other times his mighty swing was only met with a whimsical thud, as if the giant iceberg-type rock beneath the surface of the earth was laughing at us. I kept my social distance from him all day, being over protective even beyond the accepted distance - Jeff is a front-line worker and comes into close contact with the sick and folks in trouble on a daily basis. So at one point I happened to glance over towards him just as his sledge hammer hit a big rock, and WHAM! A chunk of that rock came flying across the yard so fast that I had no time to react, and it slammed right into my left eye! Fortunately, at Jeff’s insistence, I was wearing those glasses, which deflected the chunk of rock and saved my eye. Wow, in that split second my life could have changed forever. Thanks Jeff....

OK, now the airwaves here are getting a little crazy - there are dozens and dozens of birds out there up on their pulpits screaming at the color that is building in the east. GET UP AND OUT OF BED YOU SLEEPY HEADS! The wind has picked up quite a bit too, pushing even the tallest pine trees around back and forth, and oh man is it LOUD out here! Must be Friday - sometimes the world gets loud on Friday. The moon has disappeared in the west, and will next appear as a beautiful and brilliant and loud full moon rise this evening. I hope you get the chance to sit and watch and enjoy...

.50 years ago today a careless driver in a hurry was passing a car going uphill on a double yellow line and slammed head-on into my oldest brother's car at the top of the hill - he never had a chance. Tom was 22. Life is short - enjoy each moment, be kind to EVERYONE. Sometimes eat dessert first... Thanks bro for all you taught me...

06/07/20 Another dawn filled with color, light, and LIFE!

06/08/20 Another beautiful, color-filled sky at dawn!

06/09/20 4:43am and I saw the first set of headlights wan down in the valley by the big white barn - heading to work I presume. Then the second drove by a minute later. 5:14am and our resident summer tanager strikes up the band, only he has moved to the east of the cabin - he’s been on the west side now for weeks. There’s a bright 3/4 moon and a few stars visible as the clouds are beginning to break up - the storm must be over!

At 3:01pm yesterday a cool wind started to blow from the east, and a few sprinkles began to fall. Then more sprinkles, and more until it was an actual rain shower. There were times when the rainfall was heavy, although it was never like a thunderstorm (no thunder or lightning) - only rainfall that continued pretty much without stopping until we went to bed. Sometime during the night the rain stopped and the wind changed and is now blowing from the west (normal). So that was the tropical storm Cristobal that passed through - I wonder who first named their kid Cristobal and where that came from?

Thank you Cristobal - we sure did need your rainfall! Creeks and waterfalls might be a little muddy today, but I bet it will be a great waterfall chasing week and weekend ahead.

In preparation for all the rain I spent a good bit of time on the tractor yesterday and the day before, trying to beef up the side of our little driveway to direct any heavy amounts of rainfall away from the driveway and into the forest. My lovely bride mowed the yard and I mowed around the edges and out into the forest a little here and there. I love an open forest, and so do scores of critters that live there. A balanced ecosystem depends on a variety of forest and openings, so we try to accommodate. Over the years I hope to be able to open up more and more of the forest - in very small patches, just a little at a time. For example, last week I trimmed out a few saplings that were crowded in around the base of a giant pine tree - seemed like they were trying to smother that big ol’ tree. Now the base of the tree is open and free! If I had a younger back I’d do more, but one or two little spots now and then will have to do.

TICKS have gotten pretty bad this summer - like they always do - and so I’m sticking more to open areas of the forest vs. hiking our trail - the jungle that is Arkansas has pretty much taken over for a while! I still have to hike at least eight miles a day, so that means 16 trips between the gallery and cabin along the driveway - no problem for me, but the pups are beginning to wonder what the heck is up - haven’t we seen this same stretch of road before?

Speaking of the pups, a couple of months ago I took them in for annual shots (that had been delayed for obvious reasons, but the vet set up a contactless system and it worked GREAT!). Both pups gained seven pounds each, which put Wilson into the “needs to be on a diet” category. We feed them “senior” and “diet” dog food and it really doesn’t seem like they eat that much, but I guess they do get a squirrel and a bird or two now and then. Anyway, the vet suggest we substitute GREEN BEANS for some of Wilson’s normal senior/dirt dog food. I scoffed at that - a big tough wilderness dog eating green beans, are you kidding me - can you just imagine the look on his face when I fill up his bowl? Son of a gun, not only does Wilson LOVE green beans, you should see the look on his face when we run out green beans!

That reminds me - we’re out of green beans (about 58 cents a can), and spring mix and spinach, so I need to make a quick run into the local Harps store in Jasper. While I realize some folks think the world is back to normal and the plague somehow does not affect them, I still assume that not only do I have it and are “sheading” - but also that every other person on the planet has it and is shedding too, so I continue to take every precaution I can to protect myself and everyone else - whenever someone gives me a dirty look or laughs behind my back when they see me wearing a mask in public - I simply reply (to myself) that “I’m not ready to die just yet.” (I don't really care what others think about my fashion choices, haha. I haven't seen another person but Pam in a week.) So today I will be in the parking lot before the store opens an hour early for geezers and high-risk folks like me, put on my mask and do my shopping and be back outside quickly, hopefully before any other customers enter the store. I know that is not always possible and not everyone can do that, but I’m only me and do what I can. So glad to see our leaders here in Arkansas leading by example and doing what they can do to help minimize the spread. Thank you ASA and NATE and STEWART!

06/10/20 Dawn breaks beneath layes of black clouds and a temp dip down to 53 degrees - kind of chilly on our morning hike! Yesterday we had CONSTANT high winds up to 45mph - birds and butterflies and trees had trouble maintaining control.

06/12/20 As the sun continues to move north the first light of day arrives at the swing from now on for a few weeks.

06/13/20 - wildflowers here been mostly white for the past month or so and are now showing more yellow colors like this batch along the way to work this morning - HAPPY SATURDAY!

06/16/20 My canvas print exhibit is OPEN IN FT. SMITH today until August 30th! (more info)

06/18/20 Beautiful clouds above the cabin at dawn today, with cool breezes...

06/18/20 My lovely bride took me on an early-morning hike where we found baby cows and wild strawberries along the way...

06/21/20 There is an owl working the airwaves this morning, way over there somewhere across the canyon and deep in the forest. First hoot owl I’ve heard in a while. There are dozens of songbirds and various others flying, playing, and generally waking up and proclaiming it to be a great day already, even though we are still an hour away from sunrise. This time at the edge of day as the darkness revolves towards light is often the calmest, coolest, sweetest, most beautiful time of all, especially in the summer. Few folks ever get to enjoy it, but it seems to simple - just get up early....

Today when I got up and wandered out onto the back deck to take my seat to watch dawn happen it was still night and the sky above was filled with stars. The canyons below was covered up with a sea of clouds, created by the tiny bit of moisture that fell yesterday - only about 1/100ths of an inch, but it must have been a very dense liquid to know fill the canyon to overflowing! It’s quite a stunning sight with the sea and stars, and the ridgetops (like us) sticking up above the sea and into the heavens.

As I’m typing this the fog is rising and engulfing the cabin and soon there won’t be any view here at all other than the noble tall pines and oaks that surround us. I remembered that I own a flying camera that could get above the fog, so I ran up to the gallery and fired it up for a quick photo of the sunrise - this was taken from right above the cabin.

The pups and I made a quick hike down along the north trail (which I’ve avoided for a while due to thick brush and ticks) - it was BEAUTIFUL down there, and our little creek was still running a little bit. As we got back to the cabin the sun was just beginning to burn through the fog, and I got a snapshot of Mia surrounded by Godbeams!

Yesterday morning began at 1:20am when we were awakened by a very strange, slow and prolonged wailing that turned out to be Wilson. He was on the floor at the foot of our bed looking out the glass door - I have no idea what that was about but the boy had poured his heart and soul into it! I promise we don’t beat him, and he lives in a place where he has free range of a vast wilderness, food in his bowl all day, the choice of both a queen and king beds, two couches, several chairs, and three dogbeds for napping all day - plus his momma’s lap, and all the personal attention a boy could ask for.

The rest of yesterday was filled with another critter that had gone nuts. We have a lot of colorful birds that frequent, and I’ve gone through the colors before, but we just noticed a different color of bird at the feeders. It seemed to be a tanager, but not a normal summer or scarlet that we see here - in fact it was more like a western tanager we see at our campsite out west. Pam dug out the bird books and finally found an exact match - it was indeed a male summer tanager that was changing into an adult, but oh my goodness he was SO COLORFUL! Bright red, yellow, and green - looks like a tropical bird of some sort.

Well, after a couple days of wowing us with all that color, all of a sudden he turned into a cuckoo bird. We do have small birds that will crash into the big prow windows mistaking the reflections as more sky to fly through. But this guy started to bang into the glass with his body (they normally impact their heads). He would do that four times, then fly back to a perch. Then four more chest-bumps and retreat. Four more. Four more. Four more. Four move. He sometimes would move to a different window pane and repeat. Four more. Four more. It was almost always four bumps (thuds - you probably know the sound that only happens when a bird runs into a window).

Girl to the rescue! As happens frequently in life to many males, the cuckoo bird as saved by a female that joined him. He immediately diverted his attention from the windows to the female, and the two of them spent the rest of the day in happy bliss. As happens frequently in life to many males, that bliss was short lived, and by dusk the cuckoo bird had returned to the windows, four more bumps, etc.

06/23/20 It’s a couple of days later now and the cuckoo bird has gone through a couple more cycles of being sane and happy with his girlfriend around, then back to being cuckoo again for a few hours, then back to his girlfriend. So far neither the cuckoo bird or any of our windows has suffered any visible damage, but I have a feeling that female tanager has had about enough!

I’m happy to report that we have three new publications completed and either in route to us or at the printers. First, my newest picture book (and perhaps my last), ARKANSAS GREATEST HITS, is on a freight car somewhere between California and Tulsa, and we expect to take delivery of nearly 6,000 pounds of books early next week - YIPPIE!!!

We completed the 2021 Arkansas weekly engagement calendar about a week ago and it is in production at the printers in Illinois with an expected delivery date in mid-July.

Finally, the 2021 Arkansas monthly wall calendar is complete and in production at the printers in Montana, and we expect to have them in a couple of weeks. I’ll keep ya posted as we get them.

One note about our fall slide program schedule - we have no clue if they will happen or not - depends on pandemic conditions - if we would be able to offer our items for sale and give the programs while being able to prevent the spread of covid.

Photo workshops have all been cancelled for 2020 and we’ve refunded all money. Bummer. This was to be my last year for workshops, but now I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see what 2021 brings.

For the time being our canvas gallery, which has been closed since March, will remain closed to protect our customers and help prevent the spread of covid.. We are happy to set out on our protected porch any canvas prints, guidebooks, or picture books for contactless pickup - just let us know.

Life here continues pretty much as it has for the past several months - only I’ve gotten even lazier than normal! I do make at least 16 round trips a day on our driveway between the cabin and the gallery though (eight miles distance total). And every couple of days I follow my bride for a three-mile hike early in the morning up the county road past lush pastures and mooing cows. Once a week we make a grocery run. Otherwise we’ve pretty much been at home and work and haven’t been around anyone - easy for us to do since that’s just normal here. Pam does get to see her parents at a distance once in a while - in fact Pam spent an afternoon putting together a large covered self-standing swing she’d got her mom for momma’s day - now Judy can sit and swing right in the middle of her large flower and veggie garden and enjoy all the butterflies and bees!

Tough not to get into a virus discussion at the moment, but I hope you will continue to think of others and do the right things* to prevent the spread of covid - thank you!

*"Wearing a mask, washing your hands frequently, and social distancing are the gold standards for avoiding infection. However, there are also other methods you can use to keep safe. One way is to patronize and support businesses that have implemented precautions to keep people safe, and avoid those that have not. Voting with your dollar is one of the best ways to incentivize policy and behavior change." -San Luis Valley Colorado Public Health Partnership

06/24/20 Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter. That’s all the company I had when I stepped out onto the back deck at 4:20 this morning. The air was still, no wind, the airwaves were silent. I wonder how come most birds don’t feed at night? (seems like there are always plenty of bugs out at night) Finally a whippoorwill sounded off a mile or more away, up around the corner near Horseshoe Canyon. It was another 20 minutes before a hoot owl woke up downstream near Diamond Cave. By then most of the stars and planets had faded into deep blue sky except for Venus - still very bright in the east just above the approaching sunrise, and Jupiter - still very bright high in the western sky. Mr. Tanager didn’t wake up until after 5! (maybe his body is getting sore from thumping the windows too much)

It is cooler this morning - in the low 60’s, and very pleasant outside. The eastern horizon is beginning to light up nicely with pinks and oranges. A few cloud banks above the horizon, and a sea of clouds/fog is building just above the Little Buffalo River in the valley between Jasper and Parthenon. The airwaves are filled now with the music of a thousand birds. In fact it is downright noisy!

06/25/20 At last, FINALLY, a real home! For our forklift. We bought an aging forklift from a commercial warehouse in Springdale several years ago that had been operated almost 24/7 for a few years. We used it to stack and organize more than 20 pallets of books when we moved to the new gallery/book warehouse here from Cloudland (where we didn’t have a forklift - all the pallets there were on the floor). The forklift worked great, but took up a LOT of room in what turned out to be our living room in the book warehouse for nearly a year after we moved here. My lovely bride was not amused having that beast in our tiny living space in the warehouse, where the “forks” doubled as a table sometimes. We ended up moving the forklift outside beneath a lean-to we had built on the side of the warehouse.

Being exposed to the windy weather here took a toll on the beast, so I built a wall to help. A year later when I still hadn’t built a second wall Pam’s dad was able to get a second wall built, but the third wall to totally enclose the forklift turned out to be quite a challenge. The ceiling was not tall enough for a standard set of “tall” doors, custom doors were way, WAY to expensive. But TODAY Fireman Jeff arrived with a set of tall doors that he built from scratch - a pair that opens wide enough for the beast to get through. It was no big deal - there is a full INCH of space for the beast to pass through on top! By the end of the day that final wall and doors were completed and our lovely beast has a safe and dry home - YIPPIE! Special thanks to Fireman Jeff for being such a craftsman, and also Pam’s dad for working on the design of this project too. (Jeff says it is simply a copy of a normal storage shed door, but it really is so much more!)

06/26/20 WHAT A GREAT DAY WE HAD HERE! It began at 5am just before dawn with me sitting at the edge of the beach listening to the amazing waves that gently rolled in. WAKE UP DUMMY! It was only the wind in the pine trees, but I just LOVE that sound, especially at the very break of daylight as dawn begins. Note - there actually was almost no color at dawn today, despite the hype about the desert dust cloud.

When I got a surprise invoice by email later this morning we were THRILLED - I was kind of like that scene in his movie THE JERK when Steve Martin goes running and jumping through the neighborhood shouting “The phone books are here, the phone books are here!” Our new picture book had arrived (in the same big warehouse in Springdale where we bought the used forklift from), and it was four days early! (that’s never happened before) So I dispatched Pam’s dad, Ron, who sped off with his giant trailer to collect the almost three tons of books.

I think everyone was pleased when we found out the big warehouse was on total lockdown - literally, No one was allowed in or out during the day due to the virus. But one phone call and a new version of our forklift delivered all the pallets to Ron and soon he had them all strapped down and headed towards us. Only problem was a rat’s nest of pop-up thunderstorms all the way home. 70k worth of new picture books in a thunderstorm is not a laughing matter (Ron had big tarps at the ready in case, but those are a pain to attach and drive with).

Anyway, it wasn’t until he pulled up to our warehouse building a couple hours later and I saw the books were not only all wrapped up and in good shape from the more than a month they spent in transit from the printers, but that all were DRY. And so a YIPPIE COYOTE HURRAY came bubbling out of me. But also a bit of sadness deep inside if this really was my last picture book.

The forklift worked great and soon all the books were neatly stacked high in the warehouse (the three pallets wrapped in plastic below) and the forklift resting in it’s newly-enclosed home. 45 years of my photo career right there in a pile. Now only one chore left - GET RID OF THEM ALL!!! I don’t get paid to TAKE pictures, and we won’t make any money until we sell almost all of these new books - so please, BUY A BOOK!

Dust storm note. The air was heavy with haze all day, and it was mostly clouds - which was great because it kept the temps quite comfortable. No blazing sunset though - in fact less colorful than normal.

As I was about to crawl into bed I realized my exercise “circle” had not been completed yet - OH NO! So I got dressed again and headed up the driveway - I needed at least one more lap to/from the warehouse - I hadn’t done all 16 during the day. Turns out that was a great trip since there was plenty of light from the 1/3 moon that shone down through the clearing skies and it was a delightful hike!

06/28/20 Those very same ocean waves that were lapping on the beach yesterday morning turned into CRASHING waves at 4:30 this morning - the wind is HOWLING and thrashing about - but it feels oh so nice and cool. Just a little bit of haze in the air, mostly normal clouds and blue sky above. For the second day in a row there was no color at all in the early dawn, but that’s OK - the brilliant color of our lives will return again.

One note from yesterday - I spent much of the day working on the online gallery of photos from the new picture book - no captions have been added yet, but you can CLICK HERE and have a look at all the photos that made the final cut into the book. And also, um, you can BUY THE BOOK HERE.

And one wildlife note of sorts. I think the dust storm has made critters kinda lazy. Both our puppies spend almost the entire day yesterday SLEEPING IN THE CABIN! And this morning, the early-bird tanager (aka cuckoobird) didn’t wake up and begin to sing until 5:51! Good grief, does he think this is a weekend or something?

Lastly, one ART note from yesterday - my lovely bride SOLD TWO PAINTINGS! Double YIPPIE COYOTE!!! While our gallery has been closed since March, a limited selection of Pam’s original pastels have been on display at the BUFFALO RIVER ART GALLERY in Gilbert (a really neat place to visit if you are in the area). It takes so much talent to create what she does from a blank sheet of paper. I’m in awe of my bride!

06/29/20 Three items of interest to me today. First, while sipping the last of my cup of Iceland morning java on the back deck, I saw something in nature that I didn’t actually believe was happening. There was a big red squirrel sitting upright on the ground at the edge of Pam’s flower garden. He’s doing WHAT? I reached for the binocs to get a closer look. Then I called out to my bride who was in the kitchen blending up her morning fruit-veggie smoothie. She looked through the binocs and agreed - it was a squirrel dining on a big fat BIRD!!! Did you know that squirrels will eat MEAT? Boy I didn’t. But sure enough, they will kill whatever they can when hungry enough. Hey Wilson, you had better guard your nuts when out there chasing squirrels! (Oops, we already removed them away when he was a pup.) But really - be careful with squirrels!

Second item - a dear relative of mine from Minnesota (first cousin by marriage) commented on the coneflower and moonset photo that I posted online this morning. Her gracious comment was about the fact that both her and her sister-in-law (also a first cousin by marriage who lives in Minnesota) think of doing a road trip to Arkansas every time I post a picture on facebook. What a happy thought, as it has been being related to both of them all these years. Anyway, I made a comment back about how great it would be to see the two of them standing out in the middle of a wildflower field in Arkansas. Then I clicked on where I had posted the same photo on Instagram and there was a comment there with a reference to a painting - Carroll Cloar’s Moonstricken Girls. OH MY GOSH - it was almost the exact vision I had in my brain of my lovely cousins from Minnesota dancing in the middle of a wildflower field as the full moon was setting!!! Social media is not always the devil that it has been these past few months - many really nice things come from it.

And the third item - hum, it must have just blown away with the wind - it is quite windy this evening...

This is not #3, but we did learn today from dear friend, Susan Scott, and the peach harvest in both Arkansas and the famous Palasades peaches in Colorado were mostly destroyed by early freezes this year. Bummer.

I DID REMEMBER #3! Some of the more than three million nature photos I’ve taken have been printed various shapes and sizes for a variety of purposes (the smallest probably being an official United States Postage Stamp, the largest being many different billboards). One of my favorite nighttime waterfall Milky Way photos has now been printed more than eight-feet wide and is being used as a sun shade for a giant motorhome in Florida - how unique is that! I would LOVE to see this driving down the highway, but it’s probably not meant to be able to do that. I guess I have finally "arrived" - at least in someone's driveway...

Journal Archives - previous months

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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