A Sign In A Yard Today Said:

Hope 

Has Not Been Cancelled.

The High Meadows Are in Full Bloom After Early May Rains.

One of the last trips to the high meadows of North Texas saw the cutting of  last seasons stubs from a very pretty season. Ironically, one of the first trips there this spring after my hospital stay during the month of May was somewhat of a shocker to see the blooms and colors going across the meadows like a paint brush of color on a fresh canvas.


Suffice it to say, the meadows are off to a spectacular start this season. The only thing left now is to cross the fingers and toes that the fall season will be far better to view and enjoy than the Spring of 2020.

Thistle Blooms

Major color display over several high meadows have got a good start.

I Must Be Pushing 6 or 7 of My Nine Lives.

Well,---boy is that a misnomer!--- It's been another 20-day stay in the hospital again. This one was not a pretty site either. Surprisingly, I had a pretty restful night back in my own bed last night and halfway felt human this morning. That might be stretching it a bit, but hey! I'm walking, talking, and even had a little breakfast. It seems that the anesthesiology works well but is a bit of a demon as it leaves your body.

I've have a lot of chances to observe this process since the Monday before Thanksgiving last. Each time, it reveals a few more details about it's devilish departure from my system. Generally, a weeks time is about normal for me, but of course, I've had way to many overlapping episodes (i.e. another new pacemaker plus an Ablation procedure on top of that). Heck yes, I'm sore!!.

The kicker in all of this is that the surgery the Monday before Thanksgiving that was finished on the part one side is still  not finished thanks to the worse Governor the State of Texas has had in years. He was a terrible Attorney General, and is following that lead as a terrible Governor. Generally, I don't get political, but I'm Scottish and I speak my mind. Lets go back a step. I'm Gaelic in the full Scottish tradition!!! That's pretty entrenched, friends.

A Thistle along a railroad track 

One of my last adventures

I've missed a lot of the springtime blooms

Got A Peak At The New Rangers Organ Yesterday.

And now,  for the young first responder that will be playing it, "don't be discouraged. I learned on a church's Hammond." There are places for it, I suppose. I'm not an electronic organ guy.By my second year, my teacher said to my dad," Next week, we are going to the Big Baptist Church so he can move on to the real King of Instruments".Of course, I hadn't formed any opinions at that point What did I know? I just followed my dad's  lead Life just got exciting! The new organ was a three manual pipe with 42 ranks.

Now, I will say in the defense  of the Rangers.Purchasing a three manual was not a mistake. Over time, as the young man becomes  familiar and more familiar with what it can do from pre set stops and draw bars. He will be as happy a as bee in a working bee hive.

Now, there are some arena's that have fantastic pipe organs. I was hoping that the Rangers would go the extra mile.Maybe in time, they might still revisit that thought. I am sill just happy that three manual sits in the crow's nest.It must be that Rangers didn't get to enough Hockey Games. Hockey loved the sound of pipe organs over ice!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game....

Spring Wild Flowers

Earth Day Turns 50 and the Cuyahoga River Is Not Even On Fire!

That little photo from the crew of Apollo 17 that is called the "Blue Marble" was a shocker for the humans down below (it could also be up above) on that blue marble. It still is, for that matter. But somehow, we have made some progress. Everyone is talking about seeing things that have not been visible in years and yet, the scientist are telling us, it's not those kinds of emissions that is turning the blue marble warmer and warmer. Now, that's the big shocker! My mother would always tell us boys that you need to be looking in the opposite direction when you see astonishing headlines. She was more right than she was wrong.

It has come out now (Mother, are you looking down on us for this?) that the bigger wealth guys of Silicon Valley are in multi-million dollar luxury bunkers 11-feet below grown in New Zealand. Some made it there just in time before New Zealand closed its borders to foreigners (fresh off their private jet). As it turns out further, it appears that Bill Gates has been stashing food in his basement for a pandemic for years. Now, somehow, this all must be some kind of new "insider trading" (of information, that is). It seems kind of weird, but applying mom's old adage, diversion technique tactics are still at play here. Give $100 million to help the pandemic and stash another 20 thou of green beans and corn and fruit cocktail, peaches and pears. The old boys in Silicon Valley were dealing in real estate before the contractor with a privacy seal on his list of names that had been ordering up these bunkers. The numbers were a bit higher than what you can count on both hands (and feet). There also appeared to be a rather long waiting list,too.


Here, it's the time to also mention again ( been doing this quite a bit lately) what the TxDot guy said to me while we talked on the I-635 project job site  when he said, "The People in Dallas are asleep at the wheel".) The point being:it isn't just Dallas, it's the whole dang country. The rest of the world has been running up to speed for years it seems.



In the 1969 edition of the Cuyahoga River burn, I'm old enough to remember that. At the time it was rather funny. The fires have been put out where it burned. The Flats have turned into brewing companies attached to restaurants and the mouth of the river still meets Lake Erie is free of debit and oil without a fire. The steel mills have long gone away, especially J&L then Bethlehem. It was the time when the Mini--Mills were appearing. They produced only one product and ran the mill on  270 workers vs, U.S. Steel or the other two big integrated mills that produced many products and many sizes of those products, employed 2,000 workers or more and ran around the clock on three full shifts. Times have certainly changed but human greed continues in our wealthy brothers and sisters.

So,  as we celebrate the 50th anniversary/birthday of Earth Day, April 22, 1970-2020 around the world, Life is sweet, but it's not going to be unless we all awake and start pitching in to save the world that has a shelf life of about another 4 Billion years for us to find out how we can take a world population with us to that exoplanet don't you see.

Ansel Adams and my mother would have been good friends because he and John Muir would have enjoyed her biscuits around those camp fires. I miss her biscuits.

This 747-200 (heavily modified, I might add.)

I've Learned From Nature Over The Years.

Talk to a math Ph.D, a physicist, or a modern day John Muir and all three will tell you the same thing: the universe is made of a math equation and from the smallest molecule we know, to the largest expanse of the universe fits together like a puzzle of numbers. We put the puzzle pieces together only to find out that it all is the first piece of a larger puzzle etc.,etc. It's endless!

I have been home-bound for the last two weeks except for one quick trip to the grocer. Today, I was hoping to be able to pick up a Rx at the drugstore today before the storms tomorrow, but it was back ordered so I ventured farther out and decided to make a circle of the lake that opened back up yesterday. I run into a photographer that I chat with at the lake now and then. He once ask me about my route that I'm ruled by when it comes to photography.

Part of capturing a specific shot is knowing what tree a hawk comes to each day. They are more creatures of habit than we are, just barely. In other words, you have to think like the bird. And, I know some are going to laugh, but over time you learn that plants think too. They are much more complicated that just a green leaf on a twig on a tree. I had said to my photographer guy that you have to keep up on what is going on around you and that means every thing from a yellow or orange flag and paint in grass along a street to new construction to what's happening with the city's capital improvement projects. It's like that darn puzzle thing---it just keeps fitting together and gets bigger and bigger. It's rather errie how it works in reality but it does and you got to be in step with it to get the shot.

It allows what it wants to allow, it consumes what it wants to consume and it spits out what it doesn't like. In all fairness, watching it grow is the same as watching a child grow up. Or, that birds habit in motion. If you ever noticed the Wright's Tree Service truck crew trimming branches through out the country, then you know it's like the city getting a manicure. Just like the humans that do. In fact, when I lived in the Great Lakes, Wright's Tree Service was one of the city's biggest contractors. Today, before going out, I went on the Lake Tahoe Web Cam and what's sitting in the parking lot of the Food Shop in downtown Truckee on Donner Pass Road but a Wright's truck crew taking their first break of the day, I suppose. Truckee is two hours behind us in time. Then, when I got to the lake, what did I run into again but a Wright's Tree Service work crew of several trucks.

Peonies Poppy Flower

Lost the seed that I saved from last year.

The new water tower is finished and the old is being disassembled by cutting torches. There are two men in the cage suspended from the crane and one man on the catwalk below.

When I got to the stop sign to go down under the Santa Fe Trail trail head, when I came up on the Filtration Building Guard Shack, the discovery that I made there last year was twice as big, twice a beautiful, twice as large blooms as before, that I gasp in excitement. The whole area was planted in peonies-poppy flowers standing  three feet tall.Two weeks ago I was there looking to see if any had sprouted and were coming up for last year or to see that there was some evidence that the service landscaper had been there and planted for this year to no avail. It is one of those lessons I learned a very long time ago. You have to make a route and stick to it to see the heart beat of what is in that area you have blocked out that fits your Mission Statement ( it's printed in the head banner of this blog).

This was the first blooming when they were just totally radiant! With severe storms tomorrow with hail, damaging winds and heavy rain, they, most likely will be beat down like pulp. They may come back but not like I was able to capture them today. It was a gift to be able to see that beauty in this time when every one seems to be depressed. It seems that people today are more interested in how their body looks, the cloths they wear or the car they drive than the "simple" beauty of such a flower.

When I go to bed tonight, I'll make a prayer for those poor souls and thank God for His Grace that He gives me each day to see the beauty of the earth.