sedona 2008

these pics are from my trip this year to sedona with my mom in september. i love that place!

snake v. lizard

snake gets a meal. and as steve irwin would say, "isn't she gorgeous!" i got this little bit of rarely seen predation is Sedona at Montazuma's well.

pretty bird?

i witnessed this bit of interplay just below my balcony.

better late bloggin' now than never

okay so i'm a little late... i haven't blogged for a while. but i have found a moment in which to update you on all the curiosities i have recently encountered. well, somewhat recently. i have some bits and pieces on wild things and wild places. and i have about 10 million photos i need to upload to flickr.

okay, so looked above..

no! not above you, silly. above this post.

wo!

wo, i need to blog.

sweet rocks

so i have some ants on my deck. i'm okay with that as long as they stay on the deck in manageable numbers. if things change, i'm ready to take some action. mona helen has informed me, that as well as warding off evil spirits, sage is particularly distasteful to ants. but for now, they have not shown a desire to enter my prime territory.

in fact, they've been helpful so far. they seem to be contented cleaning up the odd mess that has besmirched my deck. a dead bug here and a drop of stray hummingbird food there. yesterday i found them chowing on this particularly well-formed drop on the railing. it was quite fascinating. you can actually see their normally brown little abdomens filling up with the red liquid. i get the hummingbird food at the pet store and it's red.

this looks like a substantial sweet rock (reference from the animated movie the ant bully) for such small creatures, but they made short work of it as well as other sweet splashes.

at this point they are all but gone from this particular spot, leaving only a few scouts to send back news if another sweet rock should rain from the skies.

to see a larger view, click on the pics.

i got it

ya need the sound, okay?

cute pooper

tippy pooped. even when they poop, hummingbirds are cute.

tippy

well, this is tippy.

yes, you see, i have a resident hummingbird. he chases off any other hummingbird that tries to feed from my feeders. and he sits in the tree outside my deck all day and sings. i know his little voice.

luckily, i was able to filter out almost all the other noise in the soundtrack (cuz i'm clever like that) so you can get an idea of what he sounds like. his voice is decidedly bigger than he is.

i take lots of pictures of him when i'm sitting on my deck. he's very cute. sometimes he does a tiny little hummingbird poop.

isn't he just the cutest.

today sucked

today sucked.

lily got boxed

'nough said.

new chair!!

i got the new chair for my patio!! for those of you who may know the old chair, which i found by the trash bin in "less than decent but not horrific would still support the weight of a not too heavy person" condition, the new chair is a welcome addition to my balcony. and since the condition of the old chair had deteriorated significantly to just "not horrific," meaning, the cats could still sit on it. and it was shedding it's white bits all over the patio. disintegrating really. i should have taken a picture of it before i hoisted it over the balcony and put it back near the trash bin where i found it. but i have a couple pics that should give an idea. you can click on the pics to see them larger.

i must say, however, for whoever originally left it by that trash bin, that it was not done with its life, and i got a decent two more years out of it. furthermore, i think it's safe to say that it had died a few months before today when i finally hefted it over. so no chair suffering occurred here.

so here's to the new chair, may it live long and be comfy to my cats and me!! and look how clean it is around there! .......yay.

oh yeah, and mona helen, in her magnanimousness, helped me bring the chair home. she deserves a kudo or two, maybe three, okay four, (major kudos) for that. .........double yay.

i exercised!!

i exercised!! yay!

my bougainvillea

i must comment on my bougainvillea, because it's quite glorious. my bougainvillea has been through quite a lot. at one point it was all sticks and almost no leaves, and my cousin thought it was dead.

it's been through a frost.

but this summer it's happy and making pink leafy things be trod all over my house by the kitties.

my bougainvillea has been resilient. yay for my little boug!!

kitties for everyone

belle

lily

star

sunshine d

i just want to say that i have four cats. three white cats and one orange cat. no one says, "i think i'll get 4 cats." they say, "i think i'll get one cat or maybe two cats." but if you really like cats, and you're not allergic to them, and you have the means to care for them, they just seem to come into your life.

this does not make me a "cat lady." there's a stereotype of a mal-adjusted single woman who has a lot of cats; that this person is weird, anti-social, maybe a little crazy.

whatever. i just like cats. if a single woman has dogs, they don't call her a "dog lady" and assign her the same stereotypical label. if a single man has dogs or cats, no one thinks anything of it. and what if you have a bunch of reptiles?

that's okay. only one person has teased me about having more than what i guess is the "normal" amount of cats. that person basically said if you're single you really shouldn't have that many cats, but didn't tell me why. methinks, this person wouldn't have made the debate team.

so i put this to you, is there any adequate reason that a person should not have as many cats as they can well care for? for every cat that's adopted, for every cat i have, another cat is saved from euthanasia. the truth is no one who has ever poo-pooed the number of cats i have has ever been able to come up with any reason, much less a good one, why this is a bad thing or why i shouldn't have them. alrighty then, i think i'm winning this debate.

now that i have successfully defended my co-habitation with 4 cats, i must say that they are great cats, and i love them all dearly. they have been nothing but a joy, and i cannot imagine my life without them. plus, they are really good and well behaved and sweet and loving.

under water

sometimes i see clouds, and they make me feel like i'm underwater.

a bloggin' we go

so... i have spent quite a lot of time making sure the blog looks the way i want it to look within the constraints of the tools i have to work with. so now that it looks reasonable i will post a little post.

about today... today was not the greatest day, but yesterday wasn't too bad, and i have high expectations for tomorrow.

oh lord! i'm going to have to do better than this if i expect to be any sort of blogger. i suppose it's better to blog when you are actually feeling bloggish.

please be kind.