Happy day before New Year's Eve

Come on in and step back in time to late Autumn, 2008,
when brown was the color en vogue.

Brown is beautiful

because it isn't white-

snow white.

Sunrise

New Year's Day 2009

December 30, 2008
And one morning earlier that week

(Please don't) LET IT SNOW

If you want to see some great nature pics go to Nevada Outside. Unlike that good blogger, Sunny basically despises snow. But, seeing as how here in the desert it is politically incorrect to complain about any bit of precipitation that falls our way,

she managed to make a delightful adventure of the situation in spite of what appears to be a mysteriously missing upper body. Now if the predicted inches of white stuff don't fall again tonight, all will still be Sunny!

Follow-up Flowers

A few lovely dried roses still hanging on to the plant with a fine covering of frost as winter approaches tends to bring to mind some of the dear and kind older characters I used to take care of back in my home health nursing days.

A softer and more fragile kind of beauty than seen in earlier days to be sure-but still recognizable for what they once were. Are they valued for their very rarity?


Only the strongest ones remain for a bit longer. Many kinds of strength though. Were they the lucky ones? Ask them. They are a lovable lot. What's not to love?

Is it beginning to look a lot like ??

Ho ho
NO!

Ya don't see this everyday

It is Venus (?) and maybe Saturn or Jupitor cuddled up to the moon setting into the sunset. And, of course there is a story to go along with the photo. Yesterday evening, just as I was about to give the dryer a kick for wrinkling the hangables by conking out mid-spin AGAIN, Mr. Sunny called me from his evening commute with a pretty sunset alert. Forget about laundry! Wrinkles be 'slammed'! I dropped those clothes on the spot, grabbed the cameras, and sprinted for the upstairs deck. But, seconds count for that kind of thing, you know, so, by the time I was ready to record it, the glory moment had already waned westwardly, and the sun had pretty much settled in for the night. All was not lost though. It gave me opportunity to see that crescent moon thingy with those two almost-obscenely-bright heavenly bodies hovering boldly by. And, I got this picture.

And this one.

Already seen lots of good sunsets from the up deck anyway.

Bursts of Bright Delight

That starkly white N on a brown hill in the previous post might give the misconception that it was a dreary hike.
NOT!
Kind of like this most of the way.
It is still a pretty time of year here. And, SUNNY.

Not just N-ey place

You got to love those hillside letters.
What, you can't see it? That little white spot near the ridge is an "N". Click the pic to see it larger.

Here is a closer view. It was still a lot farther away than it looks.
And this is standing right on top of it, trying to get an angle that still looks like N-ey thing.

Welcome to Peaceful Places

Come on in.
Sit a spell.

Golden Glory

There's gold in them thar mountains?
Maybe not, but, look ahead to the right. Isn't that a bit of gold?
With all this, who needs gold?
Oh, there's the golden quaking aspen
quaking obligingly for the photo.

To the R

"R", he told me, "is for Rachel, my sister."
"It is for Ridge, too, I Reminded him, "and we are going much faRther than the R, way beyond that one up ahead."
The view was gReat, but the tRail was a lot haRder than it looked.
He was into rock, rock-star, and rocket by the time he pRoudly pointed out where we had Recently Returned fRom.
It was a happy boy who aRRived back to the 'civilized woRld.'
"TRuck"
"TRuckin'?"
"No Weh-soong-mo, we'Re hiking"
"Ri-i-i-ght!"

Featuring Fall

from the front yard,
Some of my favorite leaves are the bushes that turn red, and having one by the driveway is a treat. Historically this area gets its first serious cold snap just in time to ruin trick-or-treating. But this year we got one unseasonably early and then it warmed up again. Somehow this caused the red leaves to turn first but the color never got very bright. (It also caused the grapes to freeze on the vine before the flavor was in. Rotted them into such a nasty mess even the birds won't touch them.) The yellow color always seems to thrive.

Dog gone delighted

Had a lovely time on the phone with my sis today. She was making her first kimbop and I talked her through it. OK, she called it sushi and referred to the sea-weed as "nori", but, we're all on the same page. I made some too just so we could both blog about it. Hers will undoubtedly look better than mine. She's 'crafty'.

I was telling her about this other stuff she can try. The flavored rice is stuffed in these fried tofu pockets (called something like yooboo - buy 'em at the Korean market - oh yeah, she doesn't have one of those in small-town Maine. Oops, sorry sis).
Anyway, I took it all outside for the photos. I'm using Jimmy's camera while he has mine in France and I don't like the way his does indooors pictures. See the dog feigning disinterest while I hold up one for a close-up? Don't fall for it! That boy is GONE for people food.


Might as well let him have the yooboo now that he's contaminated the plate with dog slobber. See that blur? That is him scarfing one.


All gone buddy. Hope you don't get a stomach ache.








What a happy face!

Hunter's Moon

No annual harvest moon photo this year. We skipped right over Korean Thanksgiving. Only because of the harvest moon (which coincides with the holiday), was I barely aware of it passing us by. Can't even remember if I took a photo of 'the biggest full moon of the year.' So, I offer you instead

The Hunter's Moon(Heard about it on the radio today.)
It is the next full moon after the harvest moon. In days of yore it gave hunters a chance to chase game all night by the light of the moon. First they harvested all night by the harvest moon and a month later hunted all night by the hunter's moon. All of this activity pointed to the end of Summer's plenty and the need to shore up provisions for the coming of Winter's harsh scarcity. That is the legend anyway.

TTB (time to blog)

A last look (until next summer)
at my new favorite kayaking lake

So peaceful looking. This is an example of when a picture is NOT worth a thousand words. The actual story of how those last two shots came into existance is something that can most certainly not be told here. Anybody wants to know bad enough can e-mail me. Suffice it to say that the reason my blog is boring is that some of life's more interesting moments are not bloggable.

Summer's end

To bring in tourists, this area has annual late-Summer/early Autumn activities

hot august nights-old timey car show
burning man-you don't want to know
street vibrations-bikers in town
air races-I never go to this, a pilot dies almost every year

The best in my opinion is

the hot air balloon races

McArthur-Burney Falls State Park

Sometimes sudden serendipity..Sunny unexpectedly viewed a wonderful waterfall today.

I've been there before a few times previously...it is always the same "wonder-fall"

Here is how the river looks at the top just before it takes the plunge. Isn't that tiny waterfall before the big one the cutest thing?


Evidently lots of rivers have water underneath their bed, but this one has porous stones or some such thing that causes the water to shoot out the middle of the cliff as well as tumble over the top.


The scenic, well-maintained, trail connecting the upper and lower view-points was a delight.


Saw some nice picturesque stops along the way. This looks like an ideal place for a nice young couple to get photographed.


Right on cue, here they are! Ready for fame on Sunny's blog.