Stone Face

Some people look for figures in clouds, my husband looks for faces and, especially, hearts in rocks. Can you see the face in the rock below? This is the natural groves and shades in the rock as it was found.
This rock was a double bonus, do you see the heart on the bottom right? A rock with heart.

Is it Spaghini or Zucchetti?

I was wondering if I was going to have this problem. After all my plants started coming up I realized that I probably should have put the spaghetti squash were the cantaloupe is and cantaloupe where the spaghetti squash is next to the zucchini.
The question is.... How should I cook it? Do you think it will have solid meat like zucchini or fall into strings like spaghetti? Either squash has little flavor so I don't think that will be and issue, but the spaghetti I scrape the seeds out of and the zucchini I eat the seeds. Can the spaghetti seeds be eaten? Also, the skin of the zucchini can be eaten but the spaghetti skin is too tough. What do you all think?

Daily Harvest - Sunset

So far, the harvest from my garden has been green. I've been getting lots of zucchini, and I haven't been letting them get very large if I can help it. The cucumbers are just starting to produce and the onions are still small. The lettuce and arugula have been producing just enough for my hubby and I to each have a small salad for dinner. I'm seeing tiny watermelon and cantaloupe and am eagerly watching the spaghetti squash and loaded tomato plants. I've got itty bitty okra and carrots and cabbage with wholly leaves. I've also been squishing cucumber and squash beetles. I never know from day to day what I'll get, it's always wait and see, but it's doing great for as late as I got it in.
It just finished raining again, I think we missed out on the bad winds this time, but there sure was a lot rain. The sun's shining again but there's still dark clouds all around us. Below are a couple of sunset shots that I took last week...

California Vistors

My Uncle (Dad's brother) and Aunt from California stopped at mom and dad's for a visit last week. They had just been for a visit to see new great-grandtwins in Texas and after their visit here they were on to a driving tour with (I think) General Conference Mennonite group. I didn't quite catch everything my Aunt said that they were going to do but she was excited to be a part of it.
Friends and family in Wichita got together one evening for dinner at Home Town Buffet.

Seems like this is just something that family does, gather for a meal and conversation, only nowadays a lot of times we opt for eating out rather than at someone's home.
Sorry about the blurred shot, I seemed to have focused in on mom and dad in the forefront.
Below is a long-time friend. I remember he and I walking across a field in west Wichita as kids to visit a pet store the had exotic pets in it. Those fields are no longer there, they've filled with homes, stores, churches and schools.
This is my friend with his lovely wife and step-daughter and my folks. Gotcha! LOL
We all had a wonderful time and way too much to eat.

Cardio Mike's Boot Camp - Wichita - 2nd Week

Are you ready to get to work, Cardio Mike?

Boot Camp - Week 2 - at Genesis Wichita starts with stretches to get warmed up.

This session everyone partnered up. First was the "knee game". The object was to touch your partners knee more often than they can touch your knees. The loser got to do push ups.
The knee game was a lot of fun to watch and it looked like they had a lot of fun participating.
Another partner exercise involved a towel around your partners waist and attempting to keep them from crossing the room. This was quite a challenge for some of them.
Cardio Mike kept them moving...
Then down on the floor for more partner workouts...

Back to using the towel putting a twist on leg lifts...
Then to partner sit ups...
...Jumping Jacks...
...grab a chair and work it...
...step up, step down...

...you're sitting, but you're far from relaxing. Lift those legs!
...let's hear ya, Work It!
Finally the cool down with more stretches.
WARNING! Photoshopped picture next!

I told you (you know who you are) that I was going to do this. But remember, YOU were the one who said it!

Wildlife in My Yard

These are photos that I have taken on various days recently. Below is a turkey vulture that was circling over my block. Must have been slim pickins out in the country for it to come looking in the city. It didn't hang around long.
This is a paper wasp getting ready to take wood fibers from the pallet back to it's hive. I've had an unusually large number of these around this year. I've read that they are natural predators for beetles and things that do damage to the garden, but I've had a couple of grandsons stung by these so I've been knocking them down when I find them. What a dilemma.
I don't know what this little bug is, I've see quite a few of them around. The picture isn't focused real well because the little guy just didn't want to stand still.
One morning I was surprised to find this baby bird in my garden. It just sat there while I walked all the way around it and then came in for a closeup. I turned my back on it to pick lettuce and when I looked back it was gone. No clue as to where it went.
This was a really strange spider. When it sat still it pulled it's legs in next to it. I tapped beside it with a stick and got it to run, looked like your average spider, but then it stopped and pulled in it's leg.
Now this next one is really strange. I've taken this picture with the macro lens, the bug is only actually about 1/4 inch long. It has wings on it's back that stand up at right angle to it's body and look like one circular piece. My grandson found this bug crawling around on the down locus tree.

Remember the gold fly? Now here's a green one. This was in my pool filter, so it was dead when I found it.
Had to get a shot of the full moon, it was a brilliant orange that night.
This bird is a Mockingbird and often sits on top of the utility pool while I'm in the garden and sings and chatters and just makes all sorts of noise.
This is one of the two bunnies that dine on my lawn. I think this might be the female. The other bunny is a bit larger and more colorful. They seem to be letting me get closer to them before they run.
And finally a beautiful overcast sky with a mixture of light and dark.

A Day With the Grands (cont. from yesterday)

After swimming the grandkids decided to have a nice game of Chinese checkers in the shade of the new shelter.
The day was a bit overcast, but a wonderful day for spending outside. With all the rain we've had everything is green and growing. You can see my garden to the left.
You can see a little of the damage caused by the Kansas winds. The frame across the front awnings is bent. I forgot to mention the the additional frame pieces came from an old dog kennel.

In the background of the shelter you can catch glimpses of my old van. It was still running when it was parked here several years ago, but had problems. The battery has since run down so I don't know if it would even start now. I have been using it for storage for tents and such and it has a bed in the back that the kids have slept in instead of a tent. The grandkids have also decided that it is their new clubhouse/playhouse. Though they have a lovely playhouse built specially for them, they prefer to play in a van (which convinces me that they are gypsies or maybe hippies). I was sitting comfortably reading in the shade of the shelter and my older granddaughter came and asked if I would put that "thing" up on the van, you know, with the poles and the rope? Oh, you mean the tarp. And what would I get out of doing this? "Well, you can come back and sit down and relax when you get done." Huh?
Guess I shouldn't have asked. She also set up her beauty shop and seemed to have pretty good business...
...at one point she told her sister to wait there, her hair needed to sit for 10 minutes before she could do anything else and she climbed into the van. She commented that she would be in the other room while she waited. Her 10 minutes was only like 10 seconds.
As you saw in my previous post, I moved the grill into the end of the structure and set up a table and chairs. Then I grilled hot dogs and a few steak kabobs, I had fresh zucchini to put on these also. Afterward the kids went swimming again and once I got things cleaned up from the BBQ I got a fire going in the firepit. The kids made s'mores as it was getting dark. Then we watched "National Treasures 2" on the big screen on the side of the house.
The oldest grandson had brought the movie over and when it finished the girls went downstairs to bed and another movie while the boys played a few games of Xbox on the side of the house. It was a long day, but they all had fun, and I almost got some reading done.

NO, It's NOT a Cattle Chute!

Earlier in the year my daughter brought me the remains of the frame for the safety net that was on their trampoline. We discussed the possibility of making some sort of shelter using them but didn't get any details. After finding I had source for pallets I decided that I could create half walls the width of the frame with them and then slide the frame inside the pallet and have a pretty stable structure. I could get the pallet for free and I had a pile of metal fence posts so all I needed to purchase was a large tarp to cover it all. With four frame pieces my structure turned out fairly long and thin and I had more than one person ask why I was building a cattle chute in my back yard....
I thought I had taken a picture of it before putting the tarp on but I don't find one. Below is a picture from the front....
...this is looking at it from the street. I put a "doorway" on either side at opposite ends. Not too bad for the cost, though, don't you think?
This is a later picture with the back flap down, I had lowered both sides when storm had come in. It suffered some wind damage and I do have some repairs that I need to make on the tarp where it attaches to the frame for the awning. Tarps often don't last long in the Kansas wind if it can get up under them.
If you notice, in the picture above, there is an electrical outlet inside the structure also. This is also the reason I haven't gotten a lot of posts up on my blog lately. I've been spending a lot of time out in the yard.
Wednesday the grandson from Wichita was out to visit and he always calls his buddy over, the grandson that played ball this summer. I told him to ask if the girls could come over too, so they could swim....

...to be continued...