Skywatch

The granddaughters were here this last weekend and we had gone out to the studio to work on crafts (a later post). Grandpa called out to the studio and told us we should be getting pictures of the sunset, so out we went. The sky was ablaze!

The younger granddaughter, being the precocious child that she is, decided to divide the clouds with her mighty staff. (It appears that the lamppost in the lower right was also leaving skid marks on the clouds.)

Walking to the backyard we found that the moon had been treed.

The older granddaughter freed it and held it aloft so it could find it's place. She needs no one to give HER the moon, she can capture it herself.

The clouds looked so much like fluffy frosting that the older granddaughter decided to give it a taste and took a long sample with her finger. Must've been like Cotton candy.

The following night was much darker with heavy clouds. When the moon broke through I found she that calls herself The Mysterious One cupping the moon to give it relief from weight of the clouds.

I hope you enjoyed our skywatch pictures as much as we enjoyed creating them. :)

Baby It's HOT Outside!

We're under a heat advisory and it's so hot that the grandkids are in the AC instead of the pool. I've been getting up early to water and tend to my garden and yard. Not doing ANY yard work afternoon till it starts cooling down.

My zucchini have started producing. The plants this year are growing like I remember the first zucchini I ever planted. Tighter and bushier. The zucchini plants the past couple of years spread out more, like vines.
I've got everything planted pretty tight, as usual. My 'three sisters' beds are REALLY tight. That would be corn in the four corners, acorn squash in the middle and pole beans between the corn. We'll just have to see how they do.
The birdhouse gourd vines are really taking off. The flowers on these are quite interesting.
I think 4th of July was the last rain we've had. There have been stormy looking clouds, but no storms. Not here anyway. The cloud below looked a lot brighter when I first saw it. By the time I got back with my camera it was a bit more subdued.
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. I've been trying to get the grands over to swim in the pool as often as they can. I think PK would live in the pool if we let her. She's quite the little swimmer.

Boy Invasion & Angry Sky

Friday a group of boys took over my studio. The big screen is still set up from SuperBowl and my son came over the other day and hooked up the xbox to all of it. Three of my grandsons...
and three of KMonster's friends came over Friday after school to take over my studio to play xbox and have fun. The two younger grandson's left after supper but the KMonster and his friends spent the night in the studio.

That afternoon dark clouds started moving in. Do you see the angry face on the horizon in the picture below. I didn't have my camera when I first saw the eyes in the sky so they had closed up a bit by the time I took this picture.

In the picture below there's a beam of sunlight shining through above the antenna on the water tower. The beam is hitting the clouds at the top right of the picture making them pink.

It's the time of year for storms again. Today we had rain and this evening there was thunder and lightening. Oklahoma had the first tornado (that I have heard) of the season.

Awesome Beauty & Destruction

Wednesday night, July 8, 2009 I stepped out on my front porch to check on something and noticed the beautiful cloud to the north. I went back inside and got my camera to take the following shots...
...walking out in my yard to see the rest of the cloud I see this to the west...

...Fluffy white clouds on top with the brilliant orange from the sunset...

...the south end of the west cloud had straighter lines...

...in the darker blue/gray area on the horizon, lightening was visible...

...click on any of the pictures to get a larger view.

After taking the pictures I go back into the house to look at them on the computer. While sitting there I see the radar screen on one of the TV stations with the weatherman interrupting the scheduled programing. I turn up the volume and hear that Wichita is getting pelted with huge hailstones. These were coming from this beautiful cloud that I was taking pictures of...

July Hail Storm Slams South-Central KS

A summer thunderstorm slammed south-central Kansas on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Here are some of the more spectacular hail reports...

9:29 p.m. -- baseball-sized hail reported two miles southwest of downtown Wichita; car damage.

9:30 p.m. -- baseball-sized hail reported in downtown Wichita; damage to many vehicles at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, where a crowd of more than 4,000 people was attending the Wichita Wingnuts baseball game; windows broken out; hail fell for about a half hour.

10:10 p.m. -- tennis ball-sized hail reported two miles east-southeast of downtown Wichita, near the College Hill neighborhood.

See complete article here.

Moon, Sun and Sky

I managed to get a fairly decent picture of the 2009 Perigee full moon on Saturday the 10th. I love the colors of the sky in this picture and, unlike some of my pictures, I didn't do anything to it in photoshop other than rename it. I didn't even resize this one, so if you click on it to see it better, be forewarned, it's HUGE!
On the 13th my grandson called me from his mother's cell phone telling me to get my camera and go take a picture of the sun and clouds. Below is what I saw, and took a picture of. I haven't asked them what it was that they saw, they were about 30 minutes west of me, so I don't think we were seeing the same thing.

But about 30 minutes later I noticed the sky had gone red, so I went back out with my camera and got the picture below.

Of course, pictures never do these sunsets justice. : )

Lovell Family Reunion 2008 - Page 1

We arrived at our lodging, Savannah Suites, in Arvada Colorado around 1:30 pm on Friday, August 1. We decided to get a bite to eat, so my sil and I took a walk down the street to a Walgreen to pick up a few things, then across the street from the suites to Popeye's for some chicken and sides. We stopped at a convenience store for some cold drinks on the way back. When checking out the facilities at the suites we ran into a couple other cousins that said there were others at the hosts home so we decided to drive over and visit.
When we got there, everyone had gone. We figured they had gone out to eat because of the hour we arrived.
Below is a shot looking down the end of their road.
Early on Saturday morning we all gathered at the hosts home and caravaned out into the mountains...

...through tunnels...
...to Silver Plume.
Here we got together to ride on a narrow gauge railroad called the Georgetown Loop.
I took many, many pictures, so I've tried to cut it down to just a few...
The train took turns that allowed a view of the cars ahead. You can see in the shot below a picture of one of the cousins taking a picture of us taking pictures of her. I haven't gotten a copy of her picture yet.

Just a shot of mountains ahead.
Here we're approaching a bridge that we're getting ready to cross.
This bridge is a recreation of the actual bridge that was originally here.
Can you see the town in the valley? I think this is Silver Plume.
This one is looking down from the bridge. See the track? A road runs under the bridge also.

This shot is looking back at the bridge as we descend down the side of the mountain.
Here we come back around and travel under the bridge.
Below the engine is put on the the other end of the train and we head back to the Silver Plume depot.
Back over the bridge.
Here's another shot of the town. Can you see it?

On the trip back our tickets get punched.
I took lots of pictures of the streams that we crossed, here's just one of them.
If you click on this one, you can see the engine better. One of the engineers is standing on a step on the side. I'm afraid I'd get vertigo standing out over the edge of the mountain like that.
Here's another cloud shot. What does it look like to you? (cont. below picture)
My friend watching the house while we were gone said the same thing I did initially. It looks like a butterfly. But when I looked at it again, it looks like a "W", which is the friends first initial.

Below is an engine pulling another engine from the engine house to move it to the other side of the engine house.

One of the passenger cars setting on a side track.
Some of the pretty little flowers growing around the depot.
Walking down a side track in front of the depot I came to the end of the track and a pile of rail spikes. Growing next to the rusty spikes were these pretty little daisies.
And the engineer waves goodbye as he heads out with another load of tourists to see the mountains and maybe visit the silver mine.
More Lovell Reunion to come...