Spring is here!
Brief news of the last few weeks: Amelia had her right knee replaced on March
15. She is having a good recovery, and working hard with her physical
therapy and exercises to make it all work. Her sister, Becky, came
on the 27th of March to stay with us and help out for two weeks. Thanks
to Mark and Darla for bringing her down. Sorry, got no pictures of them.
Good help it was, too. Don came a week or so later. Hailey came for
Easter (on Good Friday) with our new Granddog, Tate. More on that later.
Daffodil Hill
By April 3rd, Amelia was stir crazy enough that we took a little trip up to
Shady Cove to see the Daffodil Hill area. It was a little late for prime
viewing, but we saw
some fields of daffodils,
some
daffodils close up,
and a couple of
turkeys. We had
lunch at the
Two Pines Smokehouse in Shady Cove. Yummm! Then we drove on up to
the Lost Creek Dam. Below the dam there is a nice area for walking along
the Rogue River, but the visitor center was closed. People were fishing
on the river. I got a "sort of" picture of a small
blue butterfly. Well,
it's the blue speck on the left side of the picture. I now confess that I
got no pictures of Don and Becky. Next time I'll remember to correct that
sad state of affairs. I hope.
Brief update to flower pictures. We have
California poppies
coming on pretty strong, and the
lilacs are out all
over the valley.
Hailey and Tate come for my birthday
As I mentioned, Hailey and the new granddog, Tate, came up from Palo Alto
for a few days. She was hankering for a new hairdo, so she went in to Ashland
looking normal ( I should have taken a "before" picture, but wasn't expecting
the magnitue of change! - well, I went back and dredged up an old picture and
cropped the other folks out of it - thanks to whoever took it a couple of
months ago, and thanks to
Hailey for sending it
to me). Here is an
"after" picture, and
another
with Tate. Hey!
Matching hairdos. Here's
another against the
blue sky. Tate's not a one person dog, as here he seems
pretty happy with me.
Birthdays, we have birthdays
My birthday was on Easter Sunday this year, the 4th time in the last 33 years!
At eleven year intervals, by golly. Interesting to look at the sequence of
years at which Easter is on certain (possible) dates. Possible means
March 22 to April 25. For more information on the determination of the date
for Easter, see the
Astronomical
Society of South Australia website on the matter. Or, Eric Weisstein
has lots of information on these matters. The Paschal Full
Moon is an artifical thing, and may or may not occur on the same day as the
real full moon. Anyway, Easter is on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full
Moon, which is always after the 20th of March (by definition, I reckon). But I
digress. But one more digression. Eric Weisstein has lots of great information
at
Eric
Weisstein's World of Science. Have a look.
Well, anyway, here's the
happy birthday crew
on the deck on Easter. Earlier, Tate had been getting a little training in
the old cookie on the
paw trick while Amelia looks on. Afterward he looks
quite content.
The afternoon was gorgeous, so we took a ride out to Emigrant Lake.
For the first time, on Easter Sunday, Tate really got into his Lab-ness.
He went
way out into the Lake
to
fetch a stick
(or was that a log?). On shore, I got a little better shot of a (different)
butterfly. But only
slightly better. Finally after drying off, Tate and crew were ready to
head for home.
And then, Tax time
Well, yes, but I finished up a day early this year, so today I had time to
take a picture of
Amelia's knee, the
one behind which the new joint resides. Pretty nice looking scar, eh? I also
had a little time after the SOLIR classes and before the rain to work on
chipping up the old
yard waste. I've got the pile to be chipped and shredded down pretty
pretty small, with the chip pile from last fall (foreground, left), and last
spring (background, left - the red pile is lava rock - no chipping there),
and the current pile behind the shredder. Wish everything you can see was
all that is left, but I've still got things to haul over, and more trimming
to do, too. Ah, the life of a gentleman "farmer". One of the things this
has in common with real farming is that I get no income from it.