But today I got ambitious and did up a few recent pictures for one of my infamous "What I've been up to lately" posts. A lot of them this time have to do with flowers.
It's spring here. It got nice and warm for quite a while. Warm enough for my wife's tulips to bloom. Umm ... that should be "tulip," not "tulips." Only one of them bloomed this year. It was pretty while it was open. If you've ever seen Grnidlady's amazing flower pictures--constantly dazzling--you'll see that I'm nowhere close to her photo quality.
More and more wildlife is out and about. One night, I saw some deer on a hillside along the road, right at sunset. They were about a quarter mile away, and when they were against the hillside, they were hard to pick out from the hillside. But then one climbed up to the top and was silhouetted by the sky. Very nice. Maybe I'll get that one ready for next time. Anyway, I said aloud that I wished the deer were closer ... and word must have gotten around. In the next half hour, three deer ran right in front of my car.
On the way home from another track meet, I saw these two jaywalkers crossing the two-lane road that leads toward the setting sun ... and home. Gobble, gobble.
The weather had been warm and dry for a long time. But things have certainly changed. For the last week, we've gotten plenty of rain. A huge storm has sat over the Midwest U.S. for the last few days--on the radar, it looked like a slow-motion hurricane. We wound up near the rain-snow line, and we wound up with sleet. You could hear it clicking off windows, but it looked like rain falling down. The snow was to the west.
It sure created a mess. If you've driven in slush, you know how difficult a slushy road is. And so, on the night of May 11, they had the plows out, pushing away the slush.
We went to visit my mom on Friday. My wife had a doctor's appointment nearby, and she delivered a lightweight quilt she had just finished--soon, my mom's winter quilt will be too warm.
My mom has added a new cat to her collection, and this one is a robotic cat. Sort of. When you pet its head, it goes "Meow, meow, meow!" And when you stroke its back, you hear "Purr, purr, purr" and the cat's body expands and contracts, as if it's breathing. That's the black cat in this picture. The brown and white cat is the one we gave her for Christmas. Both the cats are on the new quilt, and the new quilt is on top of the old (heavy) quilt she has used all winter.
If you want to know more about robotic cats, here are two links from Honeyvizer's site. Petster is the first robotic kitty, from the 1980s, and the story is a hoot to read. The other one is about a 21st century Japanese robotic cat. But you have to know Japanese to read it.
I was fretting for most of today (Saturday) what to do about Mother's Day. We had eaten out several times recently, twice on our trip Friday. The cards didn't look too inspiring. But then, when entering the drug store, I saw what I was looking for. Her favorite flower.
Happy Mother's Day to all you moms and future moms and someday moms.
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