Orangish Blue Sky – Beautiful!

It had almost stopped raining so I went out the back door to look at the puddles on the yard.  The pine trees and the wooden fence had an orangish glow to them so I came back in the house and looked out the front room window and the sky was in total awesomeness!  There was even a smidgen of a rainbow showing through.  Where it was darker, the rainbow did not show up in my photos but the sky showed up in all its brilliance!

After taking the photos of the sky I came in the house and sat in the chair when I heard the rain pounding our roof.  Yeah! 

Just a thought………..do you think God got his artistic talents from his Heaven Father or his Heavenly Mother?

Rain/Happy Dance…Same Thing – Right?!

This morning we had a few little spittle rains but nothing worth mentioning.  This evening around 6:30 p.m. we had a nice rain storm.  Exciting, exciting, exciting!  We haven’t had rain in our valley for quite some time now and everything is really dry.  I’ve been watering my potted plants on a daily basis and we’ve been watering the garden a lot.  One of my most favorite things about rain is listening to the thunder.  Love thunder.  I also love to watch a good lightening storm but those can be quite dangerous.  While taking the following video, I didn’t even notice that near the end, my poor husband is walking along the fence line, making his way to our home to get out of the rain.  He was out changing the wheel lines when the storm hit.

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Catching a photo of the rain flowing out of our rain gutter.

My husband decided to place a bucket under the water coming from the rain gutter and in no time, the bucket filled to the top.

From this picture that was taken to the right-hand side of our home, you would never know we were getting a rain storm.  The sky is a gorgeous blue with fluffy white clouds.

But then, just barely above the prettiness, there are beautiful, dark rain clouds.

And, further out, the entire sky is dark – Yeah!  Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.  Singing the Christmas song “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” but replaced the word with rain. 

My Little Hummingbirds/Hummers

I just love watching hummingbirds.  They are so fun to watch, flitting here, there and everywhere.  The flit so fast that you can actually hear them as they zoom past your head and around the feeders.  They are constantly fighting over their feeders.  The last few days, I’ve been making their nectar a lot.  We started out with only two hummers and now we are up to eight.  I have three feeders placed around our home and yard and it still seems like they all want the same feeder at the same time.  Sometimes, they actually seem to tolerate each other and many of them feed on one feeder at the same time.  While taking this video, it was one of the mornings they were some-what getting along.

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Tiger Lily In Bloom and Marigolds

Wow…..amid the heat and shortage of much-needed rain, sprouts a tiger lily.  I haven’t seen this tiger lily bloom for quite a few years.  We have a fairly large patch of lilies that haven’t bloomed but tucked off to the side under a lilac bush and another tree, these lilies have decided to bloom.  I first noticed them yesterday while I was out watering the lawn.  The sun was a bit too bright and I decided not to take a picture at that time because I thought the sun would wash out the picture.  First thing this morning when I got out of bed, I headed for the lily patch to get a picture of the gorgeous lily I had seen the previous day.  Ah, feeling bad I didn’t get the picture because in it’s place was a wilted, dead lily.  When I came in the house and looked out the window a few hours later, two different lilies had bloomed………….that was fast!  It’s strange how just this one stalk from my lily bed has decided to bloom.  Good enough for a few pictures.

In my front flower bed I have a planter containing marigolds.  I’ve never really had marigolds before because of their smell.  Although pretty, I think they are one of the stinkiest (I know, not a real word, but hey, it fits) flowers.  So, just look at how pretty a marigold is, without considering their smell.

It’s Grandma Time

First off, let me just say………….Woot, woot, yippee, hurray, happy dance, etc.  The time has come when I can honesty say, I’M GONNA BE A GRANDMA!  Did I say I was happy?  Sure did, maybe not in so many words, but…………..!!  Amber, my daughter, is 11 weeks and 6 days pregnant.  The baby’s arrival time has been set for January 31, 2014.  It’s a long story as to how they told us (both sets of parents) and if and when I get the video of the whole procedure, I will post it.  But as for now, you will just have to be satisfied with the beautiful, first taken, pictures of our grandbaby!

Whoa……hold on a minute.  Can you see in that last picture what I just saw.  Look close, I’m sure you can see it.  It’s there, I know it is.  Keep looking!  Ok, I’ll point it out to you.

Wings folks, those are wings.  I can’t wait for our precious little angel to be born!

StoveTec…When It’s Too Hot To Cook

Oh my….who would have thought that Idaho would be this hot for such a long time.  Most people where I live do not even have air conditioning in their homes because it really doesn’t seem to get too hot here.  But for some reason, I’m really feeling the heat this summer, and it’s only mid July.  Not wanting to heat up the house by cooking/baking, I asked my husband if he would start up his StoveTec so we could roast hotdogs outside.  I had made a potato salad earlier in the day to go along with the hotdogs which made for a tasty meal and a cooler house.  The StoveTec we purchased comes in pretty handy when you want a little fire without the worry of starting a fire because of all the dried out foliage from all the heat and lack of rain.  It also makes very little smoke so you don’t have to keep moving your chair around to avoid smoky eyes.  The StoveTec keeps the fire contained in one little area!  We used one of the Fire Starters that I had made earlier and then just put the wood on top of the starter to get things going.  Our StoveTec has two doors, enabling us to control the heat.  This is a nice emergency supply item to have in case it’s too hot to cook in the house or in case you have a power outage…..OR!

Mormon Graffiti

As you are driving from Utah to Idaho, there is an old dilapidated block structure along the side of the highway just before you get to Tremonton, Utah.  I have no idea what the structure used to be but I sure know what it is now…………….we just call it the Mormon graffiti place.  It has been there since my children were little and I’m sure by the looks of it, a lot longer than that and my oldest child is 30.  There are also a lot of other writings on this structure but the ones that stick out most to us are the “Welcome Home Elder” writings.  Too Funny!  As a rule, I despise graffiti but this structure is not a natural structure like rocks, mountains or something of value and I think in general, that people really have fun with it.  It’s always different and it’s fun to read everything on it as you travel that stretch of the road.  On my way home from Utah a few weeks ago, this is what was on the old structure.  Whoever created the writings and artwork on the structure this time, really outdid themselves.

Loristica Camp Out

Amber (daughter), Corey (son-in-law), and Corey’s parents came to our home yesterday.  We took Corey 4-wheeling up to Loristica a few weeks ago when he was here and said he’d like to come back when his parents were visiting and take them camping.  Amber, Corey, and his parents stayed the night but due to my husbands work schedule on the farm, we had to come back home after spending a few hours there.  It’s a beautiful place and we did enjoy eating a hobo dinner and roasting marshmallows to make smores and……………..

My husband is forever making up concoctions of different varieties of food.  It just so happened that we took up some lemon brownies and my husband took it from there.  Instead of the regular graham cracker, chocolate and marshmallow smores that we were all intending on having, my husband decided to put his chocolate bar on top of his lemon brownie and top that with his roasted marshmallow.  Actually, I made myself one and it really tasted good.  Very rich, but good.

Corey was the caretaker of the fire. 

We also had a little visitor that seems to have formed a relationship with my explorer.  He stayed by the vehicle the entire time we were there.  I was even thinking at one point that he might hitch a ride back down the canyon to our home.

Goldenrod Spider

I went outside this afternoon to water a plant I have sitting on a pedestal on the front corner of our home when I spotted a spider.  I’ve never seen a yellow spider before so I thought I’d better get a photo of it.  I was leery about getting too close because I didn’t know if this spider was an attacker, jumper, poisonous, or just what it did.  After taking the photos, I came in and immediately started a Google search to find out all the details I could on this particular spider.  Upon my research, I found out that it is a Goldenrod Spider, which is a member of the crab spider family.  It can camouflage itself changing its color from white to yellow.  The one in my picture happens to be a female.  Males are a dark reddish-brown, with a whitish abdomen with dark red streaks.  Goldenrod Spiders are very helpful to gardeners, eating pests and controlling the fly, bee, and wasp population.  The bite of a Goldenrod Spider is not harmful to humans.  Actually, I am not a spider person and even writing about this spider is giving me the creepies!  Thus, a very short blog!

Rainbow Clouds

A few weeks ago when my sister was up visiting from Utah, we were going through the pictures on her camera when she showed me these cloud pictures that she took.  Awesome!  I’ve never seen anything like these clouds before.  I looked it up on the internet to see just why they had the colors in them and this is what it had:  What causes this effect?  It’s pretty simple, actually.  Ice crystals in the clouds act as little prisms, breaking up the sunlight into its component colors and spreading them out.  It’s essentially the same thing that causes “real” rainbows, except with ice and not water droplets.  The angle between the sun, the cloud, and you is important as well, but the essential ingredients needed for this effect are icy clouds and sunlight.  That’s it.

I also found the following:   These colorful clouds are called iridescent clouds, and the phenomenon is called cloud iridescence or irisation. The term comes from Iris, the Greek personification of the rainbow. It’s similar to the colors you might see when oil lies on the surface of a puddle of water. When you see a cloud like this, you know there are especially tiny ice crystals or water droplets in the air. Larger ice crystals produce solar or lunar halos, but tiny ice crystals or water droplets cause light to be diffracted – spread out – creating this rainbow-like effect in the clouds.

I at least know the reason behind her cloud pictures and hopefully someday I will get the opportunity to take such beautiful cloud pictures of my own.

Bumble Bee Taking Up Residency

I have this potted plant sitting on my back porch and this bumble bee literally lived on this plant for a week.  It was the strangest thing.  He was there almost the entire time, just moving from one flower to the next.  Another bee took up residency by the side of him but he only lasted for a couple of days.  We use the back entrance to our home 99.9% of the time and even with us using the porch multiple times, he never seemed to be bothered by us.  He didn’t even move when I got up close to take these pictures.  Then one day, he was just gone, never to return.

Meet D.T.

D.T. is a Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish) that I purchased in Utah during the 4th of July.  Since putting my favorite pet, Chip (17 1/2 year old dog), to sleep on December, 2010, I thought it was time I needed to get another pet.  I’ve never really considered a fish as too much of a pet but D.T. is pretty fun to have around.  I placed his little home by my chair in the living room.  I came up with his name the first day I purchased him.  D.T. stands for “Dead Tomorrow”.  I’ve purchased Betta’s before and it doesn’t seem like they have a very long life expectancy, thus the name.  It states on the internet that they usually live from 2-4 years in captivity.  So far, so good.  D.T. really likes attention and he even follows my finger around as I place it in front of his tank.

When I bought D.T., I also purchased the recommended food to feed him but he doesn’t seem to like it much.  He is, however, eating more now than he did at first.  I put his little fish flakes on top of the water and it floats around the top until he decides to eat.

At first, his tank looked a little boring so I printed off a background to put on the back of his tank.  I printed it off on photo paper which was a mistake.  Bettas flare or puff out their gill covers in order to appear more impressive, to intimidate other rivals.  By using the shiny photo paper, it acted as a mirror when he got close to it so it made him show his buffy manliness.

I didn’t want to get him too upset so I printed off a new background on cardstock so it would not be shiny.  At first he continued to puff up but now he’s gotten more used to it, he doesn’t flare out too much and he’s acting more like my mild little D.T.