October 26, 2014

Hi everyone,

My wish and prayer for you this day and everyday is for happiness and health.

My current desktop photo is a pair of trees along the Osage River. I’ve photographed these trees before and Momma really liked them so I think of her when I see them. This morning on my run, the light was especially pretty and I took a few shots of them and they make a fabulous desktop picture too!

I had this photo of two deer at the river for a morning drink as a desktop photo for a while too. Something that you may not be able to see in my reduced size photo is there is a heron poking out from the left side of the tree.

The weather here has been perfect for the painting job that Mike and I have undertaken. We are painting our building from a gray color with maroon trim to a mustard with butterscotch trim. Only it’s more of golden mustard and not the traditional yellow stuff. Don’t laugh! I don’t know the names of the colors and that’s what they look like to me!

Do you see that tree there? I think it may be poison sumac and the only reason I say that is because I am covered with a rash. That and I read on the internet that poison sumac has red shoots. This tree has red shoots. My rash starts with a little bit on my forehead, comes down across my nose to the right side of my face, neck, upper chest and inside of my right arm. Geesh!

“Mike?” you ask. Well, he was up on the lift, operating it so he only got a tiny little bit on one arm.

This whole courtyard was overgrown with baby sumacs and mimosas and Mike had a guy come in with a bobcat and clear it so we could get in there with the scissor lift and paint. The only problem we had is Mike’s lift is heavy. Once he got off the concrete onto the gravel, the lift got stuck. We had to hook it up to the golf cart and between the two, we had enough power to get the lift back onto the concrete. Then we went to the construction site next door and got a whole bunch of castoff plywood and laid that down for Mike to drive on. There was at least one low spot and I had to make a foray into the undergrowth to find blocks and rocks to put under one corner of the plywood. I expect that was when I got into the poison.

The worst part of the whole Paint The Courtyard Ordeal was when we got the lift hung up on a sewer cap. It was caught right between the tire and the frame of the lift. We couldn’t go forward and we couldn’t go backward.

“We could hook it up to my truck and drag it out,” Gary, our helper suggested.

“Won’t work,” Mike said. “The lift is too close to the building.”

We ended up jacking up the lift and putting blocks under the tire. Once everything was in place to Mike’s satisfaction he drove right off the sewer cap. It worked like a dream.

“Gary? Your helper?” you ask.

Boy, you guys don’t miss a thing, do you?

We have known Gary for years and we hire him to do jobs around here. Winterize empty units, construction or de-construction, plumbing and electrical jobs. Gary can do a lot of things and that makes him just about the perfect maintenance man.

When we were at our mountain home in Pennsylvania, Mike hired Gary to take care of Luby’s while we were gone. Gary did a good job. He is an older gentleman and mostly retired. So when he gets up in the morning he likes having something to do. He would go visit the girls at the gas station and get his morning cup of java, then he would come through Luby’s and see if anything needed done.

Michael always needs help with the odd jobs that pop up around here, and Michael is a morning person too. I see a match made in heaven, don’t you?

We have hired Gary to stay on and be Mike’s Helper. He comes in around 9 on most mornings and checks to see if Mike has anything he needs to have done.

In the past it has always been Mike and I to clean up the leaves in the fall. This year, Gary helped him. That allowed me to the get the games dug out of the garage and cleaned up for the 15^th annual Halloween Party at Luby’s! YAY!

I just love our games! They were custom painted and they are beautiful! The lady who painted them for us did such a fabulous job!

Look at these squares for the cookie walk, would ya! Thirty-two different squares. As I washed the previous years dirt and grime from them and laid them out in the sun to dry, I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful they are! I know Barb worked hard on them-even though she is a fine artist and this was just plain fun for her! I just hope I am not the only one who appreciates them.

“Halloween party?” you ask.

Yep! Every year we host a Halloween party here at Luby’s for all the local kids. There is trick-or-treating all up and down the Strip at the local businesses and games here at Luby’s from 2 to 4 in the afternoon. We have three double sided bean bag tosses, a double-sided mini putt, a football toss, limbo, basketball, a checker board and a washer toss game for the kids. All with a HUGE basket of candy and toys for the kids to choose from after they play.

Now, I want to tell you a little about my experience manning one of the games but first I want to tell you what else was going on here at Luby’s, okay?

Great!

We also have a costume contest with CASH prizes and our friend Margaret is solely responsible for that. She puts up ALL the prize money and handles the registration-bless her heart!

We also have a dog costume and trick contest that a local pet groomer takes care of and she puts up all the prizes for that. Things like free grooming and boarding and obedience lessons and she goes to Pet-Co and gets them to donate stuff for it too.

We have other people who help too. There are volunteers to man the games and volunteers to help package the cookies for the cookie walk and mix the prize baskets and keep them full, and another business owner who has the flyers made up that go out in the school packets with the kids. There are people who come and decorate the party area with hay bales, pumpkins and mums. There are people who help set up and tear down and then help to sweep the whole mess up when it is over and done with!

It really is a community effort!

I was kind of cranky when the day started. Mike and Margaret used to be the only sponsors of the Halloween Party at Luby’s when it first started and now the Betterment Committee has joined forces with us. People showed up to help and everyone kind of did their own thing with no regard to what others were doing. That was when I played boss, aka-Queen Bitch. Later I had to apologize for that, but regardless, there were things that needed to be done.

Things got done and everything was done in plenty of time for the party to start.

Sometimes I fuss too much.

If you are as old as me (or older), you know how to play checkers.

Checkers are easy.

“It’s what we did before there were computers,” I told Meritza, Alex and Louise, three American born children of workers of the Mexican restaurant here at Luby’s.

They came to work with their parents so they could participate in the Halloween Party.

“Meritza-pizza.” That’s the way Alexandria told me how to remember to pronounced Meritza’s name, they rhyme. Meritza is 11 years-old, Louise is 12 and Alex is 8 years. Louise and Alex are brothers and are cousins to Meritza.

I taught them the rules to checkers.

I know, that’s scary, right?

But I am pretty confident I remember the rules.

And we had a great afternoon playing.

Meritza reminds me so much of that smart, beautiful lady I have the privilege and honor of calling my sister. She just plain gets it. She can track all the moves in her head, she is just so smart.

Alex makes his jumps too fast-without thinking.

Louise is kind of in the middle, he sees fast and he thinks fast.

I had a great time mentoring these kids and they want to learn chess next.

Now, for the most part, hosting a bean bag toss at a Halloween Party is great fun and there is always one or two kids you fall in love with. I can’t show you mine because I can’t host and take photos at the same time, but mine was a sweetheart and she came back lots of times to play with me and she was awesome! She was also about 4 years old and wore glasses and had funny looking teeth-but she was a real princess!

I let the dads play too.

I’d be handing out three bean bags for each kid standing in line and when I got to the dad-I gave him three bean bags too!

“Dad’s have to stand waaay back here!” I’d tell them and most of the dads played with me. Sometimes they made the shot-sometimes they didn’t. But it was all good!

“Get some candy!” I’d tell them and, “Thanks for playing with me!”

One guy, after playing, went to the prize bowl and took one piece of candy. It was a snack size Snickers. I watched him. I went over to the woman he was with-his wife, I assume, and said, “He didn’t even get you a piece!”

“That’s just how he is,” she said.

“Yeah and if it would have been us, we’d have gotten him a piece, wouldn’t we?”

“Yeah,” she answers and he joined us and the game moved on.

Another time I told a young man (maybe a eight or ten-years-old) to wait for his sister as I was giving out bean bags to all the kids in line and reminding them to wait their turn.

“He’s a boy and he’s my cousin,” the youngin’ informed me.

This little cousin-this little boy had braided hair that extended the whole way down his back to his bottom. It was long!

“You’re a boy?” I went back and asked him. He nodded that he was indeed a boy. “Oh my gosh! I just love your hair!” I told him and I meant it too! Throw convention out the window!

Sometimes the kids took too long in the prize bucket. They would get to digging for their favorite candy and pretty soon I had a line of kids waiting. “Grab some and get out of my bucket!” I’d exclaim.

“Just one?” they would ask.

“Whatever you can grab in one hand!” I’d tell them. “As long as you do it fast, I won’t say a thing!” Boy you should see them grab a handful of chocolates and go!

All in all it was a fun day.

And next year, I hope to see YOU here!

Last time I wrote about someone throwing a McDonalds bag out and I wondered who thinks it’s okay to do that. I didn’t expect anyone to answer me and I actually got two responses.

Kevin, our youngest son, said, “Just let them go out and pick up trash once and they’d think twice about doing it.”

My beautiful niece Bambi said she is always getting on her young son about dropping trash on the ground. “It just isn’t okay,” she said.

And this is what happens to your bag of trash in a few days.

Now, speaking of Kevin, he’s awesome! He and Kandyce and Andrew came to visit us one rainy day and had to step over the pool that forms at he bottom of our stairs. “Mom, I work at a dock company-I can make you a grate for here,” he said. And this week I got my new grate! Yay! Just in time for the rain that is supposed to come in Monday night.

“All the guys helped and it was made out of scraps,” Kevin told me.

Sometime this coming week I will make cookies or brownies or a cake or something and send it to work with Kevin to show my appreciation.


Lot’s more stories-no more room!

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Hi everyone!

My current desktop photo is a duck on the river in the early morning. If you guess that I took it on my run, you would be right.



It’s mid October. Can you believe that? My calendar has already taken me into next year.



Mike and I took our new RV down to Springfield for warranty work. “What’s wrong with your new RV?” you ask.

Our awning bracket is cracked, three drawer slides weren’t installed right, two hangers are missing from the curtains that close off the windshield and the table doesn’t lock into the upright position.

On the way down I saw this billboard.

I was so busy reading it that I almost didn’t get a shot of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like this before and I just wondered what you all thought of it.

Our appointment was for early Wednesday morning so we went down the day before with the intention of hitting a few flea markets.

The Rusty Flea was the only one we went to though.

“Why’s that?” you ask.

Well, the very next flea market I picked from the list on the GPS took us way out in the country, to the middle of nowhere and when it said we had arrived at our destination, there was nothing there that looked like a business. We turned around and went back to the RV-parked at the Love’s Truck Stop-right next to Camping World where our warranty work was going to be done.

For lunch we decide to go through the drive-up window at McDonalds. We order our standard, two McDoubles-plain and drive up to the pay window. Just about that time we hear a big old THUNK!

“What was that?” Mike asked but I didn’t know. “Oh, she hit that with her mirror,” Mike said indicating the concrete post that protects the drive-up window.

“Yeah she did.” I can see her fooling with the mirror in the reflection of the drive-up window.

“I bet her dad is going to be pissed,” Mike speculated. “That’s a brand new Ford Fusion.” But after seeing the photo, if anyone is going to be mad at her, besides herself, it might be a husband. She was a middle-aged woman.

I know that some of you are wondering how the kitten is that I gave to Marilyn, my mothers care-giver.

Jenny, Marilyn’s daughter took the kitten to the vet. The vet gave her a bottle and kitten milk and thinks the kitten is 10-12 days old.

And the kitten is still alive. A testament to Jenny’s nursing skills.

I got a nice shot of a heron in the misty Osage the other morning. I bet this one would be fabulous framed.

You know something?

I was coming up the hill on my morning run and I see that-just since the day before, someone has thrown a McDonalds bag out.

In this day and age, who thinks it’s okay to throw garbage out of your car window!

I didn’t put a question mark on the end of that because it is more a statement than a question. Besides, I don’t expect anyone will have an answer for me.

That cat!

That darn cat!

Yeah, I’m talking about Baby Blue! That stinker. You know she gets on the table whenever I’m not looking, don’t you?

I was working on this puzzle and she puked on it! If she wouldn’t have been on the table, where she isn’t supposed to be, that wouldn’t have happened!

Do you know what happens when you mix moisture with pressed cardboard, like, say, in a jigsaw puzzle piece!

Yeah. It swells.

I blotted up what I could, I put paper towels underneath the wet pieces and paper towels on top of them, then put something heavy on top of all of that. Then I let them sit.

After it dried I continued to work on it. I was tempted to just trash the whole thing, but I didn’t. Then I thought that in the very least I would have trouble fitting in the pieces around the part that had been puked on, but I didn’t. Now that it’s done, I’m glad I didn’t throw it away and if Momma wants it, she can have it.

Let’s do November birthdays.

Rosemary Soden Cosentino, 2^nd; Nancy Bowers, 5^th; Cindra Bowers, 5^th; Stephanie Zabitz Brown, 6^th; Erin Lee Bowers, 7^th; Kyleigh Paige Ammerman, 9^th; Hunter Olewiler, 11^th; Michael Gerard Bowers, 13^th; Andrea Canales, 17^th; Joseph Matthew Cosentino, 26^th; Kristyn Dale Kraft, 28^th; Alexandria Marie Herold, 28^th; Julie Kraft, 29^th.

Happy birthday to all!

Mike and I are working on maintenance projects around here and that is taking up most of our time. But let me end this week with one more photo.

Slick sloors....

What’s a sloor?

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Hi everyone!

My current desktop photo is a Great Blue Heron doing his victory dance. He had just had a ‘debate’ with another heron over who’s fishing spot this was, and he won. He looks proud, doesn’t he.

Oh my gosh! I hardly know where to start! I have picked out 23 photos to show you this week and I think I’m going to have to whittle that down a little, don’t you?

So I left us lost in St. Louis last week.

Our GPS hasn’t had it’s maps updated for....hmmm....never! And it’s-I don’t know!-six or seven years old. So it’s getting dark, Mike has put in a really big day of driving and he’s getting tired. He gets a little cranky when he’s tired.

“Keep right onto 55 south,” the GPS says. I look up from fooling with my camera or whatever I was doing and I see signs that show 55 south is on the left. Mike follows the voice directions and not the road signs and we ended up in an old manufacturing district of St. Louis. In the distance I see this old Armour plant. Crumbling walls, broken windows, climbing vines all stir my imagination. Unfortunately, between reflections, bug splatters, the waning daylight and Mike yelling at me to get us un-lost, I was never able to get a decent shot of it.

“Peg, how do you know this was an Armour plant?” you ask.

In one of my shots I can see the word Armour painted on one of the smokestacks. “Is this the Armour of the meat packing company?” I show Mike the picture. “Is this how it’s spelled?”

“I think so,” he said.

I know! I know! I hear you! Google it! And I did! I’ll tell you what. I went to the Armour website and clicked on the heritage tab and found out lots of interesting things about Armour!

“Like what?” you ask. Yeah, I bet that’s what you were asking.

Armour was founded in 1867 by a 19-year-old and packed hogs to provide inexpensive meat to the gold miners. Within a couple of years they expanded into beef. As I read the history I was surprised to learn they branched out into fertilizer, glue, buttons and sutures! In 1900 they established Armour Car Lines to ship perishable meats, veggies and fruits in refrigerated railroad cars.

Throughout their history they got into other things as well, like canned milk, soap, talcum powder, tooth paste and face cream.

There’s more-lots more-but I think if you want to know more, you should go check out the heritage tab on their website. However, you won’t get any of the juicy stuff about Armour on their website. If you want to know the more scandalous stuff, check out Armour and Company on wikipedia.org.

We had intended to spend Sunday night in a campground but I couldn’t get anyone on the phone. The last thing we wanted to do was drive into a campground in the dark and not know they could accommodate us or that we could get back out again if we needed to. So we spent the night in a truck stop.

We met up with Cork and Pam (Mike’s brother and sister-in-law) early Monday afternoon on highway 65 just north of Springfield, Missouri.

“Take the lead,” Mike told his older brother on the phone. Cork gave us a blast of his horn as he passed us by.

We spent four days traveling with them and I’ll tell you what! We really packed it in!

Our first night was spent in a really nice state

park in Missouri. We just about had the whole park to ourselves as there was only one other camper in the section we were in. I had a peaceful run the next morning then Pam and Cork made us a wonderful breakfast of eggs, bacon, home fries and toast. Yum!

Our next stop was Ft. Scott, Kansas where we spent a night in Gunn Park. This is a city park and only has 10 or 11 RV sites. When Mike and I were there a few years ago there was a nice lake right across from the camp sites. Well, guess what? They drained the lake!

“What’s the deal with the lake,” I asked a man in passing.

“I’m not sure. They drained it two or three years

ago to put in fishing levies or something,” he told me.

The tree between our camp sites had been struck by lightening. You could trace the rip from the bottom the whole way to the top! It was marked to be cut down. No surprise there, right?

How abut a few facts about Ft. Scott?

Susan B. Anthony was a frequent visitor to Fort Scott to see her brother, John, who managed the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Bat Masterson's brother, Tom, ran the Delmonico Pool Hall in Fort Scott. And Fort Scott is the site of National Cemetery #1, commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln.

You’re learning lots of things today, aren’t you?

Ft. Scott is home to several antique and junk stores and we went through most of them. I think this one is one of the prettiest.

Our next stop was Iola, Kansas to see cousin Suzy. We stayed in a little RV park right there in

Iola and this sign, marking a nature trail tickled us. Cork, along with his dog Bailey and me with Itsy and Ginger walked this little trail. We didn’t see any bugs or snakes or any other dangerous things, but there was lots of poison ivy! Oh, and persimmons. We saw a persimmon tree and Cork ate one. “Not too bad,” he said as he spit out the little seeds, and spit, and spit! LOL! There are lots of little seeds in persimmons.

That night there was a ferocious storm.

I sat outside, at a pik-a-nik table (as Yogi Bear would say it) and took photo after photo trying to capture the lightening strikes.

I was hoping it would be raining for my run in the morning. Iola has an awesome trail! They took out the defunct railroad line and made ‘nature’ trails. This is a bone of contention in the Nichols family, but I won’t get into that just now.

My beautiful niece Yvette loves to run in the rain and I am trying to see the pleasure in it that she sees. I’m trying to do this by running in the rain. First, it has to rain though, don’t you know.

Alas! It was not meant to be. The next morning dawned clear and bright and I went for my run.

--There was stuff!

--There was stuff all over the trail!

--And it crunched!

Leaves, twigs, acorns and the gravel itself all crunched. Acorns can be hard on the ankle, don’t you know, so I decided to keep an eye on the trail.

Then I spot this! Then another and another. They were everywhere just like the salamanders in PA were.

And my heart sinks.

I don’t want to crush any snails under my foot.

I hear you.

I hear you in my head.

“Snails are nasty! They get in my garden and eat all my beautiful plants!”

I don’t care what you say. I don’t want to kill things. Unless you are a fly...

Tick....

Flea....

Or Mosquito!

Then you had better not let me catch you!

I was a little sad that some of the crunches under my foot may have been snails, but I just won’t think about that...

We spent a couple of days in Iola and we went to all the flea markets, antique shops and junk stores that we could find. There is one in particular that used to be a school and it is jam packed with all of those things.

This sign in Booth #28 tickled us. “Sale”, it says in a splash. “25% off. Except Ralph.”

“I wonder who Ralph is,” Pam said. Then we decided to frame Pam.

One of the best things about traveling is trying the local restaurants. We took cousin Suzy out to an Italian place and had calzones and stromboli and alfredo.

It was cool and blustery when we went out to the cemetery. Mike and Cork’s mother is buried there along with a host of other relatives.

As we were driving up to the cemetery we see that there is a new grave. After I snapped off a couple of pictures of the Luby’s standing over mama’s grave, I walked over to see who had passed. It was a lady named Alta and doing the math in my head (luckily it wasn’t all that hard) I figure she was over 100 years old when she died. She didn’t quite make it to 101.

“Peg, on the way to Iola we passed a really cool mill with tin siding on it,” Pam said to me.

“Yeah, I know the one you mean.” It is really cool.

“If you have a picture of it, could you send me a copy?” she asked.

I do have photos of this building. I think I take a picture of it every time we pass it, but I didn’t know how to tell her that I didn’t have a good picture of it.

I know right! Can you believe that?

“There are power lines that your eye can ignore,” I tried to explain, “but the camera can’t. So my photos aren’t that good.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice the power lines,” she said.

I know that Pam really likes that kind of stuff and me being a people pleaser I chased it around in my head until I came up with an answer. “I’ll have Mike stop and I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.

The next day we say goodbye to this very handsome couple and they headed for their home in Las Vegas, Nevada and we headed back to Lake Ozark, Missouri.

Mike found a place to pull off the road and in a light sprinkle, I get out and walk the whole way around the mill, taking photos.

You know something? I think I prefer the shot with the power lines in it to this one. What do you think?

I am going to end this week with a shot of Itsy. I wanted to show you how us country girls do it. We may go out and run and play in the fields and pastures and never care that we didn’t brush our hair.

“Itsy, I have some very bad news for you,” I told her. “We are going back to the city now so we have to start combing our hair and wearing our shoes again.”

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

The Great Blue Heron Debate

The Great Blue Heron Debate

I was out on my first run since we got back to Lake Ozark, Missouri and I took my camera with me. I have gotten used to lugging my big ole Canon along on my runs because I don’t want to be sorry I didn’t have it. I am always on the look out for things that might make interesting photos.

And interesting is a very subjective word-I’ve found that out over the years. What one person finds interesting, another person may find boring.

The route I had mapped out in my head-even before I left the house that morning, involved a trip around the campground below Bagnell Dam. I need to have a route long enough for me to be out for an hour and until I run it once, I wouldn’t know exactly what that might look like. Still, I had to start someplace. If I ended up at home before my hour was up, why then I would have to find other-more creative-ways of extending my run. I eyed the parking lot of the school as I ran past. I could do two laps around the parking lot if I need to, I thought to myself.

Once I had reached the dead end of School Road and turned around and came back out, I headed down Valley Road to the campground. I visualize the course I had plotted for myself in my head. I’d have this downhill to do then it will be only slight grades until I head back up to the dam. At that point I would have the steepest uphill grade of my course. But after facing the steep grades in Pennsylvania, I knew I could do this!

I jogged past the ducks on the pond. I knew when they heard me-or saw me-because one duck raised the alarm which was picked up by the others as they took wing and went to the other end of the pond.

I focus forward and I’m thinking about the next turn in the road. In my mind’s eye I can see the trees where the eagles roost in the winter and wonder if I’ll get to see any this winter. Then that got me to thinking about winter. How should I dress to run outside in the winter? What if I ask that question on Facebook?

“Peg, you can Google it and find out the answer for yourself,” you say.

I know, I thought of that. The only problem with that is there is so much information on the internet that you don’t know what you should implement and what you should ignore. I have family and friends on Facebook. Some of them are runners and maybe they would already have practical knowledge.

I come around the bend in the road and what do I see? A whole herd of these guys! Nature’s cleaners. They were everywhere! Mostly they weren’t too afraid of me, as long as I didn’t try to get too close.

Now, here’s a question for you. Why don’t they have red face masks? I thought all turkey vultures had red faces. Obviously, they don’t because these guys have black face masks, but do you know why? Are they a different breed of turkey vulture? A different sex? Or maybe it has something to do with the time of year?

“Peg you can Google it and find out for yourself,” you say again.

I know right! But then, what would we have to talk about?

My route soon takes me from the blacktop to the dirt roads of the campground itself. During my walking cycles I’m watching my time and dreaming. During my running cycles I’m counting my breaths. Breathe out one-two-three-four, breath in one-two-three. Four out-three in, over and over.

The water in the Osage River is low this time of year. It creates a large patch of dry, rocky ground that extends almost to the middle of the river. I didn’t think I’d go down onto that because I didn’t think I could run on it safely. I’d just turn around at the high water mark and head back up the hill to home.

The best laid plains, right?

Through the trees, I see him. I see a Great Blue Heron in the shallows of the misty Osage.

Cool, I think and snap off a few photos. I’ve learned to take photos first and see if I can get closer second. Critters often times won’t stand for you to get too close to them, don’t you know.

As I get to the high water mark I look up and see a pelican on a piece of tree sticking up out of the water. Well that was all it took for me to change my mind about walking out on the exposed piece of river bottom! I wanted to get as close to the pelican as I could. I put my run on hold even though I swore I wouldn’t. If I can’t get the photos on the fly, I won’t get them at all, is what I said I was going to do. Again, best laid plans.

I walk as calmly and quietly as I could, towards the pelican, snapping off a photo every few steps. I expect each photo I take to be my last. Amazingly enough, though, he just watched me as I came to the very edge of the water, snapped a couple of more shots, then turned to leave him in peace.

That crazy Blue Heron, I think, what is he doing?

I snapped a photo.

Then I see there are two Blue Herons!

I snapped a photo of two Blue Herons never realizing what is about to take place.

Chest bump!

The skirmish continues until this guy has had enough. “No fishing spot is worth this bullshit!” I can hear him say as he flies away.

And to the victor goes the best fishing spot and.....　　

The victory dance!

Once I had downloaded the photos of the herons onto my computer, and looked at them, I realized I’d gotten some pretty amazing shots.

I talk to my mother every night on the telephone. I could hardly contain my excitement as I said to her, “I got some pretty good shots of two herons going at it, have you ever seen that?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen two herons in the same shot at all,” she said.

Once I thought about it I realized she was right. Most times when I see a heron, that is exactly what I see. A heron. Just one.

I got lucky.

And my heart is filled with gratitude.

Gratitude to and for my mother. She is the one who planted the seed. She is the one that suggested I take my camera on my runs with me. If I hadn’t of had it with me, I wouldn’t have gotten these shots!

“I love you more!” I always say to her, and she chuckles.

“And I’ve loved you longer!”