Blessings

I have been blessed, in my life, many times and in many ways. I have so much to be thankful for that when I talk to God, I simply say, Thank you Father, and I don’t ask for another thing more.
This weekend, this first weekend in May, was the 28th Annual Magic Dragon Street Meet here in Lake Ozark, MO. One thousand registered cars and ten thousand spectators gathered here on our Strip. Mike and I were riding around in a golf cart, monitoring our parking lot, when an older couple gets out of their just parked car.
“How ya doin’?” Mike asked.
“Great. How are you doing?”
And that’s all it took. A conversation was struck up and we met Terry and Nona. After talking for about half an hour, Terry says, “I’m going to give you a gift for being so nice and letting us park here,” and he went to the back of his car and opened the back gate.
“I love gifts,” I told Nona and I grinned from ear to ear, because let’s face it, who doesn’t love getting gifts!
“It’s probably one of his books,” Nona guessed.
I watched as Terry pulled  a box toward him, lifted the lid and picked up a book. “I love books!” I exclaimed.
“He’s won all kinds of awards on one of his books.”
I watched as he sifted through the box of books and my heart leapt for joy when he added a second book to the one he was already holding, then he lifted a cardboard divider and added another one!
“Got any kids?” he called.
“Yes!” Was he going to give me a copy for my kids?
“How old?”
“My kids are grown up, in their thirties.”
“He wrote a children’s book,” Nona told me.
“I have a three year old grandson!” I quickly called to Terry.
Terry added a fourth book to the stack, then he joined me and Nona where we stood talking. Well, Nona was standing. I was still sitting in the golf cart with two little puppy dogs in my lap.
“This one won a Reader’s Favorite Book Award,” Terry said handing me Kitty Claus.

I’ll read it before I give it to Andrew, I thought.
“This one also got a Reader’s Favorite award,” and he handed me The She Wolf, a novella.

I can’t wait to read this one, I thought. The cover looked interesting.
“This one took a silver,” and he handed me a book of poems.

And Kat flashed in my mind’s eye.
  It’s funny how our loved ones are never far below the surface of our consciousness.
Kat wrote poems.
Many, many, many years ago I got a bunch of Kat’s poems, illustrated them and made a couple of little books. I don’t remember who all I sent them to, but I know I sent a copy to my mother.
“These are good,” she told me after she got them and read them. “Some of them are so sad though.”
After Kat died and we cleaned out her apartment, we found her journals and a bunch of poems and I knew I wanted to make them into a book too.
“I’d like to read them,” my sister Phyllis said to me at the time. “When you’re done, would you send them to me?”
“I’ll tell you what. You read them and send them to me when you’re done.”
Well, now, all these ten months later, I asked about them.
They’re gone. No one remembers even seeing them, let alone know where they are. It makes me sad because I feel like I lost a little bit of her.
But I don’t dwell on what I cannot change.
Then Terry handed me the coupe de grace, a book called When I Was A Child that took five awards and is based on a true story.

To say I was impressed would be an understatement!
“Meryl Streep read it,” Nona told me. “She said, ‘This book needs to be made into a movie.’ so Terry’s working on a screen play of the book right now.”
“When you get rich and famous, will you remember me?” I asked Terry. “Let me show you what I’m doing.”
I took Nona and Terry inside and Nona stopped to pet Macchiato, one of our cats. She was still petting him as I pulled out and opened up my notebook containing this years letters and stories. “I’ve been chronicling my life a week at a time for the past eighteen years,” I told Terry.
“Nona, look at this,” Terry said handing her a printed and bound version of my story Bookmaking. “This is fantastic.” He picked up another story and flipped through the pages. Then he turned to me. “You certainly are well organized.”
I’m sure I glowed. “Thank you! Eighteen years experience.”
Terry told me that one of his jobs had been in publishing and he knows what it takes to layout a page for print and place the photographs. “These look great.” Terry really did seem impressed, not only for the way I print and put my stories together, but also for my determination and tenacity at sticking with this project that I had undertaken so long ago.
My only regret?
I didn’t ask him to sign his books for me before he left.
Terry is the fourth author I have had the good fortune of meeting and I hope to keep in touch with him as I do the other three.
My friend Annette Broadrick is the published author of over 65 books and yes, they may be technically classified as romance, but I’ve read several of her books and there is always an exciting element of mystery to them too!
If you Google Annette you will find that she has a page on Wikipedia and you can find her books on Amazon.
I had the pleasure of meeting an author who is a good friend of my sister Patti’s, and not only that but I got to travel with her for three weeks as we relocated my mother to Arizona.
“Yeah, Peg! Where’s the rest of that story?” you ask.
You guys! You don’t let me get away with anything! While it is true that I’ve only gotten Momma to Minnesota thus far, I actually wrote the very first sentence of chapter seven in The Great RV Adventure just this past week — and that was after spending a couple of hours going through photos too.
“It all starts with just one word,” Momma said when I told her. And she’s right. A story is written the same way you take a long journey; one step — one word at a time.
Lori writes under the pen name of Kayce Lassiter. I haven’t read any of her novels yet but I follow her blogs and she’s often funny. I love the way she writes. If you go to Amazon dot com you will find that Kayce Lassiter has a page there and you can buy her books.
This past year another friend of ours became a published author. Rick published the very first adventure in his Geoffrey Hawk series called A Man Of Two Worlds last September and now the second book is out. It’s called Chaos and Serenity and you can find both his books on Amazon. He writes under the name R.W. VanSice.
I’m looking forward to reading Terry’s books and if any of you want to check him out, his website is http://tlneedham.com. If you want to buy any of his books, go to Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/author/tlneedham.

<<<<<>>>>>

Once again I have picked out more photos than I can possibly use in one weeks letter blog, but it won’t stop me from trying!
I have had two desktop photos this week.
An iris...

 and the beautiful, understated daisy is my current desktop.

<<<<<>>>>>

Boy! I’ll tell you what! I have an awesome family. It’s one of the those many blessings I was talking about earlier.
  My cute little redheaded brother Rick sent me a picture this past week of an egg laid by one of his chickens.
A large egg weighs 56 grams. An extra large egg weighs 65 grams. A jumbo egg weighs 70 grams. Most all of Richard’s eggs weigh in the jumbo range but he recently got an egg that weighs 129 grams!

“I wonder what the record egg weighs?” he mused.
As it so happens, I was in front of my computer at the time so I Googled it for him. “It says it’s 160 grams,” I told him.
“Oh! I guess I’ve got a ways to go then. But I’ve got some happy chickens.”
Happy chickens lay more eggs, happy cows give more milk. It just makes sense that a happy animal produces better.
When Richard gets home from work he lets the girls out to eat bugs and scratch around in the dirt. After they go to bed he goes down and closes the coop up for the night. So for the most part it is true — Richard does have happy chickens. They are happy until his little grandsons come for a visit and chase them around the yard trying to catch them. Then it takes about three days for them to start laying again.
“I gave the kids some bread the last time they were here,” Rick told me. “Then they could feed the chickens and the chickens let them pick ’em up.” And that is how he solved that little problem — that and a little talk with the kids mama.
Rick has thirteen Golden Comet chickens and most days he gets twelve eggs. “Seven dozen a week!” he exclaimed proudly.

“A Golden Comet is a cross breed between a Rhode Island Red male and a Rhode Island White female. The most popular breed is the Leghorn because they lay a white egg, but on a per year basis, the Comets beat them in the egg laying department!” Richard went on to quote me the statistics. “The Leghorn lays between 220 to 300 eggs per year, whereas the Comet lays 250 to 320.”
Rick loves to talk about his chickens and has extended an invitation to anyone who wants to talk about chickens to call him. Text me; I’ll give you his phone number.
Besides chickens, Rick loves to garden. This past week he got his tractor ready to till the garden and he’s thinking about what veggies he is going to put where. “But I can’t put too much out until I get a fence,” he told me. “Otherwise the chickens will eat the plants.”
And here I thought that chickens were a natural pesticide for your garden!
Someday I will have a garden and chickens too!

<<<<<>>>>>

I love the wild geranium. They just look so delicate don’t they?

<<<<<>>>>>

No clue.

<<<<<>>>>>

This one my loves, is called an ailanthus webworm.

“Webworm, Peg?” you question. “Webworm! Do you mean that’s one of those nasty tent caterpillars!”
Well, yeah. This is what it is when it’s all grown up. They belong to a family of moths called ermine moths and there are a lot of different kinds of them but they all live in communal webs, or tents, as we call them.
Kinda pretty, aren’t they?

<<<<<>>>>>

A lot of things have two names and some even have more, and this one is no different. This is a smooth beard-tongue or smooth foxglove.

“Is that a black bug-butt sticking out of it?” you ask.
I know right! I wondered the same thing. I looked. It’s not. It’s the seeds.

<<<<<>>>>>

The birds are fussing and fighting with each other right now. My thought is they are competing for the right to breed the females. That’s usually how it goes.
I was coming back up the Strip and I saw the little sparrows having a dust bath. I stopped Itsy and Ginger far enough away that they didn’t see the birds and bark and scare them away and I stood and watched and snapped off a few pics as they dusted themselves. Then another one came and attacked the guy I was photographing and the feathers started to fly! This is my favorite shot of their little spat.

<<<<<>>>>>

Our city, besides mutilating the trees, mowed the roadside on my regular walking route. They mowed down a huge wild garlic patch that I had my eye on but at least the birds seemed to have benefited.

On a walkabout this past week I was photographing the birds as they hunted around in the dried grass cuttings. I saw a tufted titmouse and a robin but they didn’t let me get too close before they took flight.
I left the road and walked the edge of the grass and saw there was still plenty of wild garlic that survived. It was all growing in the shade of the trees where the mower couldn’t mow and it wasn’t as mature as another garlic patch that I knew of.
I’m walking along, looking at the garlic and Ginger tugs at the end of her leash. I look up and there amid the cuttings I see… I see… I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I was seeing something struggling in the grass! I raised my camera and took a few pictures knowing I could zoom in and find out what it is and that was when two tufted titmice took fight.
Don’t ask me what they were tumbling around in the grass for.

<<<<<>>>>>

Can you see him?
These little guys are fascinating! This is a wolf spider. See his racing stripes? Wolf spiders have racing stripes for a reason. They don’t spin webs. With their long legs they run their prey down and they do most of their hunting at night. Can you stand one more fact, my arachnophobic friends? The mamas of this kind of spider carry her babies on her back!

<<<<<>>>>>

At the other wild garlic patch I see the flowers will soon be blooming.
“What is that on there?” you ask. “Is that a tick!”

It is. And it wasn’t the only one I saw amid this wild garlic patch either. Now that I had my eye trained for them I bet I saw a dozen more scatter around just waiting for some warm blooded creature to wander through. I took a few photos and managed to pick my way out without picking up even one little hitchhiker.
You can eat wild garlic. All parts of it are eatable-edible from the underground bulbs, to the long, thin leaves, to the flowers, to the bulblets on top. I just go for the little bulblets. But one word of caution. If it looks like garlic but doesn’t smell like garlic, it’s not garlic and don’t eat it.
I saw this guy in the garlic patch. Do they eat ticks?

I heard the distinctive sound of woodpeckers and looked up in time to see two of them squabbling in the air. I watch as one lands on the cut off end of this tree and there sat another woodpecker looking down at me! I thought it would be a cool shot to have two woodpeckers looking over the edge and I raised my camera as fast as I could. Unfortunately by the time it focused there was only one there.

I’m heading for home, walking along the blacktop and I hear click, click, click every time my right foot lands.
I picked up a rock, I think and scrub my foot back and forth to dislodge it from the tread of my sneaker. A step or three later I hear it again and again I scrub my foot back and forth on the surface of the road — a little more vigorously this time. A few more steps and I hear my efforts were futile. It was still there and now I could feel it.
My arms are full. I carry Itsy on my left arm, my Doggie Poopie Bag was slung across my right shoulder and I had my camera around my neck. Bending over to dig a rock out of my shoe isn’t all that easy for me. I wonder if I can see it. I lifted my foot and peered back over my shoulder to see if I could spot it but only got a glimpse before I had to put my foot back down or risk falling over.
I think my sole is ripped. I bet the rock is under the flap, I thought. I kicked my shoe off, picked it up and what do I see? A piece of wood. My efforts to dislodge the ‘rock’ only drove the wood in farther.

I got a hold of it and pulled and pulled and wiggled and pulled some more but it was in there tight! I didn’t have pliers and I briefly — like a nanosecond brief — thought of using my teeth.
“EWWWW!” you say.
I know right! But I was desperate! I didn’t have pliers and I couldn’t walk on it!
I kept on working on it and I finally did get it free.
Doggone mowers anyhow!

Let’s call this one done!