Monsoon Skies, Friends and Hummingbirds

Joining Skywatch Friday, Five on Friday, and Today's Flowers:
1. More beautiful monsoon season skies in Tucson....sunset:

2.  A few Tucson Fuscias...
There aren't enough things of this color here to devote an entire post to ot, so here is what I have:

My bougainvillea

A crepe myrtle (not from here!) that I was delighted to find at the Extension Center

3.  Before I took my short break I was on facebook one day (I don't get on facebook more than three or four times a month) and decided to see if I could find some old friends.  I thought, why not!  I've wondered what has happened to a few people over the years.  Women are harder to find because they get married and change their names.  But sometimes they will include their maiden names so it makes them easier to connect with.  That was exactly what happened when I typed in the name of a childhood friend from the early 60s, someone I hadn't had contact with in all this time!  How delighted I was to see her pop up...I recognized her immediately!  We haven't had any real contact since that initial Friend request and acceptance, but I am looking forward to doing so!  Wow...it blew me away!  Others I attempted to find were not clearly available...I guess, like me, their maiden names aren't included on facebook.  But I was so happy to find this one childhood friend!  Have you ever looked for a long lost friend on facebook and been successful?  I often wonder if I will ever come across a lost friend while on blogger...someone else who loves to blog that I knew when I was a kid.  It hasn't happened yet, but you never know! :-)

4.  In spite of lovely skies, our monsoon season has had a really slow start, with very little rain to date.  We are way under the expectation, but are hoping things pick up now.  If I had the money I would buy a cabin in northern AZ and leave every summer!  I hate the oppressive heat and the frightening storms.  We usually get away for at least a week at least, but our vacation has been delayed this year.  Looking forward to a weekend camping on Mt. Lemmon soon, at though.  That will be fun.  It will be cooler there, and I should get some great photos.

5.  I was watering my flowers the other day that are located just under one of the hummingbird feeders.  I heard the hum of a nearby bird and slowly looked up to see a female Annas staring at me from about six inches away.  She wasn't concerned by my presence, and decided to light on the feeder and eat.  That night I had a dream about hummingbirds....there were hundreds of them, flying all about, even in our house.  One even landed in my hand.  In the dream we were talking about how they were from Heaven; that God had sent them to us to give us happiness.  My Dad who passed away 4 1/2 years ago was in the dream, with my Mom, and my husband and daughter were also in the dream.  I was awakened by my phone ringing, out of a deep sleep, and had such a sweet feeling.

Annas Humminbird

The Wild West

For Linda Kay's Wednesday Wit and Wisdom another story to go with a photo.  Check out her site, and join in, it's a wonderful meme...

When she was a little girl she always dreamed of this.  She had longed for the world that had opened up to her in books; the mystery, romance and hardship that was the world beyond her doorstep, the wonder and the joy of different lands and cultures.  Even the "wild west" had been on her itinerary of hopeful travel.  She imagined a family like her own, moving across the plains of North America in search of a better life.  She imagined cowboys and trail bosses, and Indians.  She would be a young woman in calico with her sunbonnet and a young cowboy would walk with her out onto the prairie with the huge sky above them and the hills of rolling grasses reaching toward the horizon where buffalo would be grazing in the distance.   The cowboy would crouch down and pick wildflowers for her.  Their hands would lightly touch as he handed her the bouquet, and she would blush shyly.  Her heart had swelled with the possibilities of a life that only existed in her imagination.  And as the years passed and she grew to be a young woman, a wife, a mother, a widow, she had little time for reading anymore as she worked hard to take care of her children.  The realities of life had crowded in.  But deep inside her heart she kept a kernel of hope that one day she would travel...maybe see the "wild west."

Now she was a great grandmother, widowed again, and frail and they rode in the car headed west.  She was finally going to see the west.  She marveled at the wide Mississippi River, and the Spanish moss hanging from the trees in flat, wet Louisiana.  She marveled at the endless miles of rough land across Texas, and was thrilled when her first sighting of a working oil well pump came to view.  Soon there were stretches of open desert, and rocky crags of buttes in the distances, and cactus replaced trees and grasses.  The family, her daughter and two grandchildren and a small great-grandchild, stopped at times so she could pick wildflowers on the side of the road and she carefully pressed these treasures.  She kept a small journal of their adventures just as a woman on a wagon train would have done.  Somewhere in East Texas they had actually seen a wagon train, and she had been delighted.  Yes, it was part of a tourist adventure that people paid for a chance to sleep under the stars and eat chuck wagon grub.  But there were horses and covered wagons and it looked like the wagon train of her imagination.  There were so many wonders to delight her on this trip; so many things she had only dreamed of seeing and doing.  She would see the Grand Canyon, and even spend the night in a tent there; she would see a beautiful old mission, looming huge and white from the desert sands. She tucked a small flower inside the notebook to press it, as a grand daughter snapped a photo of the horses in the wagon train, and she sat back against the seat and smiled.  This was the "wild west."  At last, she had made it.

Cooper's Hawks Again!

They were in my back yard or on my back fence almost every day for nearly a week & 1/2.  Then I started just seeing one, and the visits became less and less frequent.  Now I feel the youngsters have moved on to their own territories, the training days over, and what I started seeing was sometimes one of them, sometimes the single adult.  I am not sure.  But I have several more posts to share of their wonderful time here...joining in with Anni's Bird d'Pot (somewhat late) and Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday....

ENORMOUS "Little" Things

For this week's Five on Friday (click on the link to see more of Amy's wonderful meme!) I want to get a little philosophical for a change.  A little bitter-sweet happy-sad in my thoughts.  Thoughts about children.  As I look at our grandson now my heart hurts.  At 13 his voice has changed and he is almost as tall as his mother now and he is no longer the little boy I have always cuddled with and read to and spoiled as much as I could, and smothered with kisses and hugs.  He is becoming a young man.  And though I look at him now with awe and pride, and see him growing happily into what he will become...there is a tinge of sadness there that the little boy is gone.  It is the way of parents to go through this with their children (we did so with his mother as she moved from little girl to lovely teen and then to wonderful adult) and of grandparents with their grandbabies.  His mother is feeling it too as she looks at him.  We have all moved on to the next phase, and boy, as I said, it is bitter-sweet, happy-sad.

1.  So, for "one" of my five, I offer you the little guy...

In Texas with my pet rooster, Lonesome George

With his Grandaddy at the Patriotic Concert at Festival Hill in 2004

In North Carolina, playing with snow on his sand table

Also in North Carolina, checking out his stocking on Christmas morning

Another Christmas, showing off a handmade ornament

With Mommy, starting kindergarten

2.  Last week we had Vacation Bible School at my church.  I was only signed up as a "floating helper" and because I was sick earlier in the week, only ended up attending the last two days.  It is always a HUGE blessing.  We have a wonderful church of sweet Christians, who go all out for these kids.  The theme was "Outer Space" and the kids all seemed to really enjoy themselves, and learn a lot about the Lord.  I am always pretty taken with the Pastor's adorable little grand-daughter.  Missing my "little girl" who is long past being grown, and not having a grand-daughter, I radiate toward this little charmer.  Everyone does at the church.  She isn't even two years old and yet is always right in there with the older kids, trying everything they are doing.  I watched her delight in throwing water balloons with the other kids.  With the girl-boy rivalry in the auditorium over the amount of pennies brought in by each for the missionary, each group would holler "Boys" or "Girls" about who would win.  I watched her sitting in her Daddy's lap, yelling with the rest of them, throwing her arms up with her hurrahs. Just TOO cute!  Then there was the missionary's 18-month-old son, in his Dad's arms as he led the singing, and he was moving his arms around like a song-leader, just like Daddy.   Just melted my heart!  Later the little guy had a piece of pvc pipe and while Dad sat at a table talking to the older boys who were doing a wood-burning project, the little guy sat there humming into the pvc pipe, like he was making music. Again, TOO cute!  These little moments of innocence, of sweetness....of learning and growing are the ENORMOUS things in life.  Such little ones, like my daughter and grandson when they were small and like these two toddlers this past week are the bearers of shining moments of pure joy, and make life's trials melt away.  I told you I was going to get philosophical! :-)

3. Oh, but there is so much promise and joy in a thirteen-year-old as he faces the future.  And such love still for his Grandmother, that it warms my heart!  I need that boy's love, and I know I will always have it.  He means so much to me!  And I know I will be proud of the man he is going to become, just as I am proud of his mother. I had planned to take a picture of him this week with his Mom to show you how much he has grown...but well, that didn't happen. :(  Maybe soon.


4.  So, for "four" I will move on to other little things: (Here is a teaser of a couple of shots, with more to be posted later...)

After seeing one set of baby quail with their parents early in the year, I kept hoping we would see more, because my photos of the fuzzy balls were very inadequate.  And it's so cute always to see babies.  Finally, a bell-shaped seed feeder I had put out for a while  was noticed and we have started having daily visits from a Gambel Quail family! Here is Papa Gambrel Quail and the little ones. (More photos will be shared later)

5.  And finally, I had planned to use "five" as my announcement that I was going to take a little time off, maybe five or six days, to finish some projects before the end of the month.  Only, I've already been taking time off every day to get these accomplished, and then keeping my big toe in the blogger water.  I am drastically behind in getting back to you all after your comments on my posts (about three weeks!) so I hope you'll forgive me.  I am getting even more behind as I finish these, and I guess I'll say I need about three days off now, so I will take it.  I promise I will try to get caught up with everyone as quickly as I can!  And to give you a "little" taste of what I've been doing, here is a pj set and toy bunny I made for the Children's Home...

Wednesday Wit & Wisdom 2

Another photograph with accompanying story for the meme Wednesday Wit & Wisdom, hosted by Linda Kay of Senior Adventures...thanks Linda Kay!

He had wondered, his entire young life, why he loved the water so, why he longed for the smell of salt air and the sighing of the winds in the pines as gulls called and complained at the break of day.  The ocean, rivers and marshy tributaries had always drawn him and he sat and watched the shore birds with his binoculars while he worried out the concerns of the day.  The sunset on the ocean brought him to the sand with a blanket while the sand crabs danced around his bare feet.  His childhood had been in a house of strife and tension, and to hide away from these torments, especially on the water,  always brought him a measure of peace.  But there was no real clue for this love of his until the day he drove his old hand-me-down car back to the place where his Dad had been raised.

The old man saw him wandering around on the waterline, picking up pieces of flotsam from the tides to examine an old bottle or piece of wood and stopping to gaze out across the mouth of the river where it fed into the bay.  The young man was startled when he spoke and whirled to face the frail old waterman.  They began to talk, the older man sitting on a nearby stump, and the teen moving up closer to him at the edge of the trees.  He had never met a waterman before, and the wrinkled hands, he learned, had fashioned boats from the pines, had hauled crab cages up from the silty bottom of the river, and worked heavy oyster tongs from a deadrise in the waking day.  As they shared the time, the younger man was carried back to a world not long past but real and honest and hard. But it was also beautiful, this time he was being carried to, and somehow a little familiar in the deepest recesses of his being.  The old man dug into his overalls for a red kerchief, and wiped sweat from his bald head and brow.

"I knew your Great-grandpa and your Grandpa, " he said suddenly.  Startled once more, the younger man was suddenly alert.  "Watermen like me, farmers.  Your Great-grandpa was a boat-builder."  How could the old man know who he was, the boy wondered.

"They owned this piece of land, young man, " he said.  "That big house yonder wasn't here then.  The new owners built that about twenty years ago.  Your people lived yonder inside the woods, on a small cove."  His mind swirled with questions, but he wasn't sure how to ask them, and then as suddenly as he had been aware of the the old waterman's presence, he felt their time was over.

"My boy will have the truck fixed by now up on the road.  He'll be wondering where I got off to."  And the old man slowly rose from the stump, and turned slowly to walk away.

"I didn't get your name," said the boy.

"They always called me Jester, " the elder man called back over his shoulder,  "I'm your Grand-dad's cousin.  We heard he died near thirty year ago.  That was a sad day.  Sad day."

And the young man was suddenly alone again.   He watched the waterman turn a corner past some crepe myrtles and call out to his son on the road. He didn't feel so alone anymore, somehow.  He knew for the first time a kinship with a brand of people who took their life and livelihood from these waters he'd been drawn to all his life.  He knew theirs was a dying breed, with only a few of them left in a world that was consuming their simpler life.  He knew his own Dad had never told him of the connection they had to this world.  But somehow that didn't matter anymore.  He felt that connection and understood it for the first time, and it gave him a sense of his place in the world.  And he was grateful to the old waterman for giving him something no one ever had before.  For the first time, he knew who he was.  And he smiled from deep inside.

Tall Tucson Trees

I am going to apologize right at the onset for not knowing the names of these trees.   I see them every day, but have never been close to any of them.  The point I am making with this post is that, here in the desert where water is an issue (we get about 6 inches in the late winter, early spring time of gentle rains, and then about 6 more during the violent summer monsoons) there are still trees that manage to grow to great heights.  Such trees are great nesting places for raptors, and I suspect the tall pine in the first shot may be the nesting home of the Cooper's Hawks who have been visiting my back yard.  I am linking in with Monica's NF Trees & Bushes today.  Hope you will as well!

This huge pine is at least 30 feet tall and I have seen the hawks all three fly to it later in the day, suggesting they are sleeping here.  They may have also nested here.

A very large tree right next door to me

Another "straight off my back porch" view of trees in my neighborhood, some very large.

One of the Cooper's Hawks rests on the limb of the large mesquite tree on the other side of us.  This tree had to be pruned back drastically after high winds blew the top out of it, but it is very large.  Most mesquites are roughly 9 to 12 or perhaps 15 feet tall only.  This one even after the pruning is close to twenty feet tall.  You can see how substantial the limb is the hawk is sitting on.  I think it was over about 20 feet tall or more before the winds damaged it. 

Gila Woodpecker Youngster & Adult

Another little break from the Cooper's Hawks with another wonderful visit to my yard!  I have the Gila Woodpeckers come into the yard pretty often...they drink from the hummingbird feeders; they sit on the fence and make a raucous noise; they are delightful to see.  I even got a photo of a young one about a month and a half ago that I posted, but this visit of young one and parent was something new.  I am linking with Anni's Bird d'Pot (I'd Rather Be Birding) and Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday.  Thank you both for these great wild bird memes!  Enjoy...

 Take a look at this video I took of them, the baby noisy and cute, the parent responding vocally....Unfortunately it would not put a thumbnail view on the video itself but if you click on the arrow it will play.

Skywatch Friday Tucson

My second installment in my more recent rejoin of a wonderful meme, Skywatch Friday.  Thanks to the hosts (Yogi, Sandy and Sylvia) for such a long-running excellent linky party!  Here are some shots of Tucson skies.....

The moon last month.  I didn't capture it the first time it was full this month but perhaps I will the second time, as we are having a Blue Moon in July!

Late afternoon storm clouds brewing...

I have such beautiful views from my back porch.