First of all if you want to join Sky Watch Friday, see Tom at Wigger's World. It is a lot of fun to see all the pictures...sometimes I get to feeling like a recording because there are just so many beautiful pictures. I notice I start to avoid leaving comments because I feel like I am repeating myself. When I start to do that, it is time for me to walk away for a while and come back to it later. I think I would still feel the need to try to view them all, even if I didn't post a single picture.

Anyway, does anyone ever look through their lens and it totally out of focus and you like it anyway. Well, here is a couple versions of one out of focus shot, taken off my front porch this morn. I cannot get it to look like the view through my out of focus lens still, but I sort of like it. The darker one is what came off my camera without anything being done to it in photo software. The other is just adding fill flash.

And below are in-focus shots. I have been trying to get in the habit of walking, but on my way to the park, I ran by the river to see what the sunrise was doing there. I cannot pick a favorite so am posting more than one...I hope you don't mind. It is sort of strange seeing the Wabash river calm enough to have reflections in it, as well as being within the banks. It has been flooded for a lot of the spring. It is kind of nice to be seeing things get back to normal.

Meet Toadie

Meet Toadie

I actually don't know if it was male or female...I switched between calling him Mr. Toadie and Big Mama...just depened on my mood I guess.

Anyway, this picture was taken in 2000. The picture is somewhat the worse for wear as you can see by the scrathes, etc. But I wanted to use it because I thought this might be a fun post. This is one of our daughters holding him...if you rubbed his side or belly he would lean into it. And if you rubbed right above and between his eyes he would close his eyes and hold ever so still.

I am wondering if we will see him this year or if something happened to him last year. Last year we only seen him two or three times early in the year. The last time I held him, he completely filled my palm width wise--he was one fat healthy boy. My palm is at least 3 or 3 1/2 inches wide. We would knock bugs/moths down for him. If we actually killed the bug, we would place it in front of him and blow on it to make it move, otherwise he would not attempt to eat it.

What's more, as a kid, we had a toad that came up on our porch almost every night in search of food...we all know how lights attract bugs at night. Only down there, he had to climb up a flight of 6 or 7 steps. After I moved to Indiana and told my husband about him, he kind of thought I was being funny or something till we went home and he seen it for himself.

Anyway, we all really have a soft spot for toads...if I am mowing and see one move, I stop and catch it and move it out of danger. With the exception of one summer, seeing a toads here is sort of rare. That one summer, I think my daughter and I sat outside with a flashlight and could 10 or 12 small toads. That had never happened before and never since.

Things of Beauty Found...
I think these pictures are beautiful in themself, but if you could see where I found them you would understand the title of this post. I took Shelby for a quick walk today...over by the railroad. It is turning into more of dumping ground than usual. So you have to look past the junk to see the beauty that is there.

The remainder of my day was spent messing around at home, after running out for a couple of items this morn. I got our front porch and the chairs and swing out there all scrubbed down, as well as I planted my wisteria. I fixed chicken stir-fry for supper--supper is the souther word for the evening meal. As soon is it was done, I sat and enjoyed my clean porch for a short while.