Holding her cousin...

This is Lorelei, holding her little cousin....don't you just love the look on her face!

She has been here the past two nights, but had to go home this evening.

She wanted to go to Mansfield and wade and fish and hunt for crawdads.  Before we got there, we realized that the Big Raccoon is still almost up and not too far from being out of banks.  So, rather than go down the road and on to Mansfield, we went up  and across the dam, and parked and walked down to the water.  I wish I had taken a photo of the little dock.  Water was up level with it, and you could see that the water had complete covered it and its railings.

Anyway, I mentioned over here on my other blog about the Great Blue Herons landing on the water.  This was in water way over my head.   They only landed and then took off immediately...the tips of their wings touching the water.  I had fully expected to see them struggle.

I have only ever seen them land in shallow water.  In talking with a blog friend, I got to wondering if they could swim, and I remembered seeing a video of an eagle swimming...



this is not the one I seen, maybe I saw it on TV.  But if you go here, you will see several samples of Bald Eagles swimming.

So I thought, maybe Blue Herons can swim, so did a minimal search...and I found a couple samples.



While I feel this was in fairly shallow water, I do feel like it was floating along.  And it had to fly to where it could stand.

I am 60 years old and yesterday was a first for me....but I sure hope I get to witness it again....

This and that....

First, something to make you smile....my daughter sent me this last night.  Ignore my copyright being on there, she took the photo.  That is a puppy that Delta is so intent on.

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Roger definitely turned a page....got up yesterday morn and it was like a light had been flipped on.  He was joking and laughing and there was a twinkle in his eyes.    He still seems to tire easily, and I can see it in his eyes, but it is such a different look.    Anyway, thank you for your prayers and well wishes.

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Roger has an old gauge that measure the temperature of steam....he has it fixed to the side of a porch post.  (To see how its temperature reading compares with our regular thermometer.)  I was sitting out there and I have no idea why I happened to notice this.  A wasps nest...I have got to spray it and get rid of them....just have not done it yet. 

Were any of you ever fascinated with these old lamps?  I have loved anything that burned kerosene/coal oil since I was a child.  I know there is a difference between coal oil and kerosene but I think my mom used the words interchangeably. 

I had two or three 'cheaper' versions when I was a kid.  One was a little one that was made totally of light blue glass...bought at the same Brashear's Glass Barn that we used to trade books at.  The other was a small red metal one, about half as tall as the one above.  Both were so cheaply made I probably should not have ever lit them.  I feel like I had another one but for the life of me, I cannot think what it looked like, so maybe the two are all I ever had.

They had oil in them.   I would actually burn them for a while every so often.  There was magic to lighting one of them and setting by it and pretending that was all I had to read by.  I always think of myself as not having had much of an imagination as a child, but I guess I pretended more than I remember most of the time.

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Roger has not been feeling well since last Thursday.  We know to expect 'off' days since the stroke, but this is getting a little old.  I feel like there has been some improvement in the past couple of days though so maybe he will be back to his new normal soon.  This has been sort of like how he felt back in February when I ended up taking him to the ER.