Having fun with the Shirley Temple video

2 dozen tomatoes

Comments on the video of tomatoes weren't so great -- right Mary Catherine! So this morning I picked over a couple of dozen and dropped a few getting them to the kitchen counter. There's so many more on the plants, and I have no clue what to do with all of them. Time to make salsa, tomato sauce, tomato paste, tomato soup, tomato salads -- tomato, tomato, tomato. Here's the result of this morning's pickings:

Leona and Fan

turtle doves

This is the second set of turtle doves hatched within 15 feet of our back door, so we've seen four newly hatched. The true love in the song gets 22 turtle doves. We've only 6 so far. The male will land within arms length of me. He is trying to teach a young one to sing. He sings, and I have to watch his chest for the air, as it seems he is almost throwing his voice. He's a ventriloquist. Here's a shot of the momma and the new 2.

do full screen -- tomato

Leona and the snow

Bert had Thursday and Friday off, so we headed up to Strawberry, CA. This is a tiny little town before you get to Lake Tahoe. Our friends are renting a fabulous house for three months and invited us up. It' takes about 2.5 hours to get there and we are certain that we want to go back. We did a little "hike" to a beautiful lake-- we can't tell you where it is, because only the locals know and we promised not to tell. We parked where the snow blocked the road and walked about 40 minutes up the dirt road, then about 20 minutes down a trail. Our family was truly happy on this day.

The next day we headed up to walk around some more and saw some raging waters. The heavy snows are making the rivers and waterfalls quite spectacular.

Rock Thrower