Saturday August 30 2008

One of the houses at the Lazy AZ

One of the young owls in the center

Lazy AZ Barn

Zoomed in, but poor quality

Great Horned Owl at the Heninger's

It looks like a cat sitting on the far post

upper left quarter of the picture.

They are about 30" tall.

Sorry not to get a close up but the light

wasn't good anyway.

It was neat to see them fly - they are big!

EVENING UPDATE; Be sure to check Gina and Sally's blogs. They took pictures when they were here this morning and have them posted for today.

Then about 11:30 or so Sheral called and wanted to have us come over to dinner one of these days before they go back to Utah, and after discussion, we decided today was a pretty good day for it after mentioning something about the weather supposed to go bad over the weekend and anyway we ended up going over about 4:30 for a delicious roast beef dinner. They had all kinds of goodies that we don't often have - delicious pickled beets, green beans and mushrooms stewed in chunky pasta sauce, scalloped potatoes AND homemade lemon ice cream. Dick gave the bones and scraps to the dogs too.

We looked at a bunch of their photos - some of Zane and Kerri's new house in Denver, (Good job painting and decorating, you guys! It's beautiful.). And a photo album they've put together about restoring the small cabin they are living in at the ranch. It was a homestead cabin from the early 1900's, and the renovation was quite a project - including moving it a short distance to where it sits now.

Dick showed us some of the newspapers and old calendars that used to line the walls that they have saved - very interesting. The Zupence family were the original homesteaders and there were a bunch of photos of them too from the "olden days". The best ones I liked were them haying with horses, and the horses were wearing homemade fly sheets, kind of like clothes for the horses, even hoods over their faces and ears to keep the flies off.

After dinner we went out to see their great horned owl family that lives in the barn. I got some pictures from a distance - maybe enough to say "See that on the post? It's an owl". We also saw quite a few sage chickens by being out that time of the evening. Dick said there had been about 150 outside their yard earlier in the day. But none of us think there are as many chickens around this year as have been the last several years. Thanks for the nice evening and the dinner, Sheral and Dick. It was very enjoyable.

I just kept thinking that I was a happy camper. It was a very nice day full of friendship and fun. By the time we started home about sunset it looked like a storm was coming from the west and then the power bleeped after we got home.

Barns on the Wood River
8x10 Oil Painting
by Lynn Thomas

THIS MORNING: What a nice warm day. Some high clouds, a pretty sunrise. A little smoky hazy, but not too bad here.

Had a nice surprise phone call this morning and Gina and Sally drove out for a visit. We had tea and chatted and fixed all the worlds problems. Sally's other house down in AZ was struck by a microburst in the last week, and Pete is on his way back from overseeing the insurance procedures for the damage and boarding things up until he can repair it all. Anyway it was a very nice and a little bit emotional celebration of special friendships. We looked at the art show again and they took a few more things home with them. Thanks very much you guys. How nice to have new homes for more of the artwork.

An interesting thing today is that I haven't taken my pain pill for the first time and that feels o.k.!! Just so many other miserable things happening, especially an icky nausea and the big "D" so still some ups and some downs.

Ruth and I will be co-hostesses at the next Mixed Media painting meeting here at my house on September 19. We got our ducks in a row with it all this morning and I'll be sending out both an email and regular mail notices. Depending on the weather, we'll see whether we just stay around the house, or go out for some plein air painting for a few hours in the afternoon. Betty should be here then, and I think she will enjoy joining us for the meeting.

Lunch time now and Joe wants a BLT, so better get busy with that. For sure I am painting this afternoon. p.s. no I never did paint, but did have good intentions. Maybe tomorrow?