I'm not much good for any thing other than pictures this week...

Unless you want to hear how miserable Ella was and Mike is with the swine flu, I thought the only thing I was good for was a photo essay. I needed a break from the house of pain and walked around this morning taking some photos with the zoom lens.

The first thing I encountered were two phoebe's perched next to the pond. One is a resident, the black phoebe and they are common all year round dipping and diving over the water catching bugs. The second is a Say's phoebe, which is migratory and only seen in the fall and winter. They act the same as the black phoebe but are not quite as dippy-divey.


Next I took a few leaf pictures since the colors on the bloodwood sycamores were looking fall-like still.


Then I meandered out to the horses to check on them and remembered that Alfie rolled in the mud. Ahhhhh! That's horse heaven or horse happiness, take your pick.


His rear and middle were covered in caked mud.


Nothing was missed.

"Yeah, I'm muddy. So what?"

Then I decided to check out the chickens and in route I saw I could not pass my Mexican sage without taking a picture.


Then walking away from the sage, the turkey vultures started popping up from behind our trees. There were at least a dozen, but all I could get on the film at once was four or five.

They circled around over my head and followed me like I was some kind of dead meat.


Oh, and one of them had dead meat in it's beak. Yum, ground squirrel. I think they were hoping we were all going to expire from swine flu. They must have smelled my husband Mike.


Then taking a moment to notice the smaller birds I saw a small flock of white-crowned sparrows, more winter visitors from far away places. They will disappear around February or March flying north.


In the garden, the giant pumpkins were looking marvelous!


And checking on my kids I found them playing imaginatively with our broken screen door. They finished ripping off the bottom of the door and used it as a ramp to roll walnuts. Ella is feeling much better and did not have a fever last night. She is still snotty and coughing. Wyatt has survived almost unscathed by the swine flu.


So hopefully next week will bode better and we can be through with our portion of the cold season. I can wish can't I?