Shooting Stars

Too many blips today, and OilMan was in an accommodating mood, suggesting shots and even offering to pull over for a shot of an old barn.

The quali were out this morning, venturing down to the bird feeder and sticking their heads up above the wall for a look around. They are incredibly fat right now or else I have just never seen them so close before. They are the state bird of California, and deserve to be, with their handsome feathers, jaunty topknots and apparent disinclination to fly. They can do, but make quite a noisy production of it, never rising more than about five or six feet above the ground as they make for the nearest low growing shrubs.

We walked in the Kenwood Reserve where the madrones looked very pretty with their smooth red bark forming little red curls near the base of the trunk. I took an interesting shot of one of the ubiquitous oaks, pointing my camera straight up through the still bare, curly branches to the blue sky. The first wildflowers were making an appearance, and the shooting stars won the blip prize of the day, perhaps because they look more like birds than shooting stars to me.

It would seem that Target (not our favorite place) is the only place in Sonoma County that has shelf liners, so we took the scenic route through Glenn Ellen where we came across the weathered old barn with sheep grazing around it and a big silo .

As Lady F would say, I draw a veil over the trip through Target. Suffice it to say that we got our shelf liners (not nearly enough, as it turns out) and got out of there before OilMan lost it. Back to the task of once more unpacking dishes, pots and cooking utensils and finding a place for them. The good news is that we have lots more choices of places to put things, with cleverly designed drawers and pull out shelves. The bad news is that there are four cabinets yet to be made, so we'll still have some boxes in the bedroom. The good news is that the Oscars are on tonight--perfect kitchen unpacking television.