LAVENDER AND EVERYTHING ELSE

I'm behind again!!! Catching you up on the last week or so......
.
This is the lavender bouquet we made Wednesday morning so the girls could give it to their ballet teacher, Mrs. Peterson.

Ready for ballet class!

This is a photo of the tree in our front yard that I don't know what it is. It apparently flowers.

Our red, red rose in front of the house. This poor thing is being eaten alive, but the flowers are pretty. And this is the rose that was blooming in November 2007 when we first saw this house.

Nathan lost his tooth last Sunday!!!! The tooth fairy came... of course. :-)

At the Marbet Summer Pig Roast Party, June 20, 2009....

We found a fuzzy little friend.

Mary Pearl likes to rock the boat whenever she gets the chance!!

Our goofballs on the swings.

They weren't exactly sure what to do on the treasure hunt, though.

But they were figuring it out...

Their chickens -- buff orpingtons. These ladies are still too young to lay, and they will be huge and goreous when full grown!!

The Marbet's garden.....

This one wasn't on the BBQ... I was calling him, "Next."

Our friend Gerald and the red roses. Oh, and his beer cup. Can't forget the beer cup.

Last Friday Astoria had a weird visitor... this is The World. The cruise ship people LIVE ON. AS in, NEVER LEAVE. So weird what people find to do with their millions.

Last Thursday, Mary Pearl came into find me at midnight, and promptly fell asleep on the couch.

Emily the Skating Queen!!!!

Mary Pearl LOVES her Blankie!!!!

And dancing.....

Last Wednesday, the crack team of fire fighters from the Knappa Volunteer Fire Department were practicing. I kept hoping they would swing their hoses in the direction of our backyard and water the garden to save me some time. No such luck.

A very rare photo of Mama.

I hope everyone's summer is going well. We are busy with a little bit of ballet and then storytimes at our local library and another one at the elementary school. And weeding. Lots of weeding.

PEONIES, FERRIES AND BERRIES, OH MY!!

Okay - how incredibly beautiful is THIS peony??? One of the flowers my mother had in our yard when I was little, it has always been one of my favorites. This one is beyond beautiful, though. Our first flower bloomed last Thursday. I love it.


This is the mama and her baby boy who live near us. I have to get out the pan and spoon and make a racket so they don't get the idea that our yard is a fun place to get their dinner. Here they are in our neighbor's yard.

An updated pix of the garden -- the peony in the foreground, the mountain in the background, and the bird tape is flying over the veggies. I took a video of our disco garden, though. It cracks me up -- it's mesmorizing (how do you spell that?).

Taking the ferry to Longview -- last Friday! I totally forgot to add these photos until today! But we went to Longview last week and I thought it would be fun to take our tiny ferry. It goes from the TINY town of Westport, Oregon, to Puget Island. From Puget Island, you cross a long bridge over the Columbia River to Cathlamet, Washington. Turn right, and in a few you're in Longview. It's a *very* pretty ride, as the photos show... don't you just expect to see vampires running through the trees along the highway?? hee hee

.

Here comes the ferry -- Nathan COULD NOT believe we were going to drive onto a boat. I'm sure he thought we were going to die.

Getting onto the ferry.....

The pilot:

A close-up of the map -- I marked in yellow our path from Highway 30, across the blue on the ferry, then across Puget Island and then onto Washington in Cathlamet -- in the lower right-hand corner.

Mary Pearl and the daisies she found near the ferry dock. She gave them a proper burial at sea while on the ferry.

On the ferry....

It was windy!!!

Heading to Washington.....

And now we're in Washington. A fun ride for a $3 fee per car. :-)

Onto Puget Island. There's a cute park right there, but not sure what else is gong on around this sleepy island. We'll have to check it out more next time.

The trees... this is the drive to Longview. And yes, me taking photos while driving. ha ha

You can see the Columbia off to the right there.

More trees.

Trees and rocks.

Taller rocks, more trees, the river.

Onto the weekend -- haircuts for the boys!!!

Nathan before...

With a mohawk....

Checking out his mohawk....

All done!!!

Daddy's turn....

All done!!!

Sunday morning, back to Columbia Farms... this time to get strawberries for the freezer!

Heading out to the fields:

Looking back toward the farm buildings. So pretty!!

Our beautiful Heartberry Strawberry!!!

That is 25 pounds of strawberries!!!!! Not bad for $30!!!!

Strawberry hands!!!!!!!

Monday today.... off to do the shopping. NOT my favorite thing to do... wish there was a way to just *blink* and have the shopping magically appear in the pantry!!!!

Cynthia

EMILY RIDES A BIKE!!!!!!

The training wheels came off last night, she practiced a bit first thing this morning, and here she is, ladies and gentlemen....

Emily "Look, Ma! No Training Wheels!" Moyer!!!!!!!

SURF TO SYRUP

We went to the beach last week on the 5th in Seaside -- totally fun, but a little gray and chilly.
Welcome to the Oregon Coast! ha ha ha

Emily Rose lost another tooth Sunday night -- here the obligatory gruesome photo.

Nathan Jade made a castle in the mud pit. It's still together however many days later. Another reason why building out of mud is more than sand. Ha ha!

The last of the Sauvie Island strawberries were sacrificed on the top of a marble cake over the weekend... sad.

Mary Pearl making her little potato family....

Daddy making strawberry syrup with the rest of the strawberries. Now we will have yummy syrup for pancakes!

More exciting news - the training wheels have come off the Princess bike! Both Emily and Nathan were able to wobble around without the training wheels, and so we went ahead and took those off last night. Crazy!! We need to get Mary Pearl a smaller bike... time to hit Craig's list...

Yesterday we took a day off and went to Longview. We had lunch at Taco Bell and they played on the playland jungle gym thing, and then we went to Michael's where I met an awesome woman named Karen who agreed to field my frantic wedding-cake calls as I get closer to doing Raven's wedding cake, and then we ripped it up at Target where I picked up the new Black Eyed Peas CD. The kids are dancing to that right now and shaking the house!!!!!

And that's all for now, guys!

Cynthia

STRAWBERRIES AND BABY CHICKIES!!!!

Hi everyone!! Once again... it's June and that means one thing around here -- STRAWBERRY SEASON!!!!! We packed up early on Saturday morning and headed to Sauvie Island (http://www.yelp.com/biz/sauvie-island-portland) and had a WONDERFUL time because we beat all the crowds with Our New Plan....

We chose Columbia Farms over the usual Krueger's Farms (which is the FIRST farm you hit when you cross the bridge onto the island, which means it's a total circus now and packed all the time). Columbia Farms is run by a lovely little family, and there were only three cars there when we pulled up a little after 9 a.m. *SWEET*

We headed for the Mt. Hood berries, because they are the BEST....
Emily is getting busy:

It didn't take Nathan any time at all to figure out what we were doing! He LOVES strawberries, so this was like heaven to him!!!!

Success!!

Here is Mary Pearl doing what she does best. We warn them, "Weigh the baby before we go out to the fields!" But they never do -- they're loss!!!!

Mary Pearl says, "I am going to eat this strawberry and you can't tell me no. And after this one, I will eat as many more as I want..."

And here she is saying, "Take the picture already... I could have eaten this entire pint of berries in the time it took you to turn on the camera!!!"

The whole strawberry-pickin' crew......

This is the farm we came to last fall for pumpkins, too, and they also sell honey in the fall from their own hives. Okay, so somehow Mary Pearl remembered that THIS is where her honey came from, and she found out they didn't have any for sale in their little store... and started bawling!!! The mom and her daughters were like, "Oh my gosh... it's not in season... " and then the mom remembered she HAD some -- and pulled out this giant jar from last season and GAVE it to Mary Pearl!!! She LOVES her honey.........

And then we went to Mama's favorite garden to visit and get inspired in... Blue Heron Herbery. This is their front yard:

One of the grape arbors:

Our retirement home in Oregon:

I love this statue. St. Christopher, right? I am bad on saints. Not Catholic, sorry.

Mary Pearl and the purple flowers...

Mary Pearl and the yellow flowers and then yellow chair....

Mary Pearl is a better model for me, because she is my baby and stays with me, while the others ran off immediately to go chase chickens and look for fish in the guy's pond.

GORGEOUS!!!!!!

And then we headed back to Knappa... and we stopped in Granny Patti's store (our "mall" ha ha ha) for cupcakes and to show Daddy the baby chickens....

Our store. Well, we have a gas station, too. And two restaurants. One coffee shop/tanning place. But that's pretty much it.

These are the araucana chicks -- they lay eggs that are pink, blue and green!! I can't wait for next spring when our chicks come home!!!! Need a coop first....

Emily also lost another tooth this weekend... very exciting!! The Tooth Fairy left her $1 and a little note. It was very cute. Although, this time she was tired of the tooth and had me pull it out. That wasn't so fun. *blech*

Take care!!!!

Cynthia

RIBBONS AND GARDEN TIMES

Yesterday was Emily's Kindergarten Track and Field day at school. I mainly took video, but here are some photos of our girl getting her first ribbon -- good job, Emily!!!!!
.
This is the morning kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Heavenrich, handing out the ribbons. Mrs. Gremar was home with her little boy that day, who was sick. :-(
.
YEAH!!!!

Such a cutie -- the first of many ribbons to come, we're sure!!!!!! The cutie-patootie on the left is Alonzo. He rarely smiles at anything, but was smiling at Emily that afternoon. He is very sweet. Ricky is on the right. He and Emily used to sit together in class.

Garden Update!!! Here you can see our new picnic table in its place in the garden. I left that spot on purpose, knowing that someday a picnic table would be there, and what do you know -- there it is!!! Charley still can't believe he built it in one day from plans from one of his magazines. Too freakin' cool. And we built it for so much less than it would have cost to buy one. It pays to be handy with your hands!!! Nice job, Charley!!!!

A nice shot of our garden gate, Buddha and our young garden Under the Misty Mountain.

The garden. The mountain.

The kids are VERY excited to finally have the table done... of course the weather turned misty/yucky as soon as we got it out there, but when the sun returns, I envision coloring books and crayons and other projects being dragged back and forth to our Outdoor Garden Living Room.

OUR FIRST STRAWBERRY!!!!!!

A close-up. This is one the darn slugs didn't get. *whew*

And then we broke in the new table with our first shared meal. Poor, little strawberry! Splitting it three ways made a tiny snack for the kids!

Fun with the camera:

Jin Pei took this one....

Emily Rose took this one:

And of course Mary Pearl took this one:

And then I have started some propagation in anticipation of next year. Here are 18 lavender cuttings from the Provence lavender in the front yard. Hopefully most of them will root, and then next year, they should be ready to place in the new lavender garden.

Lavender Up!!!!!

The weather has been cool and misty, so we have had a nice break from being outside all day for the last three weeks. It's hard to believe we only broke ground on our gardens 3 weeks ago. It has made such a huge difference in our yard and daily life. There is still so much in the future we want to look into and begin -- the lavender gardens I mentioned above, a fruit tree orchard, a dahlia border, a chicken coop complete with some gorgeous chickens who will lay pastel eggs and brown eggs for us, and then the BIG projects -- turning the fugly backporch into a sunroom and the mudpit off the backporch into a deck.

Where did that pot of gold go anyway......

hmmm...
Cynthia

DOING LAUNDRY, GARDEN UPDATE!

It's official --we did three loads of laundry today and DIDN'T use the dryer!!! So that's three hours of NOT using electricity and natural gas to dry our clothes... just that gorgeous sun and wind up in the sky. Nice.

Mary Pearl thinks it's funny their clothes are hanging outside.

Nathan has been telling us how they do laundry in Jinhua -- in China the rope they use is made so that they can stick corners of the clothes into the rope itself, so they don't need clothespins.

Which reminds me, we need more clothespins!!! I still had a rope and half of space but no more pins!! Oops!!!

.

GARDEN UPDATE: Here are all of the wonderful things that have sprouted in the garden -- some of them today!!

*Nevada, Summertime, and Crisp Mint lettuce just came up today

*Kale is up already, nice and strong!

*Napa cabbage came screaming up this morning!

*One lonely soybean plant so far

*Both kinds of carrots are up, just tiny

*Broccoli is a go, still waiting for the cauliflower to sprout

*Potatoes are mostly up

*Cascadia snap peas emerged today!

*Sweet potatoes show signs of improving -- they came to us as plants *sad*

*Spinach (Olympia!) JUST came up today -- were not there last night!

*no beets yet

*Daikon radishes are totally up, have been since last week

*Green slam cukes -- two little guys are up this morning

*Popcorn and regular corn all up and growing really strong... 3 inches high

.

Plants we have put out so far this year include -- hops, "Golden Celebration" yellow English tea rose, 6 huge elephant garlic plants, 2 coconut ice lavender plants, golden oregano, double pink peony, snowball bush, pink dogwood (NOT HAPPY AT ALL), white lilac, stevia, sweet basil, sunflowers, lupine, hollyhocks, tarragon, strawberries and raspberries.

.

And there's still so much more to go. :-)

.

Tonight is the night we get to drag the new picnic table out to the garden and put it back together (won't fit through the door otherwise) and we will get to celebrate by eating the FIRST strawberry of the season... we'll be cutting it five ways! ha ha

.

More later,

Cynthia

.

(Yesterday I posted EIGHT posts -- so please keep scrolling down to stay updated on our news!)

EIGHT POSTS NEW TODAY!!!!!

Except this one would be #9!! ha ha!!

So please keep scrolling down, down, down.... there are EIGHT posts to get you all caught up on our life under our most beautiful Misty Mountain!!

SUN HALO, BABY!!!! GET YER TIGER'S EYE!!

(Many more posts below!!! Catching you up on the last week and a half... all added TODAY!)

Okay, so maybe it was tiger's eye for when there's blood on the moon... haven't watched Practical Magic in a while... but this is the glorious, amazing thing we were privileged enough to witness today....

I couldn't even fit it in my camera, it was so big!! The kids kept calling it "the round rainbow."

Mary Pearl, Emily Rose and Nathan Jade in the ring of the sun halo.

And so I spliced two photos together so you can see the whole thing....

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!!

And here is Emily Rose's little Douglas-fir in all its finest springtime glory:

Just look at those fluffy branches popping out of there!! What a sweet little tree!

He needs a name. We'll have to talk in the morning...
.

The golden chain tree is blooming.... so pretty!! Nathan is psyched because it's yellow, his favorite color!

Keeping the kids busy -- they get paint brushes and buckets of water and then they go paint the garden border rocks. And then it dries, so they have to start over!! hee hee

Can you believe this child is 4? She looks like she could sit in that beach bucket!

Today we put together our new compost bin!! Finally!! No more plant material from the kitchen going into the trash!! Yeah!! We nabbed this idea from our friends Don and Janet at Don's Waterfall Farms in Tillamook last weekend. Wire cage, black plastic and more wire on the top to keep the birdies out. East squeezy!

.

Charley putting the cage together:

It's basically a passive composting plan...a giant worm bin. No stirring involved. Boo-YAH!

I dug up the sod from the area it will sit in, and so with the bottom open, the worms will be able to come right up and eat and eat and eat as much as they want. We will keep adding plant material, they will keep eating and telling their friends about this great diner they found, and next year this bin should be full of some seriously good compost. We have room to add more bins as time goes by, because as the worms work on one, you start filling the next one.

.

Adding the plastic to the outside:

The wire cage is anchored into the ground so the wind won't topple it while it's still basically empty, and so larger critters (hopefully) won't take it out one night when we're sleeping.

.

Zip-tying the plastic onto the frame.

The plastic keeps everything in, because we looked inside Don and Janet's nearly-full bin, and it was like Blade Runner for Bugs. All kinds of little guys running around in there! I swear I saw one guy selling watches and another cooking up noodles! Yikes!

.

On top of the pile of goodies is a black plastic "lid" -- just a cover of plastic to keep things tidy and warm.

.

Done!! On top is the Tillamook Ice Cream bucket I use in the kitchen for our scraps. The wire things on top is hinged to the main frame, and then we have a hook on the fence behind the bin so that when I lift the lid to dump the next pile of garbage, I can hook the lid out of my way.

*SWEET*

Our first pile of goodies for the wormies:

And then our next project was......

NEW CLOTHESLINES!!!!

Another thing I remember from my childhood, because we didn't have a dryer when I was growing up. If Mom couldn't hang the clothes outside, we had to hang them up on the lines down in our dirt basement. Amazing what you grow up thinking is "normal" only to find out later that no one else hung their clothes in their dirt basement! By the same logic, I thought everyone had a grandma with sassafrass trees in her front yard. ha ha ha!! But some of my fondest memories were going into that basement and making my way through all of the laundry hanging everywhere... it smelled so... good...

.

And the dirt basement came in handy on rainy days -- great place to dig out little roads for our cars. :-) And you would think a dirt basement would be wet, or have bugs or something yucky, but it was totally fine all the time. I would LOVE to be able to have a basement like that here for a root cellar!! But Oregon is wet, wet, wet... we will have to think of something else.

.

Onto the clothesline!!!

TA-DA!!!!!!!

Our first load is tomorrow.... I can't wait!!!

.

And meet the newest member of the Moyer family.... our new picnic table!!! Here it is slightly torn apart for staining, but tomorrow (Monday) Charley and I will drag this beast out to the garden where he will put it back together in its proper place.

Here we were moaning and groaning about how much a picnic table was going to cost, and so Charley found this plan in one of woodworking magazines, figured out he had the lumber for the legs in his stash already, and so all the other wood and the rest of the hardware was $70.

Good grief.

As Grandma used to always say, "Quit'cher bitchin'!!!"

Cynthia

GARDEN UPDATE -- May 30, 2009

(More posts below!!! Keep scrolling after this one!!)

The kids got their own spots in the garden this week... Emily is on the left, Mary Pearl is in the middle and Jin Pei is on the right. Emily's spot has a strawberry plant of hers in it from last year, as well as the pea plant she grew at school and brought home a week or so ago. She has also planted some larkspur and decorated it with rocks. (Decorating with rocks is a family tradition... ha ha ha!) Mary Pearl planted carrots and marigolds in her patch, and Jin Pei planted marigolds and soybeans in his spot.

Emily's garden markers... her strawberry is named "Sweetie."

Jin Pei wanted stars on a marker for his garden patch.

And here are Mary Pearl's markers in her garden patch. Too cute.

This is our baby popcorn on the 30th... it's growing SO FAST, we just can't believe it. From morning until night, it is taller. *crazy*

Our first soybean came up!!!! Boo-yah!!!!

Buddha lookin' cool in my shades. He is being backed by some seriously yummy golden oregano, and flanked by two coconut ice lavender plants from Don's Waterfall Farms in Tillamook. They apparently will have both pink and white flowers on the same plant! I can't wait to see that!

Daddy's new hops plant, also from Don's.

Our new gorgeous tea rose from Fred Meyer. I can be walking by this little lady when I am inside the garden and I can smell her yummy scent. I want more roses!!!

A close-up...

The new peony, also from Fred Meyer... but it's the big, fluffy double pink blossom. I can't wait for this to bloom. Peonies and roses remind me of my mother. In our backyard when I was growing up in Southern Illinois, we had a vegetable garden, peonies, roses, hollyhocks and plum trees. Those are the things that mean "home" to me, and I have hollyhocks coming up in my seedling flats, we're doing the vegetable garden, I have my new rose (with flowers the size of softballs, which my mother loved about the roses here in the Northwest), my new peony, and so now I just need a plum tree.

Cynthia

DON'S WATERFALL FARMS on May 24, 2009

(Many more posts from today -- trying to catch up! Keep reading! Scroll down! Scroll down!)

Here is last Sunday in the next three posts... our Memorial Day sojourn to Tillamook, our old stomping grounds before moving Under the Misty Mountain.
.
At Don's Waterfall Farms, where Don and Janet are always playing in the dirt and eating edible flowers. :-) That day, though, they had a new friend to meet... a 4-year-old tortoise. How cute is she? The kids thought it was so cool and they all got to feed her cherry tomatoes. She ate a TON of them... I am so stupid, I wouldn't even know what to feed a turtle. How much do they eat? I have no idea!! Oh my gosh...
.
But little tortie gets to live in a nice, warm spot in one of the greenhouses on their farm, and she is having a VERY good life!!!

"Yum!!!"

Checking out the goods.....

Emily Rose... our little goofball.

Mary Pearl... reaching for the camera...

We love visiting Don and Janet because they always have such great ideas about gardening and always know a better way than the magazines or whatever other "expert" is telling us another way. Like, our compost bin is totally from them and it's awesome. Went together so easily, didn't cost hardly anything, no bulky wooden crate or pallates yuckin' up our backyard... nice!!

We brought a small pile of things home from them, too, and so that's always fun!!!

Cynthia

BLUE HERON also on May 24

(Keep scrolling after this post!!! Many, many more posts below!!!)
.
New baby lamb at the Blue Heron petting farm in Tillamook. We *really* miss the petting farm, because that was something we did nearly every week -- we went to "feed da amimals" and it was totally fun for the girls to do. So when we knew we were going to Tillamook, I knew we had to go here!!
.

Little Ruby -- how adorable is she?

Feeding Ruby:

Feeding one of the many, many goats...

This is Pierre, the handsome man -- he is an Angora goat.

Hello Pierre!! Yes, you are still so very handsome....

Jin Pei got into feeding the critters right away!

The kids did not lack for customers!

This is the Blue Heron: It's a converted barn and inside you can sample the brie cheese that carries the Blue Heron label, and they also have a wine-tasting bar, tons of gifts that change all the time, coffee, chocolates and everything else under the sun -- including a very popular deli where I used to work!!!

We also went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, but *holy crap* is was BUSY!!!! It was Memorial Day weekend, after all, and we are idiots and forgot that... so we left there immediately, planning to come back another day where it might not be quite so insane (during the week in the summer is usually better!!) and just bought some Tillamook ice cream at Safeway on our way home!!

Cynthia

VISTING THE BARLOWS!! NEW BABY ALERT!!!!

(Still updating you all -- keep scrolling down after this post!!!)

On Sunday, May 24, we headed to Tillamook for the day. First stop -- the Barlow family!! We got to see how much their daughter Hannah Louise and Taylor Elaine have grown, and we got to meet the newest Barlow Baby Girl -- Harper Collette!!! How beautiful is SHE????




Emily loved riding on her old favorite swing in thier backyard... she remembers when she was so little she could barely hang on to enjoy the ride. She didn't seem to be having any problems that day!!

And then all the kids went fishing. The Barlows have a little creek running down their property line, and there are all kinds of little critters in there, perfect for kids to be investigating. So here is Mary Pearl and Hannah Louise checking out Hannah's fish while Jin Pei is watching his swim around.

Something tells me Jin Pei thinks we should have a creek in our yard, too... but after this afternoon, I was very glad we didn't!! The fish would be scared to death every day of their lives!

Jin Pei's super-cool fish. Daddy says it is a sculpin. Not sure how to spell... don't really care... ha ha! *blech*

And her is one of my dearest friends, Jennifer Barlow. She ran around her beautiful backyard and scooped up plants for us to bring home for our own new gardens, and that included 32 raspberry plants!! Nice!!!! Thank you!!!!

AND NOW THERE ARE SIX!
The Barlows and the Moyer kids.... from left to right -- in the back row we have Travis and Jennifer Barlow, and then the kids -- Nathan Jade Jin Pei (6), Mary Pearl (4), Taylor Elaine (3), Harper Collette (3 months), Hannah Louise (6), and Emily Rose (6). And yes, there will be a test later.

The awesome thing is, I met Jennifer quite by accident one day at the Bay City park. She was still pregnant with Taylor, and we realized our oldest girls were the same age. I then met her again when we were at the Blue Heron Cheese Company in Tillamook -- we were all there to feed the animals at their little petting farm. She had given birth to Taylor, and we found out that we had both signed our girls up for the same preschool!! And so that is the story of how Jennifer and I became friends, and Hannah Louise and Emily Rose became friends. They are one of the precious reasons we do miss living in Tillamook County!!!!

Cynthia

BOOTS AND BLOSSOMS May 22, 2009

Sign of a very good day -- dirty boots piled up in the garage!!!


The bleeding heart is ready to be planted already! It says, "I have been in this ice cream bucket for a FREAKIN' YEAR, PEOPLE!!!


The gorgeous tulips....

So pretty!!!!

We had some fun at the Astoria Sunday Market last weekend....

The new pink dogwood, that is actually not doing too good... not sure why....

The new snowball bush -- I have always wanted one of these!!!

And the new white lilac!!! AMAZING bloosoms on this pretty lady. Can you smell that?? SO fragrant!!!!

Cynthia

Our beautiful birds... we are lucky to have such awesome flying neighbors!!

Band-tailed pigeon says WHAT???????

These two aren't speaking... I'm thinking it's girl trouble...

Here is a spliced shot of a particularly handsome lad having some lunch. If I were a female band-tailed pigeon, I would find it difficult to pick a date. They are all just so handsome!!

Not to leave out my Northern flickers!! So handsome!!! He's having some lunch, too, but the two types of birds do not eat at the same time. ha ha

And that's your catch-up for May 20, 2009!!! Gosh... I am so behind!!