Posts from the ‘Front Porch Musings’ category

Change of venue

While I continue working on the front porch, the front porch furniture is in the front yard. Karl and Bob – and I – have adjusted…

Maybe Karl and I more than Bob…

I’m using an old comforter as my kneeling pad while sanding. Bob likes a blankie or cushion and it WAS on the front porch…

The porch is sanded and clean and ready for the sealer to be applied this afternoon. I’ve been scrambling to get this done as well as a few other outside projects that are better done in nice weather. It has been sunny, warm and very dry and supposed to be that way until Sunday so this is my opportunity to get some end-of-summer things done before we get into the off and on rainy, then snowy, fall-winter. We often have gorgeous, warm days into October but not so many in a row as this week offered.

I may be a bit slow on the blog posts as I still have my “day job” also. I added back my Twitter account over on the left: “Snippets of life” – just so there is no worry that I have done myself in playing with power tools…. “Snippets” is just a “what I’m doing now” thing – bits of my day or loose thoughts that don’t make a blog post.

…all coming at the moment, from the front yard.

Simply beautiful

Last evening’s walk was beautiful in that simple way of a warm, quiet evening. Karl and I puttered along on our walk in no hurry – him sniffing and looking, me just looking.

Return view of sky and setting sun through the woods…

The evening – simply beautiful!

…that red collar on the fence post??? I’ve been looking for it – Karl’s second collar (we have 2 so that one can be washed…) – I’ve been looking on the ground for it. I was working on this photo and noticed the red. I barely paid attention and finally realization of what it was kicked in. Have to laugh at myself as I’ve probably been passing by it on that post for days now.

Weather watching

From the Front Porch reader, Sandy, and her husband Jerry have been traveling the west these last weeks. On two previous trips, visits to Glacier National Park were a bit of a bust as the park was cloudy, fogged and/or snowed in so that they never saw the mountains…and as I just found out never saw a mountain goat either! Sandy emailed me from the Grand Tetons asking about Glacier Park weather – should they or shouldn’t they make the trip north? It is risky business trying to predict mountain weather but it has been beautiful and the forecast said it was to continue so I posted yesterday’s Glacier photos as added incentive and told them to “Come on up”!

They did! – Sandy emailed me this morning that they were on their way and that she was so excited to think that they would finally see the mountains in Glacier National Park. It was still dark when she emailed but the sky was clear and filled with stars so I had high hopes for gorgeous weather.

ahhhhhh!!! – That is a sigh of relief as the morning dawned clear and beautiful with the mountains visible north to the park. Sandy and Jerry stopped on their way to the park and in time for a piece of cherry pie…

on the front porch.

Flathead Lake scenes from the archives

aka a “blast from the past”… September 2002, I put my Whitefish home for sale and moved into a furnished rental on Flathead Lake for the winter. The furnished lake rentals are very inexpensive through the winter – rent for a month is less than 1/2 of the summer weekly “cottage” rental price. It was an opportunity to leave my home furnished for sale appeal and try out Bigfork area as well as be “on” the lake for a wee bit. As it turned out, it was a glorious late summer/early fall and the boys and I got to enjoy our beach many afternoons.

All photos taken October 2002 with my Canon Digital Elph – a whopping 2.1 megapixels – circa early 2001. I was remembering that fall and the photos from that time – I want to try some Photoshop techniques on the photos of the boys near the water…to bring them out and blur the background. Fun for the future! – for now, these still jog the memory.

Heavenly skies

Sunrise

Psalm 19:1-4 **

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day, they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

Clouds

**Thank you to a faithful reader for pointing me to the 19th Psalm – inspired by the Blue Holes post.

Photos are from Spearfish, SD – April 2008

My thoughts and prayers with the people and animals who call the Gulf Coast home as the skies there look to bring difficult circumstances in the next days.

Blue holes

Yesterday morning was heavily overcast. I have learned to take the camera no matter what. As we left the property and entered the adjacent land which opens to the full sky and mountain view, a vivid blue hole in the overcast appeared. In my head, I said “a blue hole” and it reminded me of “The Blue Hole” – an anomaly in Castalia, Ohio.

“The Blue Hole” was one of those things like “House of Mystery” or “the largest” whatever. In my memory, it was the only venue of that nature that we ever stopped to see when I was a child. “The Blue Hole” was a deep water thing – supposedly of some nature that made it impossible to determine the depth. Also, it apparently lacked oxygen in the water. My memory is of a very blue water hole, surrounded by a fence and about 50 feet in diameter. I remember leaning against the fence and peering into the depths.

The thing is, I think I remember stopping at “The Blue Hole” more than once…and I think we had to pay to see it. And now I wonder why, as we never stopped at any of the other oddity tourist things.

The clouds brought up the memories of “The Blue Hole” and I was forming the blog post in my head…thinking to get any current information and web site links that had more information than I could dredge up from memory. When I googled “The Blue Hole Ohio”, I had a small shock. A number of entries referred to the scam that was “The Blue Hole”. Other sites had explanations. Some links were blog entries as this will be – childhood memories from people my age. “The Blue Hole” as an “attraction” no longer exists…and, of course, it had oxygen in it!

So, “The Blue Hole” of my childhood is a bit of a mystery. But the experience remains and the memory of the vivid blue..the memories surfacing today as I looked at the “blue holes” in the overcast sky of northwest Montana.

Blue holes…a bit of a mystery.