Sunday Gratitude

As I had thought, this week passed by way faster that the week before. I was almost surprised how fast the weekend was here, time to reflect on gratitude.

It was another week of gorgeous sunsets when the sky was almost on fire. The photo above shows the best of them. After that the fog slowly settled in again.

I love the fog. It cools the region and brings some moisture when we're lacking rain. It's not much, but it certainly is better than nothing. It also prevents nights from being too frosty around this time. We can have some severe frost here which can do a lot of damage to all the citrus trees in the area. I love foggy mornings when you can't see the sun but there's a hint of it rising beyond the mist. The fog has a different color, the entire mood is different.

One day this week a woman in my exercise class brought in some oranges from her garden. She had so many that she generously gave them away. I took a few home, and after I had taken a few photos of them I ate the first one. I can't tell you how sweet and juicy they were. It was pure delight!

It was my birthday last week - I'm just grateful that I have birthdays in my life and I hope for many more in good health. I have seen too many friends leaving this earth way too early - there can never be too many candles on a cake! I was overwhelmed by all the good wishes I received - I have such wonderful friends! Otherwise it was a beautiful quiet day that gave me a lot of opportunity to read without feeling guilty. In the evening, one of my good friends and her family invited us over for a birthday dinner including cake and ice cream. Such a lovely evening!!! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Her entire family is delightful, her youngest daughter was a Girl Scout in my troop, she is the same age as Kaefer. They also just got a new dog, and it was great meeting her. I am such a dog person (animal person, really)! This is their old dog, Afton, who died a year ago.

I discovered a new visitor at my feeders - a Western Tanager. These birds don't come to my place very often and I was so happy to see one. They usually migrate in the winter to the South. This only shows how unusual this winter is.

Yesterday it rained a little bit again - every drop counts! It is so beautiful to see the green hills around us! I can't get enough of it. The magnolias are flowering - I just have to look out my window to see my neighbor's huge tree covered in pink and white flowers. It is breath taking. Sometimes when I go outside the air has a special fresh smell that it only seems to carry in very early spring - it smells of new life and anticipation. There is a slight almost unnoticeable mild breeze that I can feel - it often happens in January and then disappears again for several weeks.  It makes me long for spring although I hope winter stays around a bit longer and brings much much more rain. We still need it (I sound like an old broken record with my repetitive wish for rain).

What are you grateful for this past week?

Burro Fence

We had been warned!

We were driving along Route 66 when we came upon this sign by the side of the road. "How cute!", we thought.

A few miles later, we landed here:  (be prepared for tons of pictures)

Welcome to Oatman, Arizona, the burro capital (of Arizona? the Southwest? the USA? the world?)

Of course we had to stop and take a closer look! It took us some time to drive through the tiny town because of the burros who don't get out of the way just because a car wants to pass them. No way!! At the end of the town we found a parking lot, left the car and went to meet the burros.

Although they are wild and we were warned that they bite and kick they never did. All they wanted was the alfalfa that you could buy in paper bags and feed to them. Kaefer carried the bag and therefore she was very popular with the burros.

What about a beautiful burro ear?

And here is the only fence I could find in Oatman, Arizona. Honestly, I only saw it when I looked at the photos back home - when I was there I was actually looking at the burro who didn't join the craze in the road. She probably already had her share of alfalfa!

The animals were curious and wanted to explore the Geek's camera (and he took some great close-ups!)

The burro bar...

Some of the smaller burros had little signs on their heads telling people not to feed them. Here's the reason why:

A different kind of - fence?

I guess the shop owners were a bit annoyed about the people who fed the burros in front of their store and the bits of alfalfa that were lying around (and other burro "gifts" as well probably).

This is Flapjack, the only male burro in town. He must have a good life... He was pretty sassy, but very cute as well.

I'm linking up with Theresa's "Good Fences" and Eileen's "Saturday Critters".

Morning Light

Yesterday I wrote that I want to spend more mornings at the lake, and today I did just that. Right after I had dropped off Kaefer at school I went to the lake when the sun wasn't even up behind the hills. The sky already showed some change as you can see in the picture above, but it was still rather dull.

However, that changed very soon.

The sun was hitting the mountains behind the lake and the light was reflected in the water. So beautiful. Since the storms in December there have been a lot of branches, tree trunks etc. floating in the lake; I could also see quite some damage.

This one is for Texture Tuesday: I turned the original photo to black & white, brushed the color back on the floating tree and did some levels and saturation adjustments. Then I layered the photo with kk_yesteryear in color burn at 75% because I liked the dramatic effect. Another levels adjustment on the texture only so that the image is not too dark.

The real stunners though were on the other side of the lake:

You might think we're still in autumn and not in January - this is how our trees look like in winter. When the first sun hits them in the morning they glow and are quite breath taking.

This cooked tree has always been my favorite and it's a lovely foreground for the trees on the other side:

I am linking up with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday - if you follow the link you can see some stunning photo artwork! And if you want to see how others capture the light, please go to Nature Footstep and her Catching Light meme.

Sunday Gratitude

Every year I feel that the first full week of a new year crawls by incredible slowly, and after those first few days the weeks seem to chase each other throughout the year. This year's beginning was no exception - something I really enjoy by now, knowing that this feeling of time passing slowly will not last for long.

There was time to enjoy special moments and be grateful for them.

Like two very amazing sunrises that I could witness from my bedroom window. The sky shows these incredible colors only during winter, the colors are clear and very intense. It gives the beginning of a new day a completely new meaning. Sunsets were amazing as well!

It was the first week of school, and we're back to our daily routine. Interesting how fast that happens. I wake up on my own at 5:45 and get up just a few minutes after that. My daughter is the same. This week we left the house for school a few minutes later than usual, trying to break the old pattern, only to find that the parking lot at the school resembles a zoo - and returned to our old pattern. It's so much nicer to start the day in a more relaxed way.

I'm happy that I am back to my workout routine, although I want to mix it up a bit and spend more days at the lake this year. I haven't done so this past week because I first wanted to have five straight days of exercise to get back into it. There was only one day when I felt like there was lead in my legs, but the others were fantastic. I'm thankful to be back to my activity level.

I am immensely thankful for the heating in our house. We had some colder days with lots of sun and clear skies, but it comes at the price of lower temperatures, especially in the mornings and evenings. During the day the sun heats our house by shining straight in through the large windows. These clear and dry days (oh, how I miss the December rains - please let there be more rain!!) made it also possible to work in the garden. My poppies from last year have re-seeded like crazy and I need to pull a lot of them so that they don't crowd out everything else. Not my favorite kind of gardening, but it needs to be done. It helps that the ground is still wet and everything pulls out easily.

While gardening I discovered a new visitor to our garden, a little black cat. She hangs around the bird feeders which I don't particularly like, but she also just sits on top of the fence. She is still quite shy, but by now she doesn't run away immediately when she sees me, but keeps a safe distance. It has been a long time since I last had a feline companion in my garden.

Speaking of animals, there are two or three coyotes roaming the forested hill across from our house. The first time I heard them howling was in December. After we had returned from our trip I didn't hear them, but this week I heard them twice. They howl in the night, and one night they appeared to have been pretty close. Sometimes I hear only one coyote, sometimes at least two, but I don't think there are more than three of them. Some of you might remember how much I love coyotes. They're my spirit animal, I love their howling and the place they occupy in Native American legends. I just hope that nobody goes nuts and shoots them.

I started an online photography class called "The Art of Photography" with RMIT University in Australia. While there wasn't anything new to learn in the first week, I love the class and the way it is set up. The instructor explains everything in a very clear way, often with interesting examples. I did all my quizzes for this first week and now want to start my first assessment.

Last but not least, I am grateful for good bread (this is something I could mention every Sunday). I missed hearty bread during our trip (although I enjoyed the Navajo fry bread very much) and I started baking bread immediately after we had returned from the Southwest. Our favorite at the moment is this whole wheat bread.

What are you grateful for at the end of this first full week of 2015?

Navajo-Churro Sheep Wool

While on our way to Kayenta and Monument Valley in Arizona the day before Christmas Eve, we stayed the night in the Cameron Trading Post. This is a beautiful motel under Navajo management that we return to again and again. The rooms are big, tastefully furnished and absolutely quiet. The rates are very affordable especially when you take into consideration that the motel is rather close to the Grand Canyon. If you don't want to stay with the crowds, this is the place.

However, I don't want to write about the motel, but something that you can buy in the Trading Post: yarn. Not any kind of yarn, but wool from Navajo-Churro Sheep. The sheep are raised locally, the wool is harvested and dyed locally and some of it is sold in the Trading Post. It actually hangs in long strings from the ceiling and you just have to pick your colors.

It's very affordable as well, so nothing could stop me. I was in a knitter's heaven! The colors have beautiful names as well - rusty rose (on top), fuchsia (back right), jaded dreams (front left), peacock (front right) and sea foam (back left). Jaded dreams was the only color that was difficult to photograph.

Kaefer chose fuchsia, I'm going to knit some warm socks for her. Peacock will be for a friend and the other three are for me. All of them will probably be worked into warm socks since I constantly have cold feet. Our house is not particularly warm in the winter, especially not at ground level, and that's where my feet usually are!

This is the only picture that shows the jaded dream in a realistic way - and the peacock is closer to its real color as well.

My Friday Finds for this week - I just love yarn!

Fence in a Sandstorm

Well, not a bad sandstorm, really - but bad enough to chase us back into the car as quickly as possible.

In this picture you can see the sandstorm in the not too far distance, blowing the sand over to the rest area next to the freeway. We were on our way to Arizona, but this is still in the desert in California along Interstate 40 between Barstow and Needles. The desert here looks like this:

Not really much to see... and the sand can pretty much do what it wants. Like blowing over the ground and into people's faces and eyes - not fun. The wind was hard, and we tried to get back into our car as quickly as possible. But not before I had taken some pictures of the fence around the rest area.

I wish you could see how everything was bent in the strong wind!

I'm linking up to Theresa's Good Fences!

Covered with Snow

Hello my friends! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and a great start into the new year. Have you set any goals, resolutions etc. for 2015? I have stopped doing that years ago because they usually vanish by the middle of February. If I want a clean new start, any day in the year is good for that. However, I do hope and wish that 2015 will be a creative year for us with lots of joy and laughter.

 Texture: "january15createedges" in soft light at 100%, levels adjustment on texture only

Over Christmas we spent a week in the American Southwest - Arizona and Utah. It's an area we have visited often and know quite well. However, there are always new places to discover and explore, and while we visited "old" beloved places, we had lots of opportunity to discover other areas as well. We love the American Southwest, it is full of inspiration and wildness, vast "emptiness" and amazing light and colors.

 Texture: "january7papergrunge" in multiply at 42%

There was snow and it was pretty cold. However, the snow and the red rock were a lovely contrast. I especially loved the snow covered plants and leaves - the resilience of nature! While hiking the Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park I took pictures of these leaves and ground shrubs.

Texture: "january7papergrunge" in soft light at 85%

Texture Tuesday is still here in 2015 - a great opportunity to link up. If you want to see more textured work, just follow the link.