We've moved!!

Hello fans, watchers, posters, and everyone else! Today, May 19th, we have begun posting at our new blog domain, torc365.wordpress.com, owing to storage space issues here at Blogger. This blog will, however, remain up for nostalgia's sake. ;)

See you at the new digs!

139/366 Kitty Watcher

The other morning, while I was trying to get motivated to face the day, Max was enthralled by a particular tv commercial. By the way, he is laying on my blanket, up against my belly, on the side of the bed I have to get up on, so he wasn't helping me get motivated at all.

139/336 little bat

This little friend was climbing the curtain at our holiday house, at Barry's Reef, in the Wombat State Forest, Victoria, Australia. They're not great photos as they were taken with my phone.

138/366 Mother's Day

For Mother's day Hubby took me to one of my favorite restaurants. It's not close by.. it's in the middle of nowhere; about a 50 minute drive.. but it's a nice drive and they have great food. They are known for their steaks.  The town consists of this restaurant/bar, a church, and a few houses.

There are a lot of Amish people living in the area. We saw one horse & buggy, but I didn't get a good photo. Here is a road sign alerting drivers to horse & buggies on the road.

  On the way home we stopped at a small park. I've always liked this bridge .. there were 2 boys fishing off the bridge.

We also saw this tree, which I thought looked like an ent. :)


Rose
Southeastern Wisconsin

137/366 Family Day Out

Spent the day out with the Princess and the Rohan Man. This is at the Inn of the Rio Grande after lunch. :)

~Dubs

138/366 Flower

I spent Mother's Day weekend at my parents'. This lovely cornflower variety is blossoming in our garden at the moment. :)

137/366... Tinkerbell.

Ain't she purddy?

I have wanted a Fuchsia for a long time. My husband always balked at the notion. Then, for some reason, he shrugged and said... "Oh, that's a nice one. Sure, get it."   Well, I didn't argue the point and I brought home my little Tinkerbell.  (It's a Tinkerbell Fuchsia so I didn't really reach for the name)

Anyways, she now graces my front porch and everyone loves her.


Location: Calma's Front Porch.

Port Orchard, Washington, USA

136/366 Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!1

On Saturday my sister and I took mom out for a fancy-dancy seafood lunch for an early Mother's Day treat. Back at my car, I had a good view of some of the coasters at Hershey Park. Here are some folks having a bit of fun on a warm Spring day....










-Tooks in Southcentral PA

135/366 Bird lover

Bird lover, a photo by fre1ga on Flickr.

Another of those random, lovely things I see on my walks.

P.S. abject apologies for having missed last week.

135/366: Nature time

I went to my aunt and uncle's house for a Mothers' Day gathering yesterday. I brought my camera along to take some family pictures, but also had to get a few shots of the really weird, and beautiful, -looking clouds I saw on the drive over. They looked like the sand in the shallow water after a day of powerful waves.


Also, pretty trees! I kept stopping in the middle of the road to take photos, but only after checking to make sure there was no one behind me!

Richland, MI

~Sil

134/366 - View of the San Juans

Here are some beautiful views of the San Juan's from up in our viewing area above the Skagit Valley. This was not taken this week as you can see all the storm clouds about. This weekend that view would have been spectacular with the beautiful clear sunny skies we have had the last few days.

Vana

Photos Taken in Mt. Vernon WA from Little Mountain view point.

133/366 - The back of flowers

So, I brought in all of my geraniums over the winter, and because it's been so wet outside, I've not put them back out yet. They're enjoying life inside, flowering pretty constantly. One of my pots of trailing plants have flowered again and I quite liked the look of the flowers from behind (which is how I see them, as they are facing the window and the sun.

132/366 a sad day in our household

Today we made the sad decision to send our beautiful pup Bob on his last journey. Bob has been part of family for fourteen years and has brought much much joy. But arthritis, senility and a heart condition finally took its toll and we decided that it was time. So here is to Bob, he will be sorely missed

132/366 Quackers, Honkers, and Peeps

We went to a local park with the munchkin the other day, and this is what we saw.

An oddly colored Mallard Duck.

   LOTS of geese.

Baby ducks!

  Bread and crackers for the quackers. 

That lady on the far side of Munchkin is a friend of my roommate's, who had her grandsons there at the same time, and the brunette on this side of Munchkin is my roommate.

131/366 Old School redux

Last year I posted a couple of photos from old one room school houses in the area. At that time I said I would travel a short distance to the area where my mother-in-law grew up & take a photo of the school she went to. Well, I did that this week. The first photo is the school where she went to school. It has been added on to and converted into a home. It was a one room school house at one time, with two doors; one for boys, the other for girls! The old school bell is still there. This was the school for the country kids. My mother-in-law passed away a few years ago, but she told me that she sometimes rode a horse to school! 

A old sign to the side of the school reads 'Cheeseville Wisconsin , Population 20, United States of America'

 

 A little further down the road is the school the town kids attended. Obviously this was a larger building. It has also been added on to and has been converted into a (very nice!) house.  The old lintel-piece reads:

 18 Public - School 85

 (built in 1895).  This area was heavily settled by German and Luxembourg immigrants.

I don't know how much of this house was the original school and how much is new.

A few more miles miles is Stoney hill School. It is used as a 'living museum' and many school children go there on field trips to see what schools were like in the old days. 

It is considered the birthplace of (America's) Flag Day.  Teacher/schoolmaster Bernard J. CiGranda, a Luxembourg immigrant  petitioned for the holiday and wrote books on the subject of the flag & patriotism.

Unfortunately I had to borrow the Stoney Hill  photo from the internet because mine didn't turn out.  I'll go out there again one of these days as there is also a Pioneer Village nearby.                                                                            

 Rose   
Southeastern Wisconsin, USA (all near Waubeka, Wisconsin)                                          

131/366 Plant swap at the old manor house

About fifteen minutes walk from where I live, there's a farmhouse/manor house dating back to the 16th century. The house itself is currently empty, but the courtyard and stables side of it is still used to house horses and the garden site is used by a local organic gardening group. Each May, they have a plant swap event, where you can swap seedlings etc or just pick up some of people's surplus plants, possibly for a small donation for a charitable cause. We went this weekend and managed to somewhat restrain ourselves in picking up plants - I only got two, my partner five. 

The photo shows how nicely the gardening group has designed the vegetable garden, using plants and patterns from traditional farmhouse gardening, with a mix of vegetables and flowers.

The plant swap is where you can see all the people milling about. As you can see, it was a bit rainy that day.

130/366 new furniture!

New furniture! And kitties! :D

~Dubs

130/366... Beach House....



House on the Water

I always thought this would be a cool place to live. Well, save for the fact, it's located on a corner that people think they can careen around at 40 instead of 15 (It's real close to being a hairpin curve) and it would be a tad bit difficult to back your car out of the driveway that is almost on the road, still living on the water would be sooo cool.    :D

Well, they're tearing it, and the green one next to it, down this fall and making a pedestrian walking trail in their place. It will be nice to walk the water path from Port Orchard to Annapolis, which is right around the corner I just mentioned, but I'll miss seeing those cool houses.

Calma
Port Orchard, Washington, USA

129/366 Back to the flowers!!

These are some Hesperis matronalis (Dame’s Rocket) growing in the yard. They are lovely and they smell nice too.





I had taken my bike apart over the winter to clean it up good, and finally got it back together so it would work. *rolls eyes*

So I took a nice ride over the weekend and saw these pretty little clumps of flowers growing at the edge of the farm fields. I haven’t looked up the name yet, but here they are!






Tooks in Southcentral Pennsylvania

128: Melanippus the Watermelon

I went to an Epic Cycle-themed birthday party on Saturday evening (basically, the Iliad, Odyssey, Theban stories, etc.). One of my classmates came as Tydeus, who killed his opponent and then ate his brains, which is just.... well. Yeah. So my classmate brought this watermelon, complete with a modified Darth Vader helmet (which you can see in the photo), as the head of the defeated Melanippus, and we were all highly amused to find that he'd filled it with punch, which, as everyone knows, tastes way better than brains.

~Sil

127/366 A Walk at the Port of Skagit!

Today we decided to take a walk along the pathway by the Port of Skagit. It is next to the airport here and has a nice wetlands area that the walking path goes around an through. It was very nice out today so the walk was very nice. Took us an hour to go the entire path. Along the path we go by an waterway using plants as part of its filtration system. In the first picture you see a close up of how it comes out of each tunnel into a marsh area. In the second picture you see how the waterway goes through several tunnels and marsh areas as it goes along.

The last picture is of a set of blossoms on a tree along the pathway. We are not sure what it is but it appears to be an apple or some sort of something very similar!!

Vana

Photos taken in Skagit County in Bow, WA. The Beautiful Pacific Northwest of the USA!

126/366 - Supermoon (and another puppy!)

So, I haven't really had much to take a photograph off this week, however last night was the night of the so-called "supermoon" where the full moon coincided with the moon being at perigee (the closest it gets to the Earth on its elliptical orbit). It was rather cloudy last night and I only had my mobile phone with me, so it's not the best photograph in the world! (The white light below the moon is a street lamp, not a star.)

Supermoon from MRCC Liverpool

In order to make up for such a woeful photograph, I'm also posting a photo of a Springer Spaniel puppy that my boss has just taken home. He's called Flak and is 8 weeks old.

Flak, the Springer Spaniel puppy.

126/366 Green Leaves... And a Squirrel Again

The birches on the neighbour's yard are getting green:




The leaves of the rowan in the front yard are quite big already:




And, this fellow was busy digging something in the back yard:



:D

by Rowanberry

125/366 Cuddle Pup.

My little sister spent the weekend with me, and there was hardly any point when I looked up that she didn't have one of the four pups. She loves animals, especially dogs, (she wants to get into search and rescue when she grows up) but Mom and Dad won't let her have a dog right now.
The pups are now two weeks old, all have their eyes open, and all the boys have homes lined up. Still trying to place the girl puppy.

125/366 The Kids

This was taken at Manly beach Sydney, earlier this year

124/366 Rites of May

The 1st of May is a public holiday here and quite full of different meanings. It's Labour Day if you're a worker, a Marian holiday if you're Catholic, and Lovers' Day if you're courting. 

In parts of the country, especially the countryside, the latter meaning is often kept by erecting May Poles in the village centre and village feasts. 

A more private tradition, that is keeping up well in town, too, though, is the May Tree for your girl. The idea is that the hopeful lad goes off to cut a young birch tree in the night before May Day, decorates it with ribbons and puts it up outside the house of his beloved to show her his devotion. 

Nowadays, going off and cutting young trees is of course discouraged, so they are often sold, or you see what are clearly just branches taken from (hopefully) the giver's own garden. Still, the tradition remains very popular and you can hardly walk a hundred metres without coming across a May Tree.

124/366 Here & There where I live

A neighbors yard

Honeybee in our crabapple tree

Our Pippin wandering in the yard

A local park

Rose
Southeast Wisconsin, USA