The pistol-packing, Macified mama...

The pistol-packing, Macified mama ... has some beautiful flowers in her garden!

Imagine something this attractive, yet so close to Washington, D.C.  Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  Miki, Race and I took our usual morning walk.  We had a little more adventure than usual, though.  As we were walking past a mowed-down barley field, we saw a vole behaving very oddly, about 10 feet away off to my left.  It was jumping up and down, as though it were trying to escape a predator nipping at it's heels, but no predator was visible to us.  The two dogs immediately starting bouncing at the end of their leashes, snapping jaws just a couple feet from the vole, who kept jumping around and acting generally nuts.  I was struggling to keep the dogs from dragging me, while at the same time watching the crazy vole.

With no warning at all, a medium-sized hawk suddenly stooped down, nailing the vole in one claw.  Miki immediately ran behind me, stuck his cowardly little field spaniel head between my legs, and started barking like mad.  Race pulled even harder toward the hawk and immediately entered full-on insane mode.  Border collie spittle was flying in all directions, and I was being inexorably dragged toward the hawk – who didn't seem particularly perturbed by any of these goings-on.  He puffed himself up and spread his wings, but when that didn't scare Race off he just took off with the vole impaled on his claw.  As the hawk flew away, Miki came out from behind me and claimed all the credit for scaring off the hawk.

Dogs.

Yesterday evening we took a drive just before sunset to see if we could spot some wildlife up the Blacksmith Fork canyon, toward Hardware Ranch.  Boy, howdy, did we see some wildlife, especially deer!  Lots of fawns, including several sets of twins.  We also saw blue herons, a couple falcons, some larger hawks, and three or four bazillion swallows.  As we drove back toward home, a larger-than-usual moon, nearly full, hung low in the sky behind us.  Very enjoyable, that drive was...

Tonight we're going to the Trout & Berry Days dinner at the Paradise Town park.  The video at right was taken at last year's event, by a Scottish tourist; it's quite funny, but captures the spirit of the event nicely. We're going to the dinner with our friends Bruce and June N., the couple who were our realtors when when we were searching for our new home last year...