Today's Flowers # 7

My friend Luiz Santilli Jr. has started a Today's Flowers Meme, check it out. Come and join with your flower photos. You can get in on the start. Sunday at 7GMT is the post time.

Today I would like to share not a wild flower but one that is cultivated. There is a field of Sunflowers right next to the farmers field of wheat. If you click on the photo you can see a scarecrow in the field to the right back.
Going in closer you can see the row upon row of full Sunflower heads.
The Sunflowers were quite beautiful in golden yellow.
This on had a worker on the edge getting some nectar and pollinating the plant.
I went in for a macro and the bee was really busy. This farmer will have a lot of seeds to sell.

Camera Critters #24

Camera Critters by Misty Dawn, go here to see who's participating.

My friend told me there were deer behind the plant. I ran and got my camera and quietly walked to the back of the property. Out of the wooded area come a fawn and a doe. I thought these were the same ones I saw a few weeks back.
They worked there way along the back of the property browsing from the grass and trees. "I think I have an itch on my chin mom".
She is a good looking mom.
"We can both get a bite of this tree".
"Oh oh, something is wrong".
"I'll go over and investigate, maybe if I paw the ground it will get scared." I never moved a muscle.
"I guess you are harmless and I'm still hungry".
"Come along and move over here".
They always give that one look back.
This is not the end of the story and I will finish the story next week for Camera Critters.

Aftermath of Ike and Award

The Ohio are got hit by the remnants of Hurricane Ike on Sunday. There were some places getting 80 MPH gusts of wind and 2 million people lost electricity. A wind that strong can blow down trees and take out power lines and the results can be devastating. What I'm showing are the results but no major damage. Here is a large tree on the way to work. The tree rot caused it to became weak and fall. It was a large tree but it didn't do damage to the house.We had one large tree fall down in our development across a street and it had to be cut up with chain saws to allow passage. We have underground wiring and so had no outage
The damage to some trees was minimal, just a branch.
Other trees received major damage and this tree may have to come down.
Then there were the trees that came down from a stand of similar trees. This was the tallest of the bunch.
I has taken a week and we hope is everyone is back with power by Sunday.


The Award I received this week "I Love Your Excellent Blog".

What a cool award from my friend Kostas from Greece. He honored me with this neat award for my blog. I am happy to receive it from his really neat site which has such detailed photos.

The rule is for me to give this award to other blog that gave me big moments with their marvellous posts, their beautiful photographs, and also their informative comments.

My friends who I pass it on to are:

Carletta for her photos and stories of WV.

Michele for her excellent photos of the Rocky Mountains.

Ivar for his beautiful views of Norway.

Louise for her stories and photos.

Darla from Florida for her great photos.

Leedra and the Appalachian Mountain animals and more.

Sky Watch Friday 9-19-08

Sky Watch Friday is on it's own. Please check out the new sight and link in if you wish to participate. There were 357 people last week with beautiful Sky photos. You can link in from my side bar or above.

These are two shots from the Toby Keith concert last Saturday night. This is the cloudy sunset. We had two solid days of rain which ended 5 hours before the concert.
We now have the Harvest Moon in the cloudy Sky rising as the Sun is setting. The reason they called it a Harvest moon was that it gave the farmer enough light to continue working after sunset. This has changed since they added all the big lighting systems to the tractors.
Sunday brought the remnants of Hurricane Ike that hit Texas up through Ohio. It took out power to 2 million customers for a few days. Some are still down from the winds that gusted 60 to 80 miles per hour and took out many trees. This is a view of a cloudy day on Monday with a promise of better weather to come. The promise was fulfilled on Tuesday and has continued until today and a promise through the weekend.
Hope you enjoyed the Ohio Roller Coaster Weather Skies.

Toby Keith Concert

Toby Keith Concert came to Blossom Music Center with great fanfare. Toby is loved by the gents as well as the girls. There was a crowd of 22,00 for the show, not bad considering it rained from Thursday until Saturday at 2:00 PM with the 7:30 PM start of the show. There was one addiction from all the rain to the lawn. One section of the lawn became a slip and slide and anyone wearing flip-flops fell. Check out the back of this girl, she was one of 30 who fell and almost everyone had flip-flops on.
This is an example of the guys who were there in groups to see Montgomery Gentry and Toby. Yes, they were having a good time.
There were some short opening acts from Toby's label Show Dog Records and then Montgomery Gentry, We saw them a few years back when Blake Shelton opened for them.
They put on a light show with a lot of their hits and got the crowd warmed up for Toby.
It was with a lot of fanfare and glitter that Toby hit the stage.

He is a big guy but the pulled down cowboy hat makes it hard to capture. He strolled out to the stage amidst a screaming crowd.
Here is another well planned show with all the bells and whistles.
He can sing a balad, so it kept the crowd excited during the show.
He had a big screen behind and here he is looking back to the screen.
The Country Concert Season is over at Blossom and it was a good one. A wet field for this one but we took a plastic tarp and sat on it. There was the rain at Brad's concert but we didn't get to wet. All in all it was a fun series.

A Post With A Warning # 2

this is a continuation of real life happenings in the struggle for life. These are not staged photos these come from a true story that happened as posted. If your squeamish about nature pass on this one and yesterdays post. I have given fair warning so the story begins.

My next door neighbors have two grandsons who come over often. They were near the front of the their house at an overhanging part and were real excited about something. I called over and asked what was happening. They said something excitedly about a toad or frog. I didn't get it all. Well a toad or frog isn't too exciting but I had my camera in hand so I thought might investigate and at least explain to them the difference between a toad and frog. It was a pretty good chance it was a toad. I had just saved a small one from the lawn mower a few weeks back. I got there and was very surprised. The reason they didn't know what it was is seen here. It is half way engulfed by a 18" long Garter Snake. We moved a couple of wood chips off the snake and got this photo. I'm pretty sure this is a big female. It has great coloring. I zoomed in and you can see the snake is in the process of swallowing the toad. It is a big toad and it is slowly going down.
The snake decided it didn't like me so close and came after me and raised up with the toad in its mouth. I moved back and then thought, what's it going to do, bite me with that full mouth. Why didn't I snap that shot. It had charged about 4 foot. It came away from the house and toward the boys and I. I know it can't bite, so I moved in closer. It had moved quite a way so it headed back close to the house.
As you can see it has a long way to go with that toad and I wanted to get supper so I left him to his supper. I came back later but it had gone into hiding with a full belly.
This was a graphic display of life and death in the big city. It goes to show that all creatures need to eat to live and the circle of life continues. A Garter Snake is harmless to people but I don't like snakes. That's probably the reason I missed that one shot.