(Not) Wordless Wednesday

I hope you have all been well, and that you have had a lovely Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or whatever. Ours has been lovely. One gift I received is a new iPad, which is SUCH a relief, my old one, while much adored, was so out of date that it could not take new updates, and thus pages would freeze and reload and freeze and reload, and it was a nightmare to do anything more than a text or facebook on it. Now with my new iPad, which is all up to date and happy, I am hopefully going to manage to find more time here. We shall see.

First off, my iPad magically synced with my iPhone (which is also relatively old, being a 5S or some such), so I have a lot of pictures here that I had taken while out and about over the last few months, and had taken with the thought that they might make it onto my blog, but somehow it never seems to happen. So, let’s see how this new wordpress app works with my new iPad and old(ish) pictures, shall we?

Well, that was easy. I always find it strange when I am out for a walk and come across a stuffed animal. Perhaps mom or dad was jogging along with a young one in the stroller, and the young one tosses the toy, and the parent is busy jogging and does not notice.

This one is much larger, likely not from a stroller. Mulder and I saw this one on our walk the morning after Halloween. It freaked him the hell out, and he had to bark a LOT at it. I kind of wanted to bring it home with me, it was clean and pretty and nice, but perhaps someone had put it there as a surprise for their son or daughter to find on a birthday walk, and I would have ruined that, plus it freaked Mulder the hell out, plus where would I put such a thing in our tiny condo? So it stayed where it belonged.

This is another item from that same Nov 1st walk. Mulder didn’t care as much about this one, but it creeped ME out.

I took this photo several weeks ago, perhaps early Thanksgiving morning, when we were out to cheer Ted on in his 10k Turkey Trot. Pretty autumn leaves, though of course by now, the trees are bare.

On my way to pick Maya up from work, before the time change, and every day I would come across this little flock of turkeys. Now that it is dark when I make the drive, they are long gone by the time I get there.

A pomegranate tree on my walk, with leaves turned yellow. Nowadays this tree is bare and the pomegranates are gone.

A sign that Mulder and I passed every day on our walk for several weeks, though the rain has destroyed it since, and it is now gone. But I like the cheerfulness of it.

This is the heater at my Aunt Flo’s house, and if you look up to the left, you can see a phone in the closet. Why is it there? I have no idea. I did test it, and it works, with the same phone number as the house phone.

I was out running errands one day and this praying mantis came along for the ride. It was there the entire time, from CVS to Target to the grocery store, and home again, though it did find a bit more protected place to ride.

This is where it tucked away until we were home again.

A note on the door of a restaurant that we like. Seems they were shut down for a bit by the health department. We especially like the ‘for some reason’ clause at the beginning (partially covered by the receipt that is inexplicably stapled to the note).

I believe this turned into a salad dinner, along with some chicken and lettuce, back in late summer.

Probably I have shared this photo before, or one like it. Monet’s garden in Giverny, France. I have recently been watching some programs on Netflix with a British gardener named Monty Don. 1st was a show called Small Gardens, Big Dreams, and is a gentle reality show where people want to transform their local tiny garden (in their yard most of the time), and Monty comes and goes over their plan, gives them suggestions, discusses budget and so on, and then comes back and checks on them periodically until they are done. I fell in love with the show, it is so gentle, and the people do all of their own work with their own money and it is not a competition, no one goes home. Lovely. Well, when that finished, Netflix told me that he has other programs, which are sort of travel shows about gardens, one series (3 episodes) in France, and one series (4 episodes I think) in Italy. It’s gorgeous, and my favorite episode has been the one where he visited Monet’s garden, which is the third episode of the French series. If you have Netflix, and you might enjoy some lovely gardens in the middle of a cold dark winter, do a search for Monty Don, and see what pops up.

Lastly, here is a crass and hilarious card that I wanted to buy for Richard’s birthday. Luckily I did not do so, or perhaps I would not have received this lovely iPad for Christmas.

We shall see how I do with the blogging thing going forward, but hopefully the new iPad will be a help!