Lifetime Memories

I never get tired of this view. This is Hawk's Nest State Park in West Virginia. There isn't much of a fence across the top of that stone wall but I guess it does serve its purpose, I assume, which is to deter folks from wanting to sit on the wall. It is a very steep and a long way down to the bottom.

I'm too short to stand and be able to look over the wall and fence so unless I'm above the view this is what I see looking down.

A close up of the little iron fence. 

I have made visits to this state park all of my life. This past May was my most recent trip when I took my nephew who is from California to visit the park. Above is a photo of my Dad holding my younger brother as they peered down from the overlook. This was taken in 1956. My brother was two years old at the time.

 

Dad had taken us up for the day and we had a picnic. This is my brother, me (age three), my Mom and my Grandmother Bessie, my Dad's Mom. The photo was printed in June so I'm guessing this could have been to celebrate my Mom's Memorial Day birthday. I love that she's wearing pearls, my Grandma is in a hat, my brother has a white dress shirt on as did Dad and I'm in a dress with a collar. Things were definitely much more fashionable back in the day.

Linking to Good Fences

A Summer Surprise - A Summer Tanager

I added this little guy to my life list this past Saturday. He is an immature male Summer Tanager. Last Friday morning I could hear a tapping that I thought was the UPS man at my back sliding glass door. On closer inspection I found this guy pecking at his reflection in the adjoining dining room window.

I wasn't able to get a photo until the following day on July 4th. My husband and I were getting ready to go out and he had just asked me if I had seen the bird that morning because he had heard it pecking the glass. Just then he saw it in our sunroom window and I grabbed the camera and was luckily able to get a few photos.

 

He did fly from the window to the bird feeder pole for a quick pose. I haven't seen him since but I'm hoping he is still around. I would love to see him when he grows into his full strawberry color.

 

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart 

Looking Toward The Skies

Marietta, Ohio looking at the Ohio River - West Virginia on the right

A recent sunset over  Beckley, West Virginia

 

Linking to Good Fences and Skywatch 

Wild Birds - Turkey Vulture

Turkey Vulture, Turkey Buzzard, buzzard, vulture - no matter the name these scavengers do their job even with a face some say only a mother could love. Coming home from the grocery store this week I rounded a turn and scared this guy from his afternoon road kill. He flew to a nearby tree and posed for me. He wasn't about to go very far from his meal ticket just because I wanted a photo!

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

Wild Birds: A Hungry Cooper's Hawk

I happened to be walking past my sunroom window when I thought I saw something so I stopped and backed up a step or two and noticed this hawk. Of course I grabbed my camera thinking he would fly before I got a photo. It turns out he didn't fly because he was protecting his lunch. I couldn't tell what it was he had. I'm hoping it was a mole or mouse and not my resident chipmunk. Honestly I didn't want to watch too closely fearing the chipmunk had been the target. I haven't seen the chipmunk in a few days and maybe he's hiding. The chipmunk lived under the oak tree that is just out of camera shot behind the hawk. Still hoping little chippy shows up.

My apologies if you have visited this past week and I didn't get back to you. I have some issues with my immune system that has been giving me a fit this week. I hope to be able to catch up on visits later today. Thanks to all of you who have left comments on my last two posts. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

Good Fences

 

I might be stretching just a bit this week on a fence.

This is the 'fence' around the basketball game at Chuck E. Cheese Pizza. 

 

Who is that behind the fence? 

 

 

It is my oldest granddaughter Lily!

She was enjoying her sister's birthday party.



This is little sis Lucy.

Lucy turned six.

This Grammy does not know where the time has gone.

 

Linking to Good Fences

Wild Birds: Canada Geese

Baby geese in the shade and away from some circling crows.

This little guy seemed a little older and was swimming in the water.

He was the only one of his size.

 

He waded in the water and seemed to enjoy it.

 

Sleeping so peacefully.

 

I think the little guy on the left was trying to tell me something. :)

 

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

This Week's Skies

A rainbow behind new green leaves. 

 

 Right before sunset a watercolor sky!

 

Linking to Skywatch Friday

A Carpet of Magnolia Blossoms

 

 

 The photos speak for themselves - enjoy!

 

Linking to Good Fences

Wild Birds

This weeks wild bird is the cowbird. On a recent brightly sunny day (too sunny for good pictures) this cowbird landed on the feeder. The Brown-headed Cowbird is a stocky blackbird with a fascinating approach to raising its young. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks.
 If a group comes by they will empty my feeders very quickly. Supposedly a ground feeder but as you can see they get it where they can.

On a recent day when I hadn't filled the feeder the Mrs. landed on the finch feeder.

 

Here the two are on the ground beneath the feeder. If you look closely you can tell it was a rainy day. Little beads of water collect on their feathers.

 

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

What do you see?

A Field of Dandelions


Look at all that detail!

Remember when you were young how you closed your eyes and blew the spores away?

"When you look at a field of dandelions you can either see a hundred weeds or a hundred WISHES...."

Good Fences

Sylvanius

 

This is the former Albert S. Heck mansion just outside my hometown of Spencer, West Virginia. It was built in 1925, and is a two story, brick Neoclassical style mansion. It has 17 rooms, 6 baths and a full basement. It features a front portico with two story fluted Corinthian order columns and pilasters attached at the return to the house. The basement features locker rooms and showers. The house was built by Albert Heck, a local business man who invested in the booming oil industry in the early 1920s. He had come to Spencer with the railroad and later found and developed a local oil field.
 

The mansion and grounds were designed specifically for Heck's family. Each bedroom was built for an individual. A tennis court with adjoining locker room was constructed to satisfy Heck's interest in the game.  He named the place "Sylvanius" – his middle name!

The Great Depression hit Albert Heck hard and he was forced to sell his property. The McIntosh family purchased it in 1936 and until just recently it was known as the McIntosh Mansion.
The mansion was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 and is now privately owned. The property has been renamed (restored actually) to the name of Sylvanius.

The hand forged gate you see is a recent addition to the property. I am quite proud to say it was made by one of my former high school classmates, Jeff Fetty. Jeff has done commissions for writer Tom Clancy, former president Bill Clinton, musician Jon Bon Jovi, the Globe Theatre in London, and others. While he is internationally known he is a quiet and down to earth kind of guy. The gates were installed just a few weeks ago and I was finally able to go over this past weekend and see his finished work.

Linking to Good Fences

Wild Birds: "I'm Bringing Booty Back"

Birds are just as lovely from the back as from the front. I happen to think that's true. Their feather patterns are so much easier to study and admire when they decide to keep their backside to my camera.

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

Good Fences

This white picket fence stands elegantly in front of the New Era School. New Era is a restored 1884 one room school house that was dismantled and moved seven miles to its present location. It is now a museum to days gone by when the conveniences of modern schools were nonexistent. The New Era School has maintained the integrity of its time with original desks, pot-bellied stove, slate chalkboards, oiled floors, pump, outhouse, and coal shed. You can see the coal shed to the right of the school and the outhouse is out back on the left. The school is open on Tuesdays during the summer months for tours. Admission is free. The school stands adjacent to the local elementary school. In May the school children will take part in May Day activities at the New Era school including an old fashioned maypole dance.  

Years ago my parents had a choice when it was time for me to begin my school career. They were informed I could ride the bus into “town” to go to the public elementary school there or the bus would drop me off about halfway there at a small one room school house. My parents chose the town school. Every day the bus would stop and drop off those students attending the one room school and then off to town the rest of us would go. I attended school in that one building from grade one to grade eight. I liked school and have many wonderful memories of those elementary years.

However, I still often wonder what it would have been like in that little one room school house. Everyday as we stopped to get those other students we could anticipate a glorious story of something that had happened. We heard who fell in the creek, a story about the, um, – outhouse, the baseball games or tag. I particularly remember there were many stories about a young boy who was always getting into something. He was a little cross-eyed and the boys had a running joke about his antics. They always said,”It would have killed any ordinary man.” And, always we heard their laughter each and every day.

I’m not sure if those students missed out on anything; but I think maybe I did.

Linking to Good Fences and Weekly Top Shot

Wild Birds: Picky Eater

This Red-winged Blackbird landed on the feeder. Between him moving and shaking the feeder I wondered if I'd get any photos. Here he is scattering the seed to the ground. 

 

This is a fairly still shot showing he has a small bite in his mouth.

 

Scattering/wasting more seed.

(the mourning doves and the squirrels will clean up quickly)



Searching Intently

 

 Finally, he finds what he's after - the sunflower seeds!

 

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

Happy Easter

Good Fences

Three weeks ago some of you may remember I posted a lovely stone wall with an iron fence above it that I felt was worthy of the entrance to a medieval castle (here). You might also remember it led to a newly built Hampton Inn Hotel. Hubby and I were again in the area this past week on a beautiful day when we were stopped at the stoplight below the hotel. This is a shot of the new metal fence that surrounds the hotel property above the fence in my previous post.
As you can see it was a gorgeous day to be out driving around, shopping, sky watching or fence hunting!!!

Linking to Good Fences and Skywatch

Wild Turkeys

This time of year the wild turkeys in the nearby woods start to wander out into the open. I had been keeping a lookout for them and this past Thursday I caught my first glimpse of them. There were four of them. By the time I got my camera they had passed the window. In this shot I was looking out the side of the window. You can see the turkey in the background has changed her direction and is heading back the way she came.

Something had scared them and they were hurriedly trotting back toward the woods. Shooting through the window at fast trotting turkeys is not the ideal photo shoot but I got a couple of shots to say they were here. Hoping Mr. Gobbler is somewhere near and that he and the ladies will be back soon.

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart

Good Fences and Some Reflections

Theresa is always saying 'put a fence in front of it'. Here we are looking down at the local Little Kanawha River behind my favorite type of fence. I'm always drawn to barbed wire fences. I like their rustic nature. They do their job and aren't so obtrusive to the landscape.  How many of you have ever heard this quote by Sophia Loren? It makes me smile.
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."

 

I zoomed in on the river below. In the top left of the photo where you see the white branches of some sycamore trees notice how muddy the river is from the recent snowmelt. You can tell by the skyline in the first shot that the sky wasn't spectacular that day. There was enough sunlight to reflect the color of the sky in the very muddy river and give some color to the otherwise drab view.

Last week I posted two photos of a recent sunset (here). Here is another view of the sunset as reflected in the gazing ball in my front yard. The photo isn't as sharp as I'd like and the ball was somewhat dirty but I like how it turned out.

Linking to Good Fences and Weekend Reflections

Wild Birds: I'm ready for my close ups......

 

Linking to Wild Birds with Stewart