Cats

Almost as cute as cousins.

The headbangers' theme this week is "CATS" and I had this cat picked out and ready to post.

But I got to thinking I should include some other cute cats. So I remembered I had a picture of Luna waiting at the door for someone to let her in. Isn't she sweet. So patient. I think she was hungry. One of the three main things cats do--eat.

And I thought about other cute cats...

Like the Meer"kats" at the Phoenix Zoo.

And then there are the big cats...

Like this tiger at the San Francisco Zoo...

...doing that other thing that cats do--sleep.

And all in all, I decided to use the one other thing besides eating and sleeping that cats do.

Because you know that all cats play with boxes...

This cat was at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, by the way.

What cats did the other headbangers choose--well, since I am posting early because I will be gone tomorrow, what cats WILL they choose. Headbanger posts will be up by Wednesday afternoon and the links are in my sidebar.

ABC C is for Cousin Camp

Each year we camp with grandkids in what has become known as "Cousin Camp". The cast of characters varies slightly from year to year depending on which families can make it. This year we had ten of the sixteen grandkids make an appearance. It became a two generation Cousin Camp when my nephew John and his wife Debbie joined us as well. This stump became a popular base for hide and seek, but if Leeza is going to hide this time, there will be no problem seeking.

Pizza is a popular Cousin Camp food. We cook it in the dutch ovens. John regaled us with his prize

dump cake, also cooked in a dutch oven, and since they had a freezer in their travel trailer, we had it with ice cream. John has recently retired from seventeen years as scoutmaster. His specialty is dutch oven cooking, and he has seventeen dutch ovens, though he only was traveling with two. I only have these two. Hey, dutch oven dump cake could be my D next week.

Grandma's game bag makes an appearance every year. I think this intent competition concerns chess,

And there are always bubbles.

 

I post my ABC Wednesday early because Wednesday is the day we do our header challenge. Well, sometimes I post that early as well.

Light the Night

Ranney and I have made a commitment to participate in the Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this fall. We will walk in Tacoma at the South Sound event on Saturday, September 21. Our team is Just Us Walking.

Nothing fancy--just a walk

The LLS has been very supportive in Ranney's journey with Multiple Myeloma, with on-line classes to keep us up to date with the latest in research and how to manage the disease, with patient grants to help with some of the medical costs and deductibles, and, of course, with funding much of the research that has made great improvements in treatment options.

We're not walking on water--join us.

If you are in the Tacoma area, join us as a member of Just Us Walking. And we welcome you to support us with a donation if you cannot join us on the walk. Thank you for your encouragement and continued prayers and support.

Just Us Walking team page

Then and now

We went camping and hiking with the kids again a couple of weeks ago.

 

This is the smoke visible when I dropped off my helper this evening.

It is now at about 5000 acres, and is just this side of the park.

Bear Grass against a Skywatch Sky

A clear blue sky makes a great background for this Bear Grass along the Naches Loop trail at the eastern edge of Mt. Rainier National Park. Bear Grass takes several years to germinate and come to a bloom, and some years you don't see much if any. This year is a great year for Bear Grass. We saw it abundantly on this hike and saw a lot of it last month on Mt. Spokane in the eastern part of the state. It grows up to four or more feet tall. This clump was probably only about three feet.

Skywatch

Summer should bring a wildflower watch meme. Maybe next year.

What's in the Clouds?

The birds are in the clouds.

 The moon is in the clouds.

The mountains are in the clouds.

The runners are not in the clouds, but that helicopter watching them is closer.

 

After there being nearly no clouds in the pictures from Sunday's hike, I went looking through the photos from the past year to find the best of my clouds. Some of these you see above.

 

Then I went outside today and saw that we were graced by an incredibly beautiful sky full of light clouds. A meteorologist would call these cirrus clouds. I say they are the result of a fanciful paintbrush.

      This Indian Chief has either a spear or an arrow. If it is an arrow, I do not know where his bow is.

There is the arrow. 

This may be what the chief is hunting.

The Headbangers are looking to see "What's in the clouds?" this week. You can see what the other members of our small group found by clicking their links in my sidebar.  They will all have their posts up by Wednesday afternoon.

And now, to choose what to put in the header.

In anticipation of Headbangers' theme this week.

I gave the theme myself--"What's in the clouds." I think I am going to have to look further than Sunday's hike for clouds enough to fulfill it.

B

I went looking for butterflies for the letter B.

I knew I had actually caught some butterflies on the wing once, and was trying to find those pictures in my files. You can see one in flight if you look carefully in this picture below.

 

On the way to finding the butterflies I happened upon the bridges.



This one was being built to replace the one below it when we made this hike. It crosses the Ohanapecosh River in Mt. Rainier National Park.


Near the Grove of the Patriarchs the suspension bridge also crosses the Ohanapecosh.

Then I happened upon the bridge over Box Canyon.

And I thought, oh, yes! B is for Box Canyon.

 

 

ABC Wednesday--B

ABC Wednesday is starting a new round.

I have taken a couple of rounds off from ABC Wednesday, and I am not even sure which round the meme is in. But I am back.

So, A is for acorn.

As we hiked up to the meadow I remembered that I was going to look for acorns, and here they are fresh on the tree.

 But they're green, protested grandson.

 But he found some older ones that were the expected brown.

Further along we found where some even older had started their growth...

. ...to become a mighty oak.

 

You will find ABC Wednesday's linkies here. Go see what A words others have found for this week.

Shadows

Lew gave us the theme of Shadows for this week's header challenge. I remembered a header I used some time ago with the wildflower shadows. The image is actually rotated 90º--the shadows were of the flowers along the trail ahead of us.

Ant shadows would be fun to work with.

We recently did shadows at Stonehenge. No, we haven't been to the UK again. This is Stonehenge overlooking the Columbia River in Washington state.

 

(My granddaughter learned in her Washington State History class that they did not name the state Columbia so that it would not be confused with the District of Columbia.   Hmm. Like that worked.)

 

This shadow of a frog picture was taken at Shadow Lake (pictured below.)

 

Cloud shadows show up when you look down on the Valley...



 

...or up at the mountain.



But I determined that the best shadow picture for today would be a picture of Shadow and his shadow.

You've heard of a churchmouse? Well, Shadow is a churchcat. He first showed up at the door of the classrooms at church about four years ago. Trying to get kids in the door and  cats not in the door, I shooed him away.

 

Next day he got smart. He found his way around the other side of the church to the rectory, where he was adopted by Fr. Jaime and his secretary Terri. Shadow is now a pampered fixture around the parish. If he had cooperated with me and posed, I would have even shown you his little Roman Collar. Somewhere in his ancestry is undoubtedly a tuxedo cat, but all he has is a little white marking under his chin.

 

The rest of the Headbangers will be along by Wednesday afternoon--well, except for Mac who is cruising again. You can find their entries by clicking their links in my sidebar.

Fruits

Notwithstanding that I live in the Fruit Basket of the nation and could go out wandering the Valley to take pictures of any number of luscious examples of fruits, workers in the fruit, trees full of fruit, fruit stands, and other fruity examples, I didn't.

My gas tank stands near empty and I would have to fill it. Which I am not adverse to do but just lazy at the moment, though I will undoubtedly get gas before the day is over.

The thing is, all I had to do was go out to my patio and take a picture of MY fruit.

Some would argue that the tomato is a vegetable, but for the purposes here it is the fruit of the tomato plant and it is growing RIGHT HERE IN A POT ON MY PATIO. We haven't had much in the way of a vegetable garden for several years, what with spending much of the summer either traveling, volunteering at the National Park, or more recently, visiting doctors on a sometimes more than weekly basis.

I counted three, but see that there are several more which will be appearing. The other plant has bunches. These are Better Bush, a big enough tomato for a sandwich or salad. The others are cherry.

And I could still count this header for last week's theme of Green, right?

My mouth is watering already.

What fruits did my headbanger friends find to head their blogs? Check them out from the links in my sidebar.