Katney has snow and I have tulips!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We might be in the same state but she lives a lot closer to the snow than I do! I guess I will be satisfied with my tulip view. . . I posted this one to Teachers.net and it showed up taking up the whole screen so unless one presses on it to enlarge, it won't be as spectacular. . .

ODD SHOTS MONDAY

The symbol above is for a new meme that Katney started recently .

I reckon they don't have a garage? Maybe it is cheaper to use a tent than to build a garage? Whatever the reason, it is definitely odd to me!

Blog Your Blessings Sunday #22

If you care to join us acknowledging our blessings go here: Blue Panther

CLICK on photo to enlarge.

If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, my blessing today is also yours! I know, I am not worthy to receive such a wonderful gift but it is there for me anyway, just for the taking because I am a believer. That's the wonder of this gift. That's the beauty of this gift. That's the GRACE of THIS gift!

A most blessed Easter for those of you who celebrate.

Saw my first tulips in bloom Friday. . .

Went for a long walk Friday and finished up at the downtown park where I was checking to see the TULIPS progress. Each Spring, there are hundreds of them in bloom there. None last week. Just this bronze statue of the girl handing the man a tulip from her collection . . .

Today, I was given a wonderful surprise. As I entered the north end of the park, my view was pretty Hyacinths.




THEN on the southern area of the park, my eyes were blessed with the first blooming tulips of the season and I eagerly snapped a few shots of the different colors available so far.







I know that in awhile, there will be many more kinds popping up. In fact, by Easter, these should be wide open and ready for another photo session with my camera. . . the anticipation is just about killing me. . . YET, tonight on the news they predict snow at low elevations for us!!!!!!!!!!!! Where was our snow in winter? I had given up on it and am enjoying SPRING now . . . or so I thought. Hope the weatherman is wrong this time much as I love snow IN WINTER!

Sky Watch Friday #20

If you want to join Sky Watch Friday blogging, go here for the blogroll. Tom is the new Sky Watch host.



Took this sky photo yesterday when I was standing waiting for the bus. The sunny beautiful day we had when I was going for my doctor appointment changed to bitter cold and rain.

PS To those who celebrate Easter this weekend, may your day be blessed with joys!

ABC Wednesday -- Year 2 # 9

Go here if you would like to join us for ABC Wednesday. . . Mrs Nesbitt


I wasn't sure I could participate this week because I couldn't find any I photos. Then, I thought maybe I could fudge a little and show you a few of my cards I make by stamping with colored INK. I went to search for them in iPhoto and remembered that I do have "I" photos from a few years back . . .

These are from the ice storm of 2004. Icicles on our home, icicles on the shed, icicles on the bushes, trees.




















Icicles are on the shed out back. Can you see that really long one?

Iciclesare on the neighbor's carport.











The bush is covered in icicles.















Icicles hang from the overhang of the front porch; the streets are icy because the snowplow doesn't come by and the snow on the lawn has turned into a sheet of ice also.












Even tho I shoveled the driveway before I went to shovel driveways of two elderly people, our driveway iced up again and our neighbor cleared a path to walk.










Icicles on the back of the house.






And icicles on the bushes in the next two.

A new bird. . .Western Scrub Jay!

Found this bird last week . . . It was on someone's grass in the neighborhood.Friends at Tnet identified it for me.

ODD SHOT MONDAY

I apologize for not being able to link back to Katney's blog today nor have the camera ODD SHOT graphic. Blogger is giving me fits and I can't edit anything.




I can't finish editing my post for today -- BLOGGER is a big mess. I will try to make a new post for ODD SHOT Monday which I had put at the end of the previous post but didn't get to link it and had some typos I didn't get fixed when thrown off for the umpteenth time today. BIG sigh.

I was out for a walk in an uptown neighborhood, searching for spring flowers when I walked past this pile of glass windows waiting by the curb possibly for the trash or for someone to haul off. I walked past and immediately turned around and had another look. They are unique in design of placement and I was sad that someone opted for a more modern window to take their place. I have seen window frames like these in an antique shop downtown. . . so why take a photo? Maybe sentiment to preserve a bit of the past in my mind?

*^%$$%*()(#

Blogger isn't working for me and I can't finish my post below. sigh

It's a great day for a parade!!!!!!

IF you are here looking for my ODD SHOT MONDAY, please scroll down as it is at the end of this post.


Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We celebrated the IRISH with a parade on Friday.

The following article was in yesterdays' paper:


"Hough Relative Leads Parade"

Did you know?

Hough enthusiasts are known to lecture outsiders on how to pronounce Hough. But Paddy Hough’s distant relatives pronounce their family name “hock,” not “howk.”

Liam Horan, , the great-grandnephew of Paddy Hough, was the grand marshal for the Paddy’s Day Parade on Friday. Horan, his brother John and their wives traveled from Ireland to learn more about Hough, one of their more mysterious relatives.

Saturday, March 15, 2008
By ISOLDE RAFTERY, Columbian Staff Writer

Every year, Hough Elementary pays tribute to a slight, one-armed Irishman named Paddy Hough. Hough was an educator and champion of the poor, an immigrant who left his homeland in 1872, possibly after the Franco-Prussian War.

A school, a neighborhood and a parade have been named in his honor, but until this week, details about his life were sparse. On both sides of the Atlantic.

On Wednesday, two of Hough’s great-grandnephews arrived in Vancouver, searching for clues about their uncle.

“I suppose the usual thing is for Americans to come to the old country to see their roots,” nephew John Horan said. “And while we’re not coming to see our roots, we’ve come to see a little branch that moved over. It’s nice to know what your people have done.”

Horan lives in County Clare, in the west of Ireland. His brother — the grand marshal of Friday’s Paddy’s Day Parade — still lives near Hough’s old haunt.

“I was born and reared literally across the road from where Paddy Hough was born himself,” Liam Horan said. The land continues to be used as a dairy farm by another Horan brother.

The Horans believe that Hough moved to British Columbia with a group of Christian Brothers. They believe he left Ireland after the Franco-Prussian War, though they don’t know why a one-armed Irishman would have fought in that war. That — and the story behind his missing arm — remain unclear.

“We were led to believe he lost his arm as an infant in a fire, but we’re still researching that,” Liam Horan said.

From Vancouver, B.C., Hough moved to the more southerly Vancouver, Liam Horan said.

After leaving Ireland, Hough wrote to his sister and later his niece. He never returned to Ireland.

On Friday, Hough Elementary’s reader board welcomed “Liam Horan and Family.”

Liam Horan wore a beige sash and a bright green bowler hat his daughter had given him before he left Ireland. Liam, John and their wives led the parade in a tan-colored Cadillac Escalade.

Later in the afternoon, at a gathering at the home of Hough neighborhood native Ceci Ryan-Smith, John Horan contemplated their journey to scope out their family history.

“They say nostalgia starts at the age of 50,” John Horan said. “It started for us around then. We started to do family trees and he was probably the most intriguing because we knew so little about him.”

******************************
This little parade circles around the area where I live in uptown Vancouver, WA. The school is just 5 blocks from my apartment. This is the first year I had a chance to see it since I wasn't working and live in the area.

Besides the great grand nephew of Paddy Hough leading the parade as the Grand Marshal, it included a band from one of the Junior High Schools, politicians, the C-Tran patriotic bus, several antique vehicles and one from the American Legion that looked like a train/bus.

I chose only a few of my photos I took that day to show you. They related to St. Patrick's Day or Hough School entries. The kids were great since it was an elementary school and they had about 3 miles to cover. They will enlarge the size of your computer screen if you choose to click on them. Especially . . . the bagpipe/drummers to see how in step they were!










I also went for a walk earlier last week and took these photos -- they show a resting place with benches and retaining walls to help cut down on a main street noise. It is near the entrance to HOuGH neighborhood and proudly celebrate the Irish heritage. These two retaining walls are made of tiles with art work all in green! Of course, the green HOUGH sign to welcome people to the neighborhood entrance proudly "wears green" also!




OSS SHOT MONDAY

Blog Your Blessings Sunday #21

If you want to join us, go here: Blue Panther

I love to go on walks with my camera in hand. The weather forecast today was for heavy rain but when I looked out the window around noon, the sun was peeking out from behind dark, ominous clouds and actually shining! I decided I had better hurry and get a move on if I wanted to get my walk in today before the "real rain " came.

I live uptown and I headed downtown on Daniels, towards the river and a park that blesses me with beautiful flowers all spring and summer. That was my plan. . . but I didn't get there. I used an alternative route to walk downtown and when I got to Mill Plain, I decided to follow where it led me going west. Got some neat photos for another day doing that. Then I came to the factory area by the river and decided to head back north on Lincoln Avenue. Still no precipitation! Ü

Along my journey, there were several kinds of flowers I took photos of but that is not what I have to share today. . . I was walking along and spotted these. . .CLICK ON TO ENLARGE AND SEE DETAIL. They are reversible, having the bird house on both sides.

Now aren't those the cutest bird house picket fences you ever saw? Well, of course the camera came out and I took one photo of the first part because I wasn't sure I could get all three because of a bush in front of them . . . found out I was wrong but it didn't hurt to have an extra. So, long as I already had one section of the picket fence bird houses, I took singles of all three sections! For this posting, I will show you just the one with all three in a row.

OK so where is my blessing? I guess you could say "that it hadn't rained and I was able to discover such nice objects to photograph" . . . NOPE! well, sure it was a blessing but not my focus today. Ü

As I finished up taking the 4 photos, I heard a voice calling me. I thought. . . "Oh oh! I'm in trouble now for invading someone's privacy or something." Being a courteous person, I turned around to face my "accuser." The lady of the house didn't look mean so I didn't have to run to escape her wrath. She carried no blunt instruments to harm me. In fact, her voice was gentle as she said, "Come here." There was a fence between the two of us so I thought, "Surely there could be no harm in this." and I headed a few yards back towards her to see what she wanted.

I walked closer and said sheepishly that I was just out taking photos of flowers and saw the wonderful bird house fences in her yard and had to get photos of them as I had never seen anything so interesting on my walks before.

I needn't have worried. . . Seems she just wanted to tell me how her husband, who was dying of cancer, had built the bird house fence. First she told me of his illness and impending death and how their yard used to have many flowers but they couldn't keep up with the work involved so had most of them removed but then her husband had made the bird house fences, modeling them after ones he had seen somewhere. They were "on a path to the garage," she said.

I exchanged a few words about how they had made my day and how it was nice to chat for a few minutes since I am learning my way around this area after recently moving uptown. I said my goodbyes and started north on the walk again, thinking how glad I had remembered her name --Donna __ and repeated it with my goodbyes to her. I know she made my day! I hope I was a blessing in hers also.

I walked three more blocks and then it started to pour down rain quite hard. Guess who didn't bring their umbrella? A couple more blocks and I saw a bus stop sign so I waited for it to come along while standing under the shelter of several blossoming cherry trees. While I waited, the rain poured down and I thought of how God provided the dry spell earlier so I could have a chance to be a blessing to the lady named Donna and she could be my blessing too! Isn't it funny how those blessings just sneak up on you when you least expect them? It was more than co-incidence that I changed my mind about walking to the park and had a chance to be a blessing to a lonely lady today. God, you are awesome! Thanks for holding off the rain and giving me this opportunity to not only be a blessing but receive a blessing from a stranger . . . I mean new friend! I got soaking wet before the bus picked me up but I hardly noticed it until I removed my drenched jacket at home, warm and out of the rain that continued to soak the earth for the rest of the day into night.