Enjoying Labor Day Weekend

We decided to go to the Renaissance Festival this weekend, it is 2 for 1 with 5 cans of food donated to Harvesters, a good deal. We have fun watching the shows and taking photos of the characters, Ken takes a lot more than I do. (Click to enlarge) I rode the camel and kissed a rat this time and we learned about the World Bird Sanctuary near St. Louis, they a very good demo with an owl, falcon, hawk and Bald Eagle. They have a 130 acres and are open to the public every day. It sounds like an interesting place to visit sometime.

Ken gave in and decided to start bringing in the monarch cats, we had too many predators in our garden especially after learning about the Wheel Bug which I had a photo of in my last post, it enjoys a nice Caterpillar for lunch. We have 7 in our little nursery so far.

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting,

Small but approachable,

Butterflies lead you into the sunny side of life

And everyone deserves a little sunshine. Jeffrey Glassburg

A new painting

I liked the view by our motel in Moab, UT with a lone sunflower in the field and I thought it might make a nice watercolor. This is it. I can't believe August is almost gone, guess it didn't help being gone ourselves for almost two weeks.

We haven't seen many Monarchs or their caterpillars this year, we may have too many predators in the garden, don't know. We've enjoyed watching the Yellow Finches picking away at our Cone Flowers, I tried to get a photo thru the window.

We haven't any plans for Labor Day, that I know of anyway. It looks to be a nice weekend. It is hot and muggy today. A storm is to come thru and cool us off again.

There shall be eternal Summer in the grateful heart. Celia Thaxter

KC Airshow

Today we were up bright and early to go to the Airshow. Ken went down Fri. for the practise flights. I got a few autographs of the pilots. These are from my point and shoot and then collaged. (Click to enlarge)

Few more Pictures

446 photos later

446 photos and 2400 miles, we are back from a long road trip. We decided on the spur of the moment to go to Utah to visit the new grandbaby. We didn't take the RV, the cats or my computer so I couldn't post. Here are the basics!Grandpa and Wyatt

Side trip to Arches National Park, before we got to Salt Lake to visit grandkids. (Sorry photos are out of order in relation to our trip.)
We visited Kennecott Copper Mine near Salt Lake, the largest open pit mine in US.

I did a little butterfly chasing in Utah.

Kansas sunflowers.
We went back to Moab to visit with the Watersons who full time RV.

We visited Canyonland National Park with the Watersons.

Ken's grandkids and kids.

We had a great time, sorry for the brief review but it's been a full week and a half and we drove over 500 miles today.

Out for a drive

We went for a drive yesterday to see a MO covered bridge, the Locust Creek Covered Bridge by LaClede, Mo. we also visited Swan Lake Wildlife Refuge. We saw a few birds in the distance there, egrets, pelicans, herons, cormorants and ducks, it is a neat place we need to go back during migration to see the geese. I see I have filled my memory drive again, so Ken will have move out a few more photos, so until he does that it may be a while til I post again. Until then, have a good week.

Book Lovers Day

I read in the paper today that's it's Book Lover's Day, so I decided to see how many books I've read so far this year. It's been 20, most of them have been young adult books this year. I read the entire Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace of which there are 10. Another, young adult book was Brighty of the Grand Canyon which I really enjoyed too. I just finished Gap Creek by Robert Morgan today, that was very good too. At the beginning of the year I was reading books on traveling and I really enjoyed Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Other books I've read this year were Educating Alice, Eat, Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Wicked, In the Land of Second Chances and Tall Pine Polka. I don't read as much as I'd like but I have many other hobbies that filled my days. (One of which is keeping a journal of my reading.)
I also finished a watercolor today, it's the Grand Canyon with a little snow flurry from one of my photos taken on our visit in May. Our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world. From Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck