Clouds disappearing in Portuguese skies

My regular sky photographer makes an appearance here today, because these photos my husband Dick took "somewhere in Portugal" are, even if he doesn't remember where he took them, beautiful examples of the brilliant blue skies he experienced on a tour somewhere west (and perhaps north) of Lisbon. Meanwhile, I was in the capital in the fog, enjoying a shorter tour with our friends from the Brilliance of the Seas during our cruise with Royal Caribbean in December, 2008.
However, the photos speak for themselves. As the blue of the sky gets ever deeper from the first to the last, we have no need of captions. Hopefully, though, someone  might know something about the top two pictures at least, as the first is very distinctive and the second is very beautiful. (Francisca, you've been everywhere! Any ideas?)

Photos by Richard Schear, Portugal, Dec., 2008.
Posted by Kay Davies for Skywatch Friday, Sept. 30, 2010.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

This is my first post
for Hootin' Anni's new meme,
THURSDAY THEME SONG.

Because it's almost October, I just had to choose this song.

Everybody in North America knows most of,
but probably not all of, the lyrics to this song,
which is sung during the Seventh Inning Stretch
at almost every baseball game everywhere:

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd,
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.

If you want to know more about this song, including all the original lyrics, click on this link and learn about who wrote it, when it was changed, and who first sang it at a ball game.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

To go with this seasonal song,
I've chosen two photos of
spring training games
we attended and one of a game
in a Major League ballpark,
along with one of a little guy who just might be
the future of the game... what do you think?

If you've never heard this song, or have never had a chance to sing it, check it out on YouTube:
By Harry Caray

An early recording sung by Edward Meeker

And my favorite baseball song by one of my favorite singers, added here just for fun:
John Fogerty singing Centerfield

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies.
Posted by Kay for THURSDAY THEME SONG,
definitely a Davies kind of meme.

-- Kay, Alberta, Canada

Let's get this new meme up and running, everyone! Song lyrics and song titles are some of my family's long-time favorite things. Mom (1924-2007) and Dad (1924-2009), we're thinking about you now.

K for Kay and Dick's holiday in Kissimmee

K is for Kissimmee, Florida, where Dick and I spent a week exploring the area, and soon learned "Kissimmee" isn't pronounced Kiss-a-me. It is pronounced "K'simmy" and when we do it incorrectly, residents know we're furriners.
We were joined for a few days by our friend Sheila, a Canadian now living in the Tampa area. She drove over to see us, but not in a car like any of these!
One of the things we did in Kissimmee was visit a collectors' car show, which featured many of the the cars of our youth. The three of us had a great time! We saw everything from hot rods to luxury cars and a whole lot in between!

My parents had a car like this (a green one) when we were in school. Because the school bus didn't come up our road, Mom took the three of us, and our two friends from down the road, to our schools every day. That old green Jeep station wagon soon became a familiar sight to everyone who lived between our road and the high school. It gave Mom lots of stories to tell later.

This is the hood ornament from a Pierce Arrow. Too bad I couldn't  crop the red and white thing from the background.
They don't make cars (or even hood ornaments) like this any more.

Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear.

Posted by Kay for ABC Wednesday.

Part of my world seems so far away

I was born in BC, Canada's westernmost province...I'm a third generation British Columbian and, when I was young, many of my friends belonged to the first or second generation of their family to be born in the far west of Canada. Now there are plenty of third and fourth generation British Columbians.
(My apologies to BC's First Nations people, of course, because they've been there since forever and are rightly proud of that fact, too.)

However, I've been thinking about my family, about the fourth and the fifth generations. I came home to find a telephone message from my eldest niece, and when I phoned, she and her little daughter were entertaining my youngest niece and nephew along with their mom, my youngest brother's wife.

"Give them all a kiss," I said, "and tell them I love them!"

They're so far away.

Or I'm so far away.

I'm now living on the eastern side of Alberta, Canada's next-most-western province. Between me and my home town is a wide expanse of prairie, then the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, then the Rockies themselves, then all the 10 or 12 mountain ranges which, with rivers and valleys in between, make up Beautiful BC.

That's the other part of My World, the southwestern end of the BC coast, the beautiful Semiahmoo Peninsula, with the next two generations of Auntie Kay's family.

Auntie Kay with brand-new grandniece in 2007

My youngest nephew when he was learning to play T-ball

(I love the HUGE shirt)

My youngest niece when we visited the playground

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies.

Posted for My World Tuesday.

Many mellow yellows in a Spanish market

One evening, while I was resting in our hotel room after our long trip from western Canada to Barcelona, my husband went out to see what he could see. He found this amazing night market not far from La Rambla, and brought back so many pictures, I hardly feel I missed a thing. Here are just a few Spanish yellows. I have lots more to post another time.

Photos by Richard Schear.

Posted by Kay Davies for Mellow Yellow Monday.

Working hard on a very short walk

Not totally faithful to the intent of Camera Critters but well within the precepts of Shadow Shot Sunday, we have here one critter three times, and one tiny tree once.

The tree is so small it could easily be someone’s pet. The critter, on the other hand, is a properly pampered pet.

She belongs to me and the big old guy with the white hair, but when he’s not here, she’s mine, all mine. I get all the doggy kisses and furry cuddles; I get to take her for walks and car rides; I get to spoil her with treats. It’s wonderful.

I love the big old guy, too, but not as much as Lindy does, I’m sure. She adores her daddy and is only peripherally fond of her mom. Poor me.

Sigh.

We went walking one beautiful day this week, when the sun was high overhead and I forgot to wear my hat or to take Lindy's water bottle with me, but I did remember my camera. So we'd walk a little bit, then I'd try to get Lindy to pose.

 I wasn't always successful. Her curls are somewhat out of focus in the first shot, but you can see her shadow, and mine. When she did deign to pose, her patient expression clearly said, "Oh, Mom, must you?"

But look, if you look closely at the yellow leaf behind her, you can its shadow, too. Too for one. Uh, two for one.

In the third picture, Lindy was getting warm. We had already stopped several times for photography practice and still hadn't gone a full two blocks from home, but a drop of moisture made its own shadow hanging from the end of the shadow of her tongue.

We walked some more, having to detour around a few blocks the town workers have closed off for their own purposes. Then, on the final leg of our walk we were coming down our back lane when I saw this little Blue Spruce tree. It's perhaps 2 feet (61 cm) high now, and I've been watching it since it was a 6-inch (15 cm) seedling. It casts its own little tree-shadow amongst the seedy daffodils. Too cute.

I just have to include the final photo, in which, yes, you can find shadows and also a large Blue Spruce tree, but that's not why it's here. It's here because I got so excited when I discovered our neighbor had installed solar panels on his roof.

One would suppose solar panels would be a common sight here in southern Alberta, considered by most experts to be the sunniest part of Canada, but one would suppose erroneously. Alberta is oil-rich and common-sense-poor, in my opinion, preferring to squeeze oil out of the tar-sands in the north rather than urge the use of solar power in the sunny south.

Did I say "sigh" yet?

All photos by Kay Davies, with the cooperation if not the help of Lindy Davies-Schear. Posted for Shadow Shot Sunday and Camera Critters, and for the edification and instruction of any present and future readers.

So I took it on myself to make some changes...

My husband is fast developing a reputation as the skywatching photographer in our house, so I decided I simply must assert dominion over my own blog by taking some sky photos myself.

Then, when I looked out the window and saw a beautiful sunset happening, I had to run outside, somewhat underdressed for the occasion (pajamas and slippers), which meant I couldn't hang out on the street for very long. I snapped a few shots of the sunset from the road in front of our house, then took myself and my camera to the back yard where I did some artsy things with the leaves in the foreground.

Quite smug I am, too, actually; even though I haven't yet managed to get myself (fully dressed, of course) down to the end of the street to shoot some sunsets at the edge of the coulee where there are no wires, cars, or houses in the way. O well, it gives me something to which to aspire. "A woman's reach should exceed her grasp or what are The Heavens for?" (to paraphrase Browning in a Skywatchian kind of way).

Therefore, I am pleased to present a brave but heretofore unacknowledged photographer in her own right (and her own write) ...insert drumroll here...
Kay L. Davies, all the way from Beautiful British Columbia via beautiful small town Alberta! (I always do things the long way 'round, but here I am, and here are my photos, outside our little hobbit house outside Medicine Hat, Alberta.)

Photos by Kay Davies. Posted by herownself for

Skywatch Friday.

J - Couldn't find Jabberwocky but one came

Inspired by Donna quoting Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" (which I love) with the letter "J" for ABC Wednesday, I wanted to post pictures of people with the initial J doing something silly, or Jabberwockyish.

Looked all through my iPhoto files. No luck.

Then, in an e-mail today from my sister-in-law Maria, there was a picture of our young nephew, whose name starts with J, being silly on a recent fishing trip with his dad, uncles and cousins. He must be sitting on the ground, because the chair behind him is empty, and his hat... well, I know he did that deliberately.

Also found, in my "J" folder, two pictures taken in either Spain or Portugal, with no identification on them beyond my husband's favorite classification "Pictures to Edit" which means "pictures to give to Kay to edit"! I don't know where they were taken or why I filed them under "J"! So either my husband is silly for not identifying his photos, or I am silly for letting him get away with it.

One of us is very Jabberwockyish. Sigh.

Photo of J___ by Clint Davies. Posted by Kay Davies for

ABC Wednesday.

Our flowery and weedy world for Tuesday

I accidentally uploaded these photos in the small format, rather than larger, but I think I like them like this, with the flowers appearing as tiny jewels in the heat and dryness of a prairie/desert landscape. The cactus blossoms are beautiful, but I love thistles, even this nodding thistle which is classified as a noxious weed. The red-stemmed weed (which I've been unable to identify) contrasts nicely with the green and yellow around it.

These photos were taken by my husband, Richard Schear, on his walks with our dog Lindy. I'll be walking with Lindy while Dick is very busy for the next couple of weeks, but our travels will likely take us no farther than the post office, as I don't like to get too far from civilization without another person. I'll be sure to take my cellular phone with me, though, and perhaps I'll remember to take a cane, although I usually forget that. And a camera? I'll need lots of pockets!

Photos by Richard Schear. Posted by Kay Davies for

My World Tuesday.

Old & new yellows in old & new Shanghai

Above, and below, the only place I felt truly crowded in China was in Old Shanghai, a favorite destination for tourists from around the world.

Above, the lobby of the Shanghai Westin was alive with color, but the most interesting yellow was in the glass sculpture below, in vivid contrast to the orange-red.

Mellow Yellow Monday

This week, our contribution to Mellow Yellow Monday takes us back to Shanghai, final stop in the cross-China (almost) cruise tour we enjoyed with Viking River Cruises.

While I was posting the photos, I thought of an old song recorded by Doris Day in 1951, when it reached #9 on the Billboard Magazine popular music charts. The title was "Shanghai" but my father, who was a musician and an inveterate collector of funny song titles, told me it was "Why Did I Tell You I Was Going to Shanghai?" which is mentioned in parentheses in Wikipedia as the alternative title.

Why did I tell you I was going to Shanghai?

I wannna be with you tonight

Why did I holler I was going to Shanghai?

I wanna be with you tonight

It was just a little misunderstanding

That a kiss on the cheek could patch

I need you so badly, I'd gladly

Start all over from scratch.

Oh, why did I tell you it was bye-bye for Shanghai?

I'm even allergic to rice

Why don't you stop me when I talk about Shanghai?

It's just a lover's device

Now, who's gonna kiss me

Who's gonna thrill me

Who's gonna hold me tight

I'm right around the corner in the phone booth

And I wannna be with you tonight.

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies.

Posted by Kay Davies for Mellow Yellow Monday.