ABC Wednesday: C is for Clint's cat

Regular readers of my blog have probably seen Bailey on here once or twice before this month. He belongs to my brother Clint and my sister-in-law Maria, who love to travel with their truck and fifth-wheel trailer, and Bailey, their cat, now accompanies them on their travels.

These photos were taken by Maria when they took Bailey north from the Vancouver suburbs up to Quesnel, BC, to meet Maria's sister and her family.

C'mon in, it's cooler in here than outside!

Mmm, I think I've found a nice soft place to sleep.

Hello, dog, you're not much bigger than I am, and I'm still a kitten.

Ah, yes, even more comfy than my mom's arm! I think I'll sleep here.

Posted for the letter C at
ABC Wednesday, Mrs. Nesbitt's alphabetical meme
now under the aegis of Roger O. Green, who is just the man for the job.

Thanks to our friend Gattina in Belgium, for presenting ABC Wednesday today. When I started my post, I had no idea she would also choose the word "cat" for the letter C, although I shouldn't be surprised! Read what she says about cats, and see what other bloggers said about C, HERE.

Our World Tuesday: kitchen toys

We each have a new toy in our newly-renovated kitchen. I had to give up coffee this spring because it was bothering my stomach, so Dick bought a Keurig coffee machine, which makes one cup of coffee at a time. I used to drink lots of coffee,  all day long, but he only has one large cup first thing in the morning.

  
On the other side of the kitchen, between the sink and the fridge, is my new vegetable juicer. I've learned to use a plastic bag inside the pulp-catcher, so I have one less part to wash. Juicing is not a task for the faint of heart, believe me, but I enjoy the juice, and Lindy loves the pulp.

Posted for
Our World Tuesday

Succinctly yours: foliate

Each week about this time, there is a prompt photo posted at the Grandma's Goulash blog for the meme Succinctly Yours.
The photo is to inspire a short story of 140 words, or a short-short story of 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation.
There is also a word of the week, chosen by Grandma's daughter Calico before she sees the photo. This week's word is foliate, and it seems I'm late this week, because almost everyone else has posted. I wonder how they connected the word with the picture. I wonder how I'm going to do it!
Well, as God said to Noah (according to Bill Cosby), "You never know what you can do until you try."

Here's my submission. You can see I couldn't fit the word of the week in there at all, probably because I was distracted by Bill Cosby and Noah, but I did manage to make it 140 characters including spaces and punctuation.

"Well, they told us to build the stairway 40 cubits high, so we did, and we put the Keep Out sign in as many languages as the foreman knew."

Now I'm going to check out the other submissions for succinctity and foliation.

Posted for
Succinctly Yours
To see whether other submissions contain the word foliate, click HERE.

Shadow Shot Sunday 2: flower shadows

Photos by Kay Davies, July, 2012

No, this is not my garden. It belongs to my brother's in-laws, and it is located on  Pender, one of British Columbia's beautiful Gulf Islands. I enjoyed a few wonderful days there early this month, and the shadows can be gorgeous.

Posted for

Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Click HERE to see more shadows from around the world!

Pet Pride: Bailey is a travelin' man, er, cat

Lindy says, "Hi, Bozo, My mom and dad tell me I have another cousin I haven't met yet. His name is Bailey and he likes to travel with my Uncle Clint and Aunt Maria in their truck, which is pulling a house. Yes, it's as big as a house, although they call it a trailer or a fifth-wheel."

Photos by Maria Davies, July, 2012

They have a bed for Bailey, with a food dish and a water dish in it.
Lindy says, "Wow, being a traveling cat looks like a wonderful life."

Posted for
Pet Pride
The meme about pets that appears every week, thanks to Bozo and his family in Mumbai, on their Pets Forever blog.
Lindy says, "Hi, Bozo, this is my youngest cousin. He's a cat, and his name is Bailey Davies. He lives with my Uncle Clint and Auntie Ria in British Columbia. He has a special place in the truck where he can drink, eat, and nap, if watching his mom take pictures gets to be too boring."

Real Toads: the option is always an option

I'm afraid it is getting latish on Sunday afternoon, and I haven't been able to wrap my head around the poetic form offered for the Sunday mini-challenge to the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Says Kerry to her minions: “The Ballade, itself, could not be called a mini-challenge, but...(the) Dizain is a decastich, a whole poem made up of a single Ballade Supreme stanza, a 10-line stanza without an envoy.”

Right, I ought to be able to understand that, oughtn’t I? 

Sigh. Not today.

Fortunately, Kerry offered an alternative. Dear Kerry. Dear dear Kerry. I, your most mini-minded minion, thank you.

“For those who prefer the Free Verse option, your theme is "The Prince".”

Yes, thank you, thank you, Kerry!

the prince

was invited

by the Olympic committee

to attend

the opening ceremonies

and to arrive

by parachute

but he declined

so his mother

jumped instead

Camera Critters: a cute creepy crawly

Not my usual kind of camera critter, indeed. In fact, I never pet anything with more than four legs, but there were three of these guys on the birdbath when I visited Pender Island, BC, this month, and they made me laugh.

Kay Davies photo, July, 2012

Posted for
Camera Critters
hosted by Misty Dawn. Thanks, Misty!

For Real Toads: Transforming Fridays: ice

Hannah is challenging us to stretch our imaginations at the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.
This week's challenge is to write about snow and ice— such a wonderful topic in the middle of summer, and if we want to write from the human point of view, we must write as a person native to the area.
Therefore, I have chosen my point of view, and here he is: this is J.L.C. Gull, who appointed himself our guide when we were in Alaska.

Hey, you!

Yes, you people there

on that cruise ship!

  

Don’t worry,

it’s just me— J.L.

I want to show you

the glacier.

Come on, let’s go.

Did you know

glaciers are blue?

I’m not kidding,

c’mon, hurry.

There it is!

Look! Blue!

 

  

I like the little bits best.

This one’s mine today.

There’s my cousin Jeremy,

he seems to be

having trouble

steering.

 

And that one

isn’t big enough

for two. It won’t

offer any protection from...

 uh, oh, time to get out of here... any protection from killer whales...

P.S. I’ve been told killer whales (aka Orcas) like this one eat seagulls and line their nests with our feathers, then pick their teeth with our bones, but I'm not sure it's true, because I've never figured out where they nest.

Sure was fun talking to you folks on the ship. I like to hitch rides on ship railings sometimes, but I am happiest when a small piece of ice calves off the glacier, giving me a ship of my very own.

J.L.C. Gull, July, 2007

Photos by Richard Schear

Thursday Theme Song: every little bird...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcmvwFcfWmY

  
He rocks in the bird-bath all a day long

Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a-singin' his song

All the little birds on Jaybird Street

Love to hear the robin goin' tweet tweet tweet

Rockin' robin (tweet tweet tweet)

Rockin' robin (tweet tweedlee-dee)

Go, rockin' robin 'cause you really gonna rock tonight
  

Every little swallow, every chickadee

Every little bird in the tall oak tree

The wise old owl, the big black crow

Flapping them wings sayin' go bird go

[Chorus]

A purty little raven at the bird's first dance

Taught him how to do the bop and it was grand

They started goin' steady and bless my soul

They out-bopped the buzzard and the oriole

 [Chorus]

Photos by Kay Davies, July, 2012, Pender Island, BC

Posted for

Hootin' Anni's musical meme

Thursday Theme  Song

Thanks, Anni!

But just a note about the video: I remember when dancers on TV dressed like that, and when they could jive like that, but I was a bit younger and never managed to get a handle on real 1950s jiving.

And as for slow dancing? My feet were always stompin' on  my partner's feet. To save men's toes, I eventually developed a pretty wicked shimmy for myself in the 70s. I remember going to the Hot Jazz Club in Vancouver with a friend, and when I was shimmying, she said "Oh yes, that's my friend Katie" in reference to a very old song called

"I Wish I Could Shimmy like my Sister Kate"

Missed the point in Real Toads challenge

I was so busy thinking about brevity, I missed the part where Mama Zen asked us to describe our worlds in 35 words or less.
Sigh.
My world today can be summed up in my Facebook status update: "Note to self: when juicing, remember to put a cup under the spout."
Only 13 words, but it wasn't written for this prompt.

My previous submission here contained fewer words than that, but didn't describe my world, because it included a photo taken while I was visiting an island off the coast of British Columbia, my home province.
So...my world now...in 35 words...

snore of dog

louder than wind in trees.

trees: tallest things

on my horizon—

no mountains,

no hills on this prairie,

no ocean anywhere.

I am an alien

I live here now

and it's good.

Photo by my husband, Richard Schear, July, 2012

Posted for Mama Zen's brevity challenge at the online writers group

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Real Toads: wish I could write like MZ

The soul of both brevity and wit is Mama Zen, a member of the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. MZ can say more in a few words than I can say in a month.
Today she challenges members and other contributors alike to "explore the oft unappreciated art of not writing"...that is, keep words to a minimum, and she's going to issue the same challenge once a month now.
So, if I want to overwrite, I can't do it here. 35 words maximum, that's the rule.

Photo by Kay Davies, July, 2012

silver skeleton—

what scenes
you must have seen

while you lived

ABC Wednesday: B for Bailey's bad hair day

Bailey is my brother Clint and sister-in-law Maria's new kitten. My legs still bear the marks of Bailey mistaking me for a tree.
Of course, I had to try to get him to pose for a portrait, but after all that climbing, he had to have a nap.

Here he is, immediately upon waking up, looking "bed-raggled"!

Photo by Kay Davies, July, 2012

Posted for
ABC Wednesday
Mrs. Nesbitt's alphabetical meme, now under the capable leadership of that popular blogger, Roger O. Green. Thanks, Roger!

Real Toads: Open Link Monday

Dirty Tricks

when we were young

we thought we’d never be thirty

when we were thirty

we never thought we’d be old

now all of us are old

some of us are sick

some are widowed

—and one of us is blind

the rest of us are horrified

we never considered blindness

what it must be like never to see

your husband as he holds your hand

the cats who rub against your leg

the books stacked by your bed to read

the sewing projects left unmade

the unfinished quilts, the unfinished dreams

she never smoked

she lives on a farm

eating farm-fresh food

she planned

and planted

nurtured

to nourish

her family and friends

life plays dirty tricks sometimes

Kay L. Davies, July, 2012

   

Sketches from dreamstime.com 

  

Posted for

OPEN LINK MONDAY

at the online writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

  

The name of this group comes from a poem by Marianne Moore, an amazing, award-winning poet we would all wish to emulate.

the result is not poetry...
till the poets among us...

can present, for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them'

Our World Tuesday: like archaeology

Looking like an archaeological dig, are the striations of the nearby coulee, beside the path where Dick and Lindy go for their walk.
In other parts of Alberta, erosion has unearthed dinosaur fossils, and in yet others can be found fossils of marine creatures from the epoch when the interior of North America was a vast inland sea.
Although the sky in this photo is dull, the scene is brightened by huge fields of canola (also known as rapeseed) from which cooking oil is made. When I edit this photo to make the sky and the coulee brighter, the color of the canola is almost painful to the eye, which I find it to be when driving by.
There are nearly as many canola fields in Alberta as there are fossils in the ground.

Photo by Richard Schear, July 2012

Edited version of original photo above.

Posted for
Our World Tuesday

For Real Toads: Ella's ancestor challenge

1914-1918

she held the oar

and tried to smile

but her hair fell into her eye;

and gave her an excuse to cry—

she couldn’t tell them now,

it would be too late:

I love a man and now

he’s dead—

his ship went down

and I want to drown

in this lake

but perhaps I’ll drown

in tears

instead

Posted for Ella's "ancestor" challenge at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, an online writers' group I love a lot. Very interesting challenge, Ella. Thanks!
Photo supplied as prompt by Ella's Edge

Succinctly yours: juncture

The word of the week at Succinctly Yours is juncture, and this is the picture provided for participants to use as inspiration when composing a short story of 140 words, or a short-short story of 140 characters including punctuation and spaces.
Posted for Grandma's daughter Calico, who provided the word of the week before she saw the photo, and for Grandma at her Grandma's Goulash blog, who hosts Succinctly Yours, a microfiction meme with a twist.
This week, my submission consists of 137 characters, including spaces and punctuation.

During the July council meeting, the mayor said, "At this juncture, I suggest we have the Christmas decorations removed from the square."

Pet Pride: a big, happy, wet dog

When we adopted Lindy, we were advised to buy her a wading pool for summer weather. At first, we put it on the lawn, but when we emptied it, the big patch of dead grass under it was too good for Lindy to resist, so she dug it all up!
Now we keep her wading pool on the concrete patio area, which keeps the water cooler, and she is not at all tempted to dig up the patio.
However, it still means drying off a big wet dog when she comes into the house. I've decided to leave that chore to my husband, who is bigger and stronger than I am! LOL
Meanwhile, with summer temperatures having finally reached the sunniest spot in Canada, Lindy is thrilled to have her pool, especially when she comes home from a walk.

Mmm, this is nice and cool on the pads of my feet!

Ahh, yes, this is bliss!

I can lie down, but I can't swim. Maybe we should find a lake.

Posted for
Pet Pride
the meme hosted by Lindy's friend Bozo and his family at the Pets Forever blog in Mumbai, India.
Lindy says: "Hi, Bozo, if you come to visit me, we can take turns in my pool, because I don't think we'd both fit at once."

Camera critters, two bucks and a murder

"Here comes that man
with the fat yellow dog again.
We're outta here!"

"No, let's go this way...!"

How many crows does it take
to make "a murder of crows"?

There are four
in the photo on the left,
and six in the photo below,
but some are well camouflaged.


Posted for the
Camera Critters meme
hosted by Misty Dawn.


Thanks, Misty!

Richard Schear photos

Weekend Reflections; Shadow Shot Sunday 2

I tried to divide these pictures up for use in two different memes but couldn't, so I'm posting them to Weekend Reflections and also Shadow Shot Sunday 2.
They were taken during and after my visit with family and friends on Pender Island, in BC's Gulf Islands. Some were taken from the deck of the ferry, Queen of Nanaimo, which had to stop to unload and pick up passengers at Mayne Island and Galiano Island on its way to the mainland terminal at Tsawwassen, BC.

It was wonderful to stay in this lovely room, with such a beautiful view,
and with the flowers on the deck reflecting in the fireplace.

The view from the deck of the house on Pender Island.

Coming in to Mayne Island.

Leaving Mayne Island.

On the way to Galiano.

Coming in to Galiano.

Photos by Kay Davies, July, 2012

Reflections and shadows from the dock at Galiano.

Shadow of the Queen of Nanaimo while docked at Galiano.
The shadows of two people can be seen on the foredeck. I'm the one on the right.