Mellow yellows, many murals make up Moose Jaw

Moose Jaw is known to TV cartoon fans as the town where super-hero Atomic Betty attended school
at Moose Jaw Heights...when she wasn't somewhere in space, protecting the galaxy.
However, the city is also known for its murals. There are so many murals, I could only show a few last year, the first time I featured them on Mellow Yellow Monday.
Now, because yellow is such a bright spring-and-summer kind of color, here are a few more, to brighten up a snowy winter. I know Moose Jaw is having a snowy winter, because it's just a few hours from here, in Saskatchewan, the Canadian province east of Alberta. At least Moose Javians (yes, that's what its citizens are called) have these murals to brighten up an otherwise white scene for them!

This only one half of a large mural depicting the rolling hills, lush valleys and wandering rivers of the Canadian prairie.

This ceramic mural depicts the Temple Garden Spa in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,
where guests can enjoy a spa treatment or swim in the indoor/outdoor hot springs pool.

Moose Jaw's legendary reputation, as having once been Al Capone's hideout, means many murals depict his era.

Canada's air show favorites, the Snowbirds, are based in Moose Jaw.

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies

Posted for the Mellow Yellow Monday meme. 

CLICK HERE for many mellow yellows from around the world.

These camera critters really are elk, says Dick, and I...well, I...

    Some years ago Dick and I were in the car, not far from home, when he suddenly shouted, "Elk!" at the top of his lungs, and stuck his arm under my nose in an attempt to direct my attention toward the field on my right.
    "No, dear," I said, when I had extracted his arm from my nose. "Those are pronghorn antelope. Little pronghorn antelope. Elk are large, sort of moose-sized."
    "Snrffle, mrff," he said, or something sounding like that. "I got the word wrong."
    "You probably don't even have elk around here," I said, because I spent most of my life in British Columbia where wildlife is really wild. BC is not where the deer and the antelope play, like Alberta is.
    "We do, we do," he insisted. "You'll see."
    But I never did see. I've never seen an elk in Alberta.
    Dick came home one day last year with a story about seeing elk an hour or two north of here, but he couldn't produce photographic evidence, so I refused to believe him. No proof, no "Oh, darling, aren't you wonderful?"
    Recently, however, he came home from a business trip waving his camera in the air, and, once more, yelling "Elk!" at the top of his lungs.
    "Where?" I asked, pretending not to see his camera. I looked out the window, but there wasn't even a deer or a rabbit out there. Wasn't even a dog.
    "In here, look, look!"
    "I'm rather busy right now, dear. Maybe later you can show me what you think is an elk," I said, smiling on the inside but looking like a very strict, very busy wife on the outside. Or a very busy blogger, anyway.
    "Just look here!" he said, pointing to the LCD screen on his camera. "What do you think those are?"
    "Spots," I said, "four spots."
    "Just a minute, just a minute, I'll zoom in on them."
    "Oh," I replied, straight-faced, "now there are only two spots."

Four spots

    "Here, here, here," he said. "This one's better, look at this one."
    "It's out of focus," I replied, looking at it.
    "Oh, that's the wrong one. Here, this one is better."
    And he was right. Two elk. Two large elk. And he hadn't really had time to leave Alberta, unless he had gone to Saskatchewan, which would have been silly.
    So, now I know there are elk in Alberta. And the third picture was better than the second one, also better than the first, for that matter, although you can enlarge the first one and see the four spots are elk, too. Not antelope, not deer, not rabbits. Elk. Yep.

Two of the four elk, rather nice-looking ones, too. 

To see other critters that have found their way into people's cameras, please click

HERE

Posted by Kay for Misty Dawn's Camera Critters photo meme.

Both photos, in this instance, are by Richard Schear.

Moose Jaw, my first mosaic attempt is for Mellow Yellow Monday

Moose Jaw isn't just the place where Atomic Cartoons' popular heroine, Atomic Betty, lives when she isn't out saving the galaxy, this Saskatchewan city is also home to many colorful murals, inside and outside. Murals for my first mosaic!

Posted for the Mellow Yellow Monday meme, hosted every week by Drowsey Monkey.

For more Mellow Yellows from around the world

CLICK HERE

F is for lots of different things...

F is for Furry Friends ... above, my husband Dick with our dog Lindy; below, Dick's furry friend Igor lived for 20 full years.

F is for the funny face of a Frigate Bird chick in the Galapagos Islands.
F is for Flowers in Florida, when we went out to photograph crocodiles.
F is for Freeport in the Bahamas, above, and for a Freighter we saw in Freeport Harbor, below.

F is for Football Fans from Saskatchewan, Canada, seen at a baseball game in Seattle.
Final foto, F is for Fabulous Food in Prince Edward Island.

And just For Fun, every word in the following sentence starts with or (in the case of "of") contains an F.

Fully for folly, fair Fiona, feeling funny, flew forth full of fabulous fancies frighteningly framed for filling files, fleeing further forward from Freddy’s father’s fortune, fantasizing figments for future failures.

Further fun with the alphabet can be found at http://abcwednesdayround3.blogspot.com/

Smokey the Bear is STILL in the Air!!

Update -- The smoke blew as far as Manitoba, three provinces over from the locations of the forest fires, and smoke is still featured on the hourly forecast of theweathernetwork.com here in southern Alberta. My husband and our dog have had to take shorter walks because of the air pollution and here in this photo the sun, setting over the prairie, is seen through a haze, darkly.

(Below, from a previous post:)
The skies here in southeastern Alberta appear cloudy this morning, but the "cloud" is actually smoke drifting across the Rocky Mountains and over the prairie, reaching as far as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, some 800km (500 miles) from the BC border.

The smoke comes from the 110 active forest fires in British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province. There are other fires, but these 110 are all more than 10 hectares (24.7 acres) in size. That's 1100 hectares (2718) acres burning today.

I spent most of my life in BC where forest fires were always a possibility, because 2000 of them occur every year.

Even now, when many people have quit smoking, we still see smokers who throw lighted cigarettes out of car windows. There are also campers who build campfires, and neglect to put them completely out and then douse them with lots of water.

Even though most forest fires are caused by lightning, and many of them are in remote areas where smokers and campers never go, it is still important to do our part. Never throw lighted or partially-crushed cigarettes out a window. Never build campfires and leave them without being certain every last ash and cinder has been soaked with water.

As Smokey Bear used to say, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." Please do your part.

(Photo by Richard Schear)

See photos from other parts of the world at http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/