Summertime!

We're having a bit of a heatwave, 94 today. Not too bad I guess, but Orio wants in:



The ducks too are trying to beat the heat.... time for a nap!

ducklings!

Aren't they insanely cute!!!
...and only 24 hours old!

Windstorm Today

Don wrote this up for us in an email- quite a day today!
"We had winds gusting up to 60 mph for around eight hours today. Our neighbor across the street lost many roof shingles (ours is fine) but the real news was a large tree that fell 600 feet down the road, destroying a parked car. No-one was hurt. It was also a dust storm with the winds coming across the plains before hitting us. Things are calmer now but quite chilly."

Our first Cayuga egg! :)

This morning when I went to let the ducks out of their barn I was greeted with a dark oval jewel! The first egg of the year! And it's perfect! :) It's about the size of a jumbo chicken egg as you can see in the picture. As soon as the girls start laying regularly, we'll order our runner chicks and give them to a Cayuga mom, and let her do the work of raising them! Then this winter, we'll still have fresh eggs! Runner ducks are the egg laying queens. Nearly an egg a day all year long. That's some amazing production skills!

Snowflake Images

I saw this article on http://spaceweather.com/
Beautiful, aren't they!

SNOW FLAKES: The industrial district of Marl, Germany, isn't known for its natural beauty or outdoor photo-ops. But maybe that's because people just haven't been looking closely enough. On Dec. 18th, resident Martina Borchert discovered this scene in her own backyard:

"These crystals landed on top of a rusty old bird feeder," she says. "Normally they would have melted instantly, but the temperature outside was -4 C, and that gave me time to arrange a photo shoot using my Canon EOS 350D and a 60mm macro lens. Two hours and one cold nose later, I stored more than 800 snapshots on my hard drive!" Here is a selection of the best: #1, #2, #3, #4

circumhorizontal arcs

A friend sent me these pictures of a beautiful rainbow phenomena that happened here on June 6, 2006. This one was taken Just over the Idaho border:
Here's a link to the other image:
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/chaim8a.htm
This one was taken from downtown Spokane.

It made National Geographic news! You can read more about it here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060619-rainbow-fire.html

It's Nice to Have Help Raking Leaves!

Around our house, one of the most fun of all chores is the annual raking of the leaves. Of course it usually takes 4 times longer than it should because of all the help we get! ...That will make sense when you watch this: