Steve and Judy's Travels!

I told the dogs “great news” I was going to go get mom from the airport and bring her home from her trip to California!

They were thrilled.  They escorted me to the front gate.

We fly in and out of that little airport in Harlingen an hour away.

And the puppy reunion. 

Now, the pack is complete again.

Way later than we expect it to each year, the crape myrtle finally leafs out and grows like crazy.  Here it is, leafing and growing.

Then, when we’ve totally giving up on it blooming, maybe in July, the flowers pop out.  Nothing to show here.  No flowers popping out.  It’s still just June.

There has been a mockingbird in the crape myrtle though.  A pair in fact.

We watched them build a nest.  No photos, the nest was pretty hard to see.

It got easier to see when they started feeding the baby that hatched out though.  Got a couple photos of a baby face getting fed.

The baby fledged and is gone now.  We saw it one morning in the latticework on the back fence complaining and getting fed.  I guess that’s all it took for it to be off on its own.

They’re intimidating.

But check out the Bronzed Cowbird.

Red eyes!

A framed photo of the band, Slumgullion.

These would be the people who lived in our basement for six weeks in Colorado when Becky was a baby, so 1969 or 70.  An unfinished basement, they put in some cots and hung sheets and blankets on the walls as noise insulation.  They only practiced during the day while Judy and I, and Becky, were away at work, the babysitter, and school.  Once Slumgullion hooked up with the Hungry Farmer in Boulder, they played there for years.  Other gigs too, but we usually went to see them at the Farmer.

The Farmer was way outside of town on Arapahoe just east of 55^th.  (That’s not way outside of town anymore.)  It’s long gone now, but I found a couple pictures online for anyone who remembers Boulder in the ‘70s.

A brown-crested flycatcher.

 There’s no reason for it to come to our feeders.  It waits on a perch for a chance to fly out and pick off a bug out of the air.  Nothing as cool as that on offer in our yard.  Maybe it chooses the perch by us because the birds that are already here make it seem like a safe place.

 Growing up westerners, it’s not a bird we ever encountered until we moved farther east.