My son the farmer...

...planted some watermelon seeds in our garden this year. Rather late, too -- toward the end of June. I have never managed to get watermelon from seed to table in my life, so I tried not to raise any expectations. What the heck, let's see what happens.

Well, by September there were four good-sized "moon and stars" watermelon in our garden, looking tantalizing. I brought one in and cut it open. Still white inside. I was devastated -- no chance for that one to ripen any further. 3 weeks later I took another one and split it -- just starting to turn pink.

So I wrote the other two off -- no chance for them to ripen before frost. I left them til frost killed the vines, then brought them in -- about two weeks before halloween. I figured if they didn't have a long enough season to ripen, we could carve them for jack o'lanterns.

We were stunned when I cut off the tops, and wound up scooping out ripe watermelon. I was so not expecting to see pink inside, it was really gorgeous.

The jack o'lanterns turned out ok too...

My son the farmer...

Your mantis kung fu is strong...

But it cannot defeat cat style kung fu...












Amber has been bringing in bugs -- the bigger the better. The last one before the mantis was a cicada buzzing its protest through the house before the dog took over and crunched it.















The dog's thinking about whether to crunch this one...













Mantis plays dead with legs in the air before we rescue it...












Here is is cleaning floor fluff and parakeet feathers off itself. Guess I need to sweep the floor...

Ice cream at Lugia's

Ice cream cones as big as your head.


This is the "kid" size (obviously, big as a kid's head) -- one size below small. Seriously.

I went for "baby" -- just one scoop.











Ice cream enlightening the world...

Cheating on Black Creek

Well, I did go to Black Creek Park last weekend, I didn't get any pictures though. It was too cold to work the camera. I saw a couple of birds that I tried to zoom in on, but they flew off before I could get them in view. And since I was looking at the camera's lcd screen instead of at the birds, I don't even know what they were. Didn't have my glasses, though so the camera was my best shot at i.d.

It was cold and clear, and I didn't have fresh snow to stomp through this time. The path was trodden smooth, melted and refrozen, and kind of slick. About all I can say about my walk is that I made good time. I had too much going on in my head to look around and pay attention to things around me. The walk didn't even clear my mind.

The kids had this past Monday off from school and we drove out to Mendon Ponds Park. There was one trail I wanted them to see, because you can do this....


















Sam was a little freaked out by the prospect of birds (even chickadees) zooming in to land on him, but Claire managed to get a couple to visit...



















There were also a number of obese squirrels along the trail, cleaning up spilled birdseed. They didn't eat out of your hand thank goodness.

It's all downhill from here...

No walk at Black Creek last weekend. It was the Cub Scouts' sledding party, so I got to stand atop a windblown hill in single-digit weather for three hours, watching kids, mine included, whiz down the hill at top speed having the occasional near-death experience.

This picture does not do it justice, but the sledding hill at Black Creek is daunting. It's also full of moguls that would launch kids into spectacular wipeouts. A good time was had by all, until the frostbite set in.

The mom of one of Sam's friends went down the hill too -- a couple of times. On her last trip down she whacked her head -- "you're a nurse -- what should I be looking out for?" she asked. She also revealed that several years ago, she'd had a craniotomy to have a brain aneurysm repaired.

I saw her Tuesday when we picked the kids up from church school -- turns out she'd had a killer headache the day after the sledding party, went to the doctors and wound up having a CAT scan to check everything out. Everything looked ok, but I think she'll be thinking twice about any more sledding.


















A view from the top. Honestly, you can't tell how steep it is, with everything uniformly gray like this. Crappy light and no filters...

the creek flows on...

At Black Creek Jan 11 around 3:00 -- heading toward sunset. Went down by the creek side -- ice reaching out from the banks, open in the middle, chunks of snow & ice drifting downstream, catching on ice banks. Tracks on the ice edge -- too far down the bank to i.d. Four doves in a tree flew off when I noticed them.







Found a little nest full of snow -- artifact of summer.


















Farther on, found a snow angel by the trail



















...looks like a dog ran through it. So, does my buckthorn have thorns? Yeah, puny ones maybe, a fraction of the size of the buds:




















You call those thorns? Check out the Hawthorn over here:



















... now those are thorns.

Detour

Driving home from work last night, all the street signs looked as if they'd been blacked out; like one long construction zone where the signs were no longer accurate so they'd been covered with burlap.

Only they weren't bagged, but snow-blasted, obliterated by storm and a driving west wind. I was re-routed by weather, don't know to what purpose.