ARIZONA

We have been in Arizona now for almost two weeks.  The weather has been a little cooler than normal and we had some rain.  It is a bright sunny day today and I have taken some pictures of the house and the scenic area we can see from the house.  It is a very nice place and will be great for this winter.

This is a shot of the driveway up to the house.  It is 56 steps long and up hill.  I make the trip at least once each day to pick up the newspaper at the bottom.  Guess that is my Cardio workout for the day.

This is a shot from the top of the driveway.

This is a shot of the view from the kitchen window.

This is a zoomed in shot of the kitchen window view.

This is a shot of the view from the dining room window. 

This is a zoomed in shot of the dining room window view.

This is a zoomed in shot of the lake that you can barely see in the previous picture.

This is a shot of the mountains from the backyard looking north.  All of the previous pictures of the views were mostly looking west.

This is a picture of the pool in the backyard.

Patrick

WINTER

I think winter has officially arrived.  As best as I can tell, we got at least 6 inches of snow last night.  I think it will be here until spring now.  It will be a white Christmas.  The following pictures show the area around the house after last nights snow.  Also got lucky and got pictures of Woody.


Back Yard and the river.

Bird Feeders

Deck and Gazebo

Front Yard

Woody trying to figure out how to get to the feeder tray

Woody

Patrick

FALL

It is fall in Minnesota and the trees are changing colors.  We have one tree in the backyard that started and stopped and then 3 weeks later finished.  As usual we have also had our first snow of this fall.  It won't last, but is a sure sign of things to come.  Hope you enjoy the pictures.


This is the tree that started to change and made it look like it has a golden crown.

Closer shot of the color on the top.

This is the tree after the total change.  You can see the bare limbs at the top where the leaves have fallen off.  It was about 3 weeks between the previous pictures and this one.

Same tree this morning after our present from Mother Nature last night.

Flower in the front of the house after the snow last night.  Guess it is about done.

Flower behind the house before the snow.  It has been pretty like this all summer with continuous new blooms.

Patrick

FLOWERS AND NEW STAIN ON DECK

We had our decks stained last summer and the stain didn't last for some reason.  So, we have had them done again with hopefully a better stain that will last awhile.  There are before staining and after staining pictures of the small deck.  We have hanging flowers behind the house each summer and also some in front.  They have done real well this summer and still look great.


This is the small deck after being power washed to get all the old stuff off.  There wasn't much left to remove.

This is the deck after the new stain was applied.  Looks great.

This plant has been full of the yellow flowers all summer.

This one has flowers all around and continues to bloom.

This one is on the ground in front of the house and has done great even after the rabbits ate part of it.  It filled in again.

This one is on the front steps.  There are some white flowers in the middle, but they weren't blooming when I took the picture.  The others keep going.

Patrick

Rabbits

We have several Rabbits around the area and they are increasing in number.  So far they haven't caused any big problems to get them on the my list.  The following pictures show some of them.


This is one of the older ones and one that comes to the bird feeder area about every morning.  He was just sitting and resting when I took this picture.

This is one of the younger ones, but growing quickly

This is sort of a middle sized one.

This picture doesn't show it well, but this little guy is not more than a month old.  We have seen him in the front yard often lately.

This is a nice flower we have sitting in the gravel area in front of the house.  You might notice there is a pretty good size bare spot on the front side.  This is from the Rabbits eating it and will get them on my "list" if they keep it up.  I think it was the young one in the previous picture that did it. He keeps that up and he won't get to be old.

Patrick

NEW BIRD

We had a new bird visit our grape jelly feeder this morning that I haven't seen here before.  It is an Orchard Oriole.  Looks like a regular Oriole that got a darker dye job.  Below are two pictures of him.  It was raining a little at the time and he is fluffed up some because of that.

Orchard Oriole

Second shot of the new guy.

Patrick

SPRING GREEN

My previous blog showed our backyard in the dead color of winter and then in the white color of an April snow storm.  Yesterday the guy came that cleans up our yard and de-thatches it.  He does a great job as you will see.  There was also a little rain fall after he finished and now we have a nice new green carpet.  Just one picture, but one that is much nicer to view than the ones in the previous blog.  Maybe we can get leaves on the trees and the garden planted soon.

There was a little frost last night that hasn't totally melted yet.  The sun is up and taking care of that chore.

Patrick

APRIL SNOW

The last three days have been very snowy.  Seems like every year there has to be at least one snow storm after we get home from Arizona.  We have been home for just over a week and here it came.  The following pictures show our backyard before the storm and this morning, 4/12/20. All the pictures were taken at about the same time each morning.  Hope it all melts very quickly.


 Backyard Tuesday morning.

Backyard after the storm.

  

Another shot before the storm.

 

  

The after picture

 

 Before the storm shot toward the river with the sun just coming up.

After the storm. Still to cloudy to see the sun this morning.

Our bird feeders before the storm.

After the storm.  Birds are busy catching up.  They stayed fairly busy all during the storm.

Patrick

BIRTHDAY AND SNOW

We had a nice time yesterday celebrating Pat's birthday.  Our friends Ilene and Diane joined us for a tour of casinos in Laughlin.  No big winners, but a great time.  We finished the day with dinner at Earls Castle and then drinks at the Martini Bar.

This morning I looked out just as it was starting to get light and saw an unexpected sight.  Rain had been predicted, but the white stuff wasn't suppose to get to us.  Almost made it feel like home.

Ilene, Pat and Diane at Earl's Castle.

Another shot. 

The morning snow in the backyard.

Another shot.  Fortunately it is gone already and just rain now.

Patrick

BALLOONS

This past Friday, Saturday and today was the annual hot air balloon festival in Lake Havasu.  They had nice weather this year and were able to fly the balloons each day.  The following pictures were taken during the three day event and most were taken from the patio at our house.  Please pardon the wires and telephone poles in some of the pictures.  They haven't put all that stuff under ground here yet.

Taken the first morning of the festival.

Colorful.

Two at once.

My favorite, the Pink Elephant.

Another shot.

In profile.

This one was far out.

Same here.

And another.

This was the area they all took off from down near the lake.

A second shot of the area.

The Pink Elephant and one other.

Another shot of the take off area.

And another.

This one was closer to the house.

Same here.

And here.

One more.

This one again and he past by.

Not sure what this one was.  It was a long way out there.

Colorful.

This one had just landed as we were on the way by this morning.  Right next to the highway on the service road.

Another shot of the landing.

And one more.  We couldn't stop to watch him deflate.

Patrick