mini road trip

Hit the road last weekend, in search of sunshine.

Since the weather reports showed that the only sunny part of the

country was going to be southern Nevada and California,

it made the decision easy. We chose to head to the Valley

of Fire, a beautiful state park in southern Nevada, and then

on to other parts...

from the valley of snow

(salt lake city)

to the valley of fire

hiking on the rocks

joshua trees,

high desert, Nevada

Cathedral Gorge State Park, Nevada

crazy chipmunk

Cathedral Gorge

Polka with Lawrence Welk

The first night, everyone else seemed to have the same idea -

campsites in Valley of Fire were full. So, we camped out in a motel room.

go Apolo!

camping in Caliente,

Nevada

night sky

Paintings

Mormor On Her Eighteenth Birthday

The shape of a grape

Let Me Take Your Coat

Cadmium Orange Kerchief

Sun Tan Lotion

Nude In A Yellow Canoe At Midnight

A friend of a friend's paintings.

Johnny Lane

There is a joy in them,

similar to Matisse.

(I would love to be

the nude in a yellow canoe

at midnight...)

my shadow

no more winter, says me.

Tree Woman

This carved wooden beauty stands on my aunt's porch.

She was created by an artist who had a studio in

an old shack on my aunt's property.

In the artist's words,

"this woman came out of the tree."

If a woman can come out of a tree,

anything is possible.

Once upon a blue moon

a new year is born!

baby jesus menagerie

Celebrating the Return of the Sun

photo taken in Italy, of a friend's wine cellar.

I want her in my living room.

Happy Winter Solstice!

outside my window

snow frosts my apples.

Have your turkey and eat it too

In 1947, designer Barbara Orr Ehrhart (pictured) demonstrated her love of turkey not just by having it for dinner at her Oregon wedding, but also by making wedding dresses out of turkey feathers for herself and her bridesmaids. LIFE captured the oddball ceremony, feathers and all, in these photographs.

For several months, Ehrhart collected 34,000 white plumes from 300 turkeys. The bridal gown was made of 500 yards of white plume feathers from a truckload of White Holland turkeys. The bridesmaids' dresses came in feathers dyed yellow, pale green, and black. One gown was valued at $18,000 -- the equivalent of nearly $175,000 in today's dollars. - Life Magazine

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Ha.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre

by

Wilhelm Staehle

ancestral apples

I picked bushels of apples from the trees my grandfather planted

on our family farm forever ago. I unearthed the old harvest ladder,

and climbed as high as it took me.

I looked down and saw the ghost of my mother, lamenting the rotting apples,

that she would have made into applesauce and pies.

The Yellow Transparents were her favorite. Mine too.

I can taste the tartness of her applesauce, the crisp sweetness of her pies,

in every delicious bite...