Hereford Inlet - Part 2

Hadn't intended to add this many, but - oh well - why not?



The gazing ball is in the front garden. A view from a different angle will be on my Sky Watch this week.


This is another in front.


This one is just off the parking area.


The gazebo/band stand divides the front and back gardens.


The cone flowers are in one corner of the herb garden.


This would be found in the shade garden, along one side of the gazebo.


I believe this is a type of hydrangea. There are several in varying shades.

Blogblast for Peace

If you need another reason, find the statistics on my sidebar for both Iraq and Afghanistan. But you shouldn't need statistics. Look into your hearts.

Favorites

Among the comments I received for Mellow Yellow Monday, Celeste asked me about the significance of yellow for that day of the week. as I understand it, yellow is simply Drowsey Monkey's favorite color, and she thought it would be fun to see how many wonderful, cheerful things could be found in that color.

But in answering Celeste, I started thinking about "favorites". Have I talked about this before? My memory isn't very good any more. I should probably search my own blog to find out, but I think I'll indulge myself and just sound off about it anyway. As I know I've said before, you can always hit the Delete button if I bore you.

I have always had a problem with the idea of "favorite" anything. How does one choose favorites? And why should we? I have no favorite color - or music, or book, or food, or anything else really. Color in particular would be an impossible thing for me to disect and arrange and separate, one from another. I wonder how many colors there are in the world? Myriad! Each one complimenting or contrasting with all the others, dazzling the eye and the brain with its beauty. This reminds me of a day when I was sitting in my dentist's waiting room, looking out a picture window. For some reason I started counting the shades of green that I saw in the landscape. Of course, I couldn't possibly sort out all of them, and gave up quickly. In one tree alone, there were more than I could count.

There are days when I really need yellow, or red. - Red is so wonderful! There are days when I need soft lavender or pale shades of blue around me. Well - you get the idea. How could I choose a favorite?

The same is true of tastes or scents, or sounds. Music! How can I choose a favorite song, or type of music? I need them all! We all need them all, depending on our mood. I can choose my LEAST favorite. There are certain sounds or tastes or odors that I really cannot abide. But a favorite? No. Which color of a rainbow do I like best? Which bird song? Which of my children is my favorite? What ridiculous questions. Please don't send me any more emails in which I am supposed to list my favorites. I just don't play favorites.

Mellow Yellow Monday

It's Mellow Yellow Monday once again. Drowsey Monkey is waiting to see all of our sunny yellow pictures.

Today I have one that caught my eye in a shopping mall. I don't usually like to show ads, and I'm certainly not pushing beer. But it is bright yellow, and I thought it was a pretty clever slogan. So - - here it is:



On the other hand, I have passed this sign for months now, and finally stopped to take its picture. It's just blank, yellow - just waiting for someone to paint a large "MELLOW YELLOW" on it!

Shadow Shot Sunday #60

Good Sunday Morning, Australia! Even though it is still Saturday in the U.S., I'm ready with my Shadow Shot. I'm sure that Tracy, at Hey Harriet is ready too.

Today it is me, me, me. My own shadow in various places. First, is the photographer, trying to shoot a picture of a butterfly.




Then I am starting up the ramp to the hawk watch platform.



Here I am with my walker.



And finally, I am standing on my back deck.



OK. That's quite enough of me.

Ben Stein's Final Column

My friend, Eileen, sent me this in an email today. You may have received it from someone yourself, but if you haven't, I really feel it's worth reading:



Ben Stein's final column --
For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.' (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have over-taken it . On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model ? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails..

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. Soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. Soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will..
By Ben Stein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Stein