Spoon Daisy

These are a couple of shots of our coveted purple "Spoon Daisy" a member of the Osteopermum family and very difficult to find this year. We also have a white one which I will get pictures of and post some other time. This single purple bloom actually broke off the plant before we planted it last week and has been sitting in water for the whole week in the living room yet it still looks perfect.

Paris hiking trail

May 24, Deb and I went for a drive and ended up hiking along part of the Trans Canada Trail near Paris, Ont. These pictures are a few of the beautiful things we spotted along the route. Although the red Trillium seem to be almost all dead already, the pink and white ones were found in abundance along the pathway. We also spotted lots of birds but didn't get any good shots of them (too many leaves on the trees now).

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Today while walking out at Pearce Park was saw a beautiful male rose-breasted grosbeak. Of course we didn't have the camera with us and I can not find a picture online to do this beautiful bird justice but if you click on the name you will get an idea of his colouring. The one we saw was brilliant black and white with bright red chest spot..definitely out to impress the ladies!
On the way home we passed by the bald eagle's nest to check it out. No signs of anyone there but then as we came down the road on the other side of the patch of trees containing the nest..there sitting side by side on a lower tree branch, were the pair of bald eagles. Very good to see them, I had been concerned that maybe they had abandoned the nest because it has been weeks since we have caught even a glimpse of them.

More bird sightings

Today on our morning walk we came across a Gray Catbird(the righthand picture) and LOTS of little warblers incuding a Blue-Winged Warbler. On the way home we found a little Eastern Kingbird (picture on the left)perched in a small tree beside a water filled ditch. It was obviously a good bug spot because he was not bothered by us at all just spent his time flitting out to catch bugs and then back to one of two the small trees on the property line beside the ditch. We did not have a camera with us so these are not my pictures. You can learn more about any of them by clicking on the name.

Happy 50th Birthday Barbie

This weekend Deb went to Ingersol to celebrate Barb's 50th. Picture is Barb and her daughter, Sherry. Deb claims she stayed up until midnight partying. Of course that means she is paying for it the rest of the weekend. It sounds like everyone had a great time. Happy 50 Barb!

Lagoon Stroll

This morning we decided to try a different route for our walk. We headed out at the West Elgin Sewage Lagoon. It is not as nasty as that sounds.. just a couple of ponds near the sewage treatment plant. The nature club has placed various nesting boxes in the area so there are lots of birds to be found there. In the pictures you can see pretty Bluebirds protecting their nesting boxes. I also got some nice shots of Purple Martins and Swallows who didn't appreciate having us wandering near their nests. In the pond you can see the back and tail of a large turtle who only showed his head when we were very far away from him. While we were standing on a causway between two ponds, watching him apparently bottom feed ...a coyote tried sneaking up on us(maybe after Dusty?). I turned and saw it and pointed while telling Deb and he jumped and turned midair and took off to a nearby bush area. We decided it was time to move to the opposite shore and head back rather than tempt him by continuing to wander in his hunting grounds.

Winter semester is finished!

My exams have all been graded and the marks tallied. Final results are not nearly as good as first term but still good enough to keep me going with accounting as my major within business studies. Final grades are:

Business Law...............................................................................85%

Contemporary Principals of communication...........................85.3%

Economics 1 (Microeconomics).................................................80%

Accounting....................................................................................73.38%

When considered with course weighting gives me grade point average for the term of 3.643

Not bad for an "old dog" learning new tricks! Now that I have taken a business law course I can understand why Rosilee was torn between studying Law? or Accounting? I very much enjoyed this basic law course despite the teacher's early warnings that it was a "tough course" to pass. LOL.

For the Spring/Summer session of college I have chosen to scale back a bit and leave time for relaxing. I am registered for 2 classes: Economics 2(Macroeconomics) and Business Math. They are both math type courses and also both required so I thought I'd get them out of the way at once and hopefully be finished with the high school type math stuff. I didn't like it much way back then and haven't grown more fond of it over the years. Classes begin next week and finish mid August.

We celebrated Chris' 16th birthday yesterday. He wanted Chinese food for dinner but had cadet meeting which meant we had no time to travel to a Chinese restaurant. I improvised by heating some frozen Chinese food and creating a few dishes of my own to come up with a surprise Chinese dinner that we all enjoyed. Chris loved it so much that he took the leftovers for his lunch today. I had to buy him a birthday cake because I had meetings in London and ran out of time to bake. The cake was pretty, but a huge disappointment to us all. Way too sweet with tons of icing on it...looks pretty but nasty to eat AND expensive too. At least we all got a reminder of how much better homemade is in more ways than one! At this point Chris is thinking that getting driver's licence can wait awhile because cost of driving is so high(this revelation came after discussing facts of prices with Dustin and Seldon,Miranda's boyfriend, last week). It makes us happy because we are well aware that Chris is not yet ready for the responsibility of driving yet.