Company

We count ourselves fortunate in having some good friends. Two set of friends visited with us the past few days. John and Zoila came from Wisconsin on their way to Texas to visit family. It was the first visit since 1989, but we had been to see them in Eau Claire two summers ago. We just had a lazy visit except for a trip to Memphis to see Lauri and Jeff.

Robert and Olivia came the day after J&Z had left. Their family had met in Hot Springs for a few days and Robert and Olivia came on over to visit with us. We had a nice, relaxed visit without any special sightseeing or such.

LK and I are getting set to go to Texas tomorrow.

Just a Few Thoughts

I am fairly sure that I saw the family of doves the other day. When I walked out to the rose garden, two doves flew up into the redbud trees. After just a moment they proceeded to the roof of the house. When I looked up, there were four doves on the roof. It looked as if two were adults and two were juveniles. I believe they are the parents and the young that were hatched in the tree in our front yard. It's good to think that the parents do a little training after the young ones leave the nest.

A Bit of Excitment on Baker Street

This afternoon as I was working at the computer I heard sirens coming down the street. This is not too unusual, but it was unusual that the sirens seemed to stop in front of our house. I looked out and saw smoke billowing up from Baker Street. I went downstairs and looked out front and saw firemen approaching a car that was on fire. By the time I went back into the house and got my camera much of the smoke had died down, but the firemen worked several more minutes getting the fire completely extinguished. I was told that no one was seriously hurt.

Hot Days of Summer
I keep looking at the photos that we took while on our trip to Europe. It had snowed a few days before we arrived at Brantes and there was snow on Mont Ventoux. In fact the pass over the mountain was closed when we tried to go to the summit. I attempted to add a photo here but I can't get the "add image" to work. Back to the instructions! O.K. I've got a photo up! This is Brantes, France and at the center of the photo is the apartment where we stayed for two weeks in April-May.

A Hot Tail-end of June
This week has been too hot! It's probably not as hot as the summer of 1980, but it is too hot for me. BTW, during that hot summer of 1980 we were in Europe where they were having one of the coolest summers in many years.

We are having company week after next, So this week was a time for straightening up a bit around the house--both inside and outside. We did try to limited the outside work to the cooler parts of the day. We still have some more to get done--plan to get some more mulch today and spread it around.

A short time ago, I discovered that a dove had a nest in the golden rain tree in our front yard. Well actually, the dove used a nest that the robin used last year. Anyway, there were two young in the nest and we watched them over the next several days as they grew. Yesterday, when I checked, the birds were no longer there. We weren't too surprised since we had seen them stretching their wings the day before. I did get a few digital photos of the mother and her young.

The figs on our tree are getting ripe. We have already eaten several and the birds are getting their share. The tree is from a cutting that was given to me by Mr. Wilson over twenty years ago. The figs are the large one and they are delicious.

Tomorrow is Lynda's birthday and we plan to eat out again. And we have asked Mike and Betty to join us. My birthday is next week, but since we had a big party last year we are going lowkey for the event.

I'm checking around to see if it is possible to send a JFK-type rocking chair from the US to France without costing a fortune. Our friend Pierre wants one.