I THINK MY FRONT PORCH HAS BECOME A FAVORITE SPOT

Early August has been memorable over the years.  It was thirty-three years ago on August 2nd that Kelly and I first met at a little coffee shop near Doon, Ontario.  It was the Monday of the August long weekend.  And it was eighteen years later on August 9th, that Kelly and I met the fabulous Pheebs in Zurich, Ontario.  We were quite a team for the best part of fourteen years.  Just a couple of old memories from days long gone by.  

TUESDAY EVENING'S SUNSET AS SEEN FROM MY WALKING ROAD THROUGH MY iPHONE

 AN AREA FARMER BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL TUESDAY NIGHT

Not one of my better days, but I did get out for a drive through the countryside southeast of Bayfield this morning with a walk at an old walking spot Pheebs and I liked.  I spent a couple hours reading on my front porch this afternoon.  I think my porch has become a favorite spot of mine this summer.  So peaceful with the chipmunks scampering about and birds singing in the treetops.

 IT WAS ANOTHER NICE MORNING DRIVE THROUGH THE COUNTRYSIDE

 PHEEBS AND I ALWAYS ENJOYED WALKING ALONGSIDE THIS HEDGEROW

Al's Music Box:: Country Roads by John Denver.

 THESE ROADSIDE SUMAC LEAVES HAVE TURNED COLOR EARLY THIS YEAR

GROANER'S CORNER:(( This fellow is looking to buy a saw to cut down some trees in his backyard. He goes to a chainsaw shop and asks about various chainsaws. The dealer tells him, "Look, I have a lot of models, but why don't you save yourself a lot of time and aggravation and get the top-of-the-line model. This chainsaw will cut a hundred cords of wood for you in one day." So, the man takes the chainsaw home and begins working on the trees. After cutting for several hours and only cutting two cords, he decides to quit. He thinks there is something wrong with the chainsaw. "How can I cut for hours and only cut two cords?" the man asks himself. "I will begin first thing in the morning and cut all day," the man tells himself. So, the next morning the man gets up at 4 am in the morning and cuts and cuts, and cuts till nightfall, and still he only manages to cut five cords. The man is convinced this is a bad saw. "The dealer told me it would cut one hundred cords of wood in a day, no problem. I will take this saw back to the dealer," the man says to himself. The very next day the man brings the saw back to the dealer and explains the problem. The dealer, baffled by the man's claim, removes the chainsaw from the case. The dealer says, "Hmm, it looks fine." Then the dealer starts the chainsaw, to which the man responds, "What's that noise?

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Adam was walking with his sons Cain and Abel. As they were passing the locked gates of the Garden of Eden, one of the boys asked, “What’s this?”Adam replied, “Boys, that’s where your mother ate us out of house and home.”

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Al's Doggy World

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Al's Art Gallery

SO, DID I SEE A UFO LAST NIGHT..... YES I DID AND NO I DIDN'T

Following are a few shaky iPhone photos of something odd I saw in Monday night's sky.

SOMETHING APPROACHING THE CAR AFTER I CAME TO A QUICK STOP AND GOT OUT

 I TRIED TO GET A STEADY BEAD ON IT, BUT......

 IT QUICKLY DISAPPEARED ACROSS THE CORNFIELD, BUT I KNEW IT WOULD BE BACK

With another nice summer's night upon us, I headed out to my walking road.  I was a tad late for what looked like a nice sunset, but I was able to grab a quick shot before the sun disappeared over the horizon.  

Following my walk, I headed for Clinton to pick up a decaf coffee to go and slowly headed west along a few country roads to my night sky spot.  Nearly there, something caught my eye moving in the darkness off to my right.  It was a light where I knew no light should be.  My first thought was maybe a combine working late in the fields.  But then the white single light turned into two lights, with one being green and one being red.  And it was moving way too fast for any kind of farm machine.  I watched it, and then it disappeared, only to reappear again seconds later, and still moving fast.  Because I could not readily identify this flying object, I technically had a true UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) sighting going on.  I reached my night sky spot and quickly turned the car off and got out to see if I could hear anything.  I couldn't, but I noticed the lights were now moving fast in the opposite direction.  Hmmmm, I had a suspicion.  Back in the car, I quickly left my night spot location and drove a short distance west to a crossroad where I turned right in the direction of the strange fast-moving lights.  In less than a minute, there it was on my right, just making a tight turn nearly right over top of me.  I quickly pulled over and jumped out of the car with my cell phone camera, but the flying object had already disappeared across a cornfield.  But, I knew it would be back because at this point I had gotten a good luck at it and identified it as large crop-spraying drone.  I didn't know they used them at night but figured it would make sense to spray at night when there is no wind.   My shaky hand-held iPhone pictures are not the best, but they do give you an idea.  And, little did I know that it was not the last strange object I would see before returning home later.  I drove the short distance back to my night sky spot, turned the car off and doused the lights.  Getting out of the car and leaning back against it, I marvelled at the night sky.  The milky way was visible as well as the Planet Venus, and number of constellations.  I saw two aircraft flying from west to east pass through the claws of the constellation Scorpio.  Another aircraft, probably coming up out of Toronto to the east, passed through the constellation Altair, the Eagle, heading west.  I also saw one meteorite rocket by from the northeast heading into the southwest.  Then a bright object caught my attention high overhead, and I thought for a few seconds it was the International Space Station.  But it was too big and too bright.  But only for a few seconds, and then the light diminished to that of a small satellite.  I figured the brightness I saw was an iridium flare when the sun briefly reflected off the metal satellite.  The satellite slowly passed through the constellation Cassiopea heading northward.  

 I HAD TRIED TO CAPTURE TWO CONSTELLATIONS WITH MY iPHONE BUT THEY ARE VERY FAINT...SCORPIO ON THE RIGHT AND SAGITTARIUS ON THE LEFT...BUT HEY, I DID GET THE LIGHTS OF VARNA, ONTARIO AT THE LOWER LEFT

And then, it was after I had left my night sky spot and was nearly home that I spotted something really odd in the sky.  I was at the south end of Porters Hill Line, signaling to turn right on Bayfield River Road, and as I glanced to my left to check for traffic, I saw two amber flashes in the night sky low to the horizon.  I hesitated and watched.  There were the flashes again.  One amber flash a split second after the first amber flash.  The flashes did not appear to be moving.  Well, there was no going home now until I could find a logical explanation to what I was seeing.  I turned left and crept slowly towards the lights.  They seemed to be close and right above the road.  And then they disappeared, and I couldn't see them.  I pulled over and got out of the car.  The reason I couldn't see them was that I was practically right underneath them.  I cautiously walked up the road about twenty feet, trying to make some logical sense out of what I was seeing. The two flashing amber lights seemed to be just above me in the dark sky.  

 iPHONE PHOTO OF THE TWO AMBER LIGHTS

Then, standing there in the darkness, I noticed a power pole off to my right, and I had a hunch, so I turned around and looked across the road behind me, where I saw another power pole.  These amber lights pulsed about every 5 seconds, so I had a feeling it had something to do with these two poles and electricity.  And then I had an 'A-ha' moment.  I activated the flashlight feature on my cell phone and pointed it up, whereupon I saw three probable power lines over the road running between the two power poles.  The amber lights were flashing first from the westernmost wire to the center wire only a couple of feet away.  There was no sound to those flashes of amber.  I have been up and down Bayfield River Road many times at night and never before have I seen these lights, so I don't know what that flashing meant or how it was happening.  There were definitely no colored light bulbs on those wires. (or so I thought) I will be back out under the night sky tomorrow night, so I'll definitely watch for those lights again.  Oh, I just love it when strange things happen in the night sky.  Update:: This afternoon, with my Sony camera over my shoulder, I rode my bicycle the short distance out of the Park to where I saw those flashing amber lights Monday night, and sure enough, there was the proof of what I had seen.  In the darkess and even with the iPhone light, I did not see the two light pods that were behind those flashing lights Monday night.  They must be some kind of inline monitoring devices on those lines.  Anyway, two after dark mysteries solved Monday night, so all is good:))

 HERE'S THE ROAD RUNNING EAST BETWEEN THE TWO POWER POLES WITH ONE ON THE LEFT AND ONE ON THE RIGHT....AND IF YOU LOOK REALLY CLOSE TO THE UPPER LEFT OF THAT TREE DOWN THE ROAD, YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE THE LIGHT PODS THAT WERE CAUSING THOSE AMBER LIGHTS

 AND HERE ARE THE TWO LIGHTS THAT WERE DOING THE FLASHING

NO WONDER I COULDN'T SEE THE LIGHT PODS WHEN I WAS DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH THEM

 THE ONE POWER POLE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE ROAD

You wouldn't think in the first week of August I would have to turn the furnace on, but that is just what I did around 6 a.m. this morning when I woke up feeling cold.  The temperature outside was 54F.  But, even at that hour of the morning, I could tell it was going to be a nice sunny day.  And, it was.  After my walk, I busied myself on the end of the lawn mower, and weed whacker plus half a dozen other little outside things.  Oh, and if you are wondering what one of those drone crop dusters looks like in daylight, below is a picture of one I pulled from the internet.  And, yes, this is what I saw....but in the dark.  It seemed about the size of a flying refrigerator, and somewhere in a farmyard nearby, sat the drone's operator, probably in a dark space, huddled over whatever visual and controlling devices are needed to operate these things.

Al's Music Box:: The Shifting, Whispering Sands by Johnny Cash.

GROANER'S CORNER:(( It was the day of the big sale. Rumors of the sale (and some advertising in the local paper) were the main reason for the long line that formed by 8:30, the store's opening time, in front of the store. A small man pushed his way to the front of the line, only to be pushed back, amid loud and colorful curses. On the man's second attempt, he was punched square in the jaw, and knocked around a bit, and then thrown to the end of the line again. As he got up the second time, he said to the person at the end of the line..."That does it! If they hit me and knock me down one more time, I won't open the store!!!!"

- “I mixed up the cardiac resuscitation equipment with the lie detector, but I will de-fib you later.”

- “How do they figure out the price of hammers? Per pound.”

- I just found out I'm colorblind. The diagnosis came completely out of the purple.

- “When an escaped prisoner was caught camping out in the woods, it was a clear case of criminal in tent.”

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A mother-in-law sent two ties to her son-in-law. Some weeks later, she was invited for lunch, and so he wore one of them in the hope of pleasing her. The meal was a tense and uncomfortable one, with the mother-in-law maintaining a stony silence. Finally she spoke. "Alright, what's wrong with the other tie?"

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