'YAAAAY' A BONANZA CORN SPILL:))

I think our Planet must be tipping upside down on its axis.  It's October 30th, two days away from November, and at 8 o'clock this morning our outside temperature was 64F.  I'm not complaining, I'm welcoming that axis tip with open arms.  Maybe we can go right from Autumn weather to Spring weather this year:))

Under a light cloud cover, Pheebs and I slipped east along Bayfield River Road then turned north on Tipperary Line.  We were on the hunt for corn spills alongside the road.  We hadn't traveled far when looking at a partially harvested field I spotted the telltale signs of a sizeable yellow clump on the ground about a hundred feet in from the road.  'Yaaaay', a bonanza corn spill:))  It was at a spot the farmer uses to get his farm equipment in and out of the field.  I quickly stopped and backed into the field and right away noticed about a dozen strange green-looking round balls on the ground.  Too big to be apples and too small to be soccer balls.  'What the heck' I thought as I stepped out of the car.  I picked one up and saw it was textured, slightly soft, and moist, and it had some weight to it.  I quickly surmised this must be a group of Aliens from a faraway Planet.  These must be their brain craniums or something.  No sign of a crashed spacecraft nearby.  Oh well I thought, I've got more important things going on here and I had better get this corn shoveled into my big bucket before the Aliens Mothership returns to pick up the crew.  Well, I was like a little kid in a candy shop as I hastily scooped up the yellow corn kernels with my blue shovel into my white bucket. (because of my photography hobby, my mind works in colors)  There was more than enough corn there for my bucket so I soon hefted my load into the back of the Subaru, picked up one of the little green Alien heads, and headed for home.

 WHILE DRIVING BY THIS PARTIALLY HARVESTED CORNFIELD I SPOTTED THE POT OF KERNEL GOLD I WAS LOOKING FOR

 A BONANZA CORN SPILL

 THAT WAS A HEAVY LIFT INTO THE CAR

 WHAT THE BIG DARN HECK ARE THESE THINGS?!!?

For the second day in a row, I was outside in my shirt sleeves doing a host of things around our yard.  A small poorly built cedar fence out by the road had fallen over (ya ya I built it about 15 years ago) so once again for the umpteenth time, I was able to pull it back up and with a rope, lash a couple of the posts to tree branches behind them.  A couple strategically placed rocks helped as well until the next time the fence falls over. And, oh yes, it will fall over again!!  On a roll from my fence fix, I used my garden trowel to bury an extension power cord between two flower beds that I have carefully been easing the lawn mower over for the past two summers.  It sometimes takes me a while to get things done.  And, imagine how happy I was this morning to see that the birdfeeder I had shakily re-hung in a tree yesterday.......was still hanging in the tree.  Will wonders ever cease.  And, when Pheebs and I headed out for an afternoon walk I spotted a frog sitting on a rock beside our small front yard pond and I'm sure it was the same little fella I had to catch Tuesday and take to the Park's pond.  Well, I grabbed my net and scooped up the little frog again, and with Pheebs leading the way, we all headed for the Park's pond.  A couple minutes later,  after having a friendly Father to Frog talk with the little wayward traveler, I gently placed him back in the Park's pond.  I think with this unusual warm weather going on right now..., this little fella is thinking it's Spring and he's anxious to get back to our front yard pond for another summer season of tasty bugs.  

I SPOTTED THIS LITTLE CHAP SITTING ON A ROCK BESIDE OUR POND

 SAFELY IN MY NET AND ON OUR WAY

 BEFORE PLACING THIS LITTLE GUY IN THE PARK'S POND I HAD A TALK WITH HIM EXPLAINING WHY IT'S BETTER TO BE IN THE DEEPER PARK POND THAN OUR SHALLOW FRONT YARD POND.....YOU CAN SEE HE IS INTENSIVELY THINKING ABOUT WHAT I SAID

 ANOTHER NICE AFTERNOON WALK

A Blast From Our Past:)) Facebook tossed me a memory today from late October 2011 when I wrote something about silence...Sitting In The Darkness Listening To 'The Sounds Of Silence'.  

Oh, and about those round green Alien brains I found this morning.  Kelly, using her iPhone took a picture of it, then used an app on her phone to identify the round green Orb.  Here is what they are......... Osage Orange

Al's Music Box:)) That's Just The Way It Is is a song by American rock group Bruce Hornsby and the Range.  Written by Hornsby it was released in July 1986 as the second single from their debut album, The Way It Is. The song topped the charts in the US, Canada and the Netherlands in 1986.  Hornsby's brother John said, "The song is mainly about compassion, about understanding racial and social types, and beliefs and practices that are different from your own. It's about a status quo that's so complacent in its narrow-mindedness and bigotry that it seems it'll never change. That's why the line 'Ah, but don’t you believe them' is so important." "The Way It Is" evokes people to give to the poor and to protest against racial segregation, white supremacy and economic value.  Musically, the song is characterized by two long piano solos by Hornsby.

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A family of three was heading to Kansas, and they got to the airport way early. The four-year-old son, super excited, kept wandering off, so his dad had to chase him down over and over.  Finally, the dad got tired and said, “If you wander off again, I’ll check you in with the luggage!”  Of course, the kid wanders off again. So the dad picks him up and takes him to the gate agent. The agent says, “Uh, sir, you can’t check in your own child.”  The dad sighs and says, “So… you’re saying I’ll have to carry on my wayward son?”

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- Sadly my obese parrot just died.
But it's a huge weight off my shoulders.
-A midget walks into a library and asked the librarian if there are any books about irony.
The librarian says yes it’s on the top shelf.
- My friend decided to get a face tattoo of his favourite Star Wars character…You should have seen the Luke on his face!
- How can you convert dollars to pounds?
By visiting McDonalds

- My wife said to me, "How on earth are we going to use 9% less gas this winter?"  "You can stop burning my dinner for a start," I replied.

- When I was younger I had a job pretending to be a statue.  I held that position for some time.
- The new thought-activated car they're working on is going to be even more popular than the voice-activated one.
It goes without saying.
- My wife is one of the clumsiest people I know.  I'm so glad she fell for me.

- I can’t think of a time when I lost my toupee while riding a motorcycle.  At least not right off the top of my head.

Q. Why is it so hard for women to find men who are sensitive, caring, and good-looking?
A. Because those men already have boyfriends.
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 THIS TO ME LOOKS LIKE A SHEEPWRECK

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                          Al's Art Gallery

I GENTLY EASED THE LITTLE GREEN GUY INTO THE WATER AND WISHED HIM WELL

Thunder, lightning, and lots of rain came in the night and stayed till after dawn.  I knew there would be no muddy country road drives for Pheebs and I so we kept our Subie ride short and slipped into and around Bayfield.

A GRAY DRIZZLY MORNING IN BAYFIELD

 I COULD HARDLY BELIEVE THE LOW WATER LEVEL OF LAKE HURON

 EVERYTHING IN THE FOREGROUND SHOULD BE UNDERWATER 

A LONE FISHERMAN WITH COFFEE IN HAND PATIENTLY WAITS FOR A NIBBLE

Kelly's appointment with her Nurse Practitioner was at 11 a.m. so I dropped her off at the Maitland Valley Medical Centre in good time.  They took her right in.  From there, under cloudy skies, I headed off to Walmart and Pet Smart to pick up a few things.  With a little bit of time to kill, I headed for the Goderich harbor.  Driving down the hill to the harbor I felt something slightly warm on my left cheek.  'A-ha' sunshine:)))  It was 11:50 and the day just kept getting better from there.  Temperatures were on the rise and I think we topped out somewhere just over 70F this afternoon.  A huge bonus for our area this time of year.  

 AGAIN IN GODERICH I WAS SURPRISED YET AGAIN AT THE LOW WATER LEVEL...YOU CAN SEE ON THE RIGHT WHERE THE LEVEL SHOULD BE

 KIND OF ALARMING HOW FAST THE WATER LEVEL HAS DROPPED....I WAS JUST HERE AT THIS VERY SPOT LAST WEEK AND I DO NOT RECALL THE WATER LEVEL BEING SO LOW

 THE FISHING BOAT MIKE-J IS SOUTHBOUND DOWN THE LAKE....AND NO, THAT IS NOT A CANADIAN SUBMARINE IN THE FOREGROUND

 WITH FISHING BOATS ALWAYS GO THE GULLS

From the harbor, I made my way back to the Medical Centre and picked up Kelly about half an hour later and we headed off to A&W for a bite.  My brown winter jacket has lasted me about 10 years and it's been slowly falling apart lately so following A&W we stopped into Marks (Work Wharehouse) and by golly we found me a new jacket.  When it comes to clothes it's kinda rare for me to get new stuff except socks and underwear of course.  Nice to have something new for a change.  But, I'm going to have to give up 10 coffees a month now to pay for it.

Home again, I didn't waste any time taking advantage of this great weather day.  The squirrels got into the shed and grabbed a pair of clippers to cut down one of our bird feeders so my first order of business was to get that birdfeeder back up and running again.  While I was at it I decided to move this birdfeeder to a slightly different location so that led me to re-doing a section of ground right in front of our sunroom.  I took out the heavy concrete patio stone and planted grass seed in its place.  I also raked up several wheelbarrow loads of leaves and pine needles.  Leaves are much easier to work with if they are wet and after last night's rain, the soggy mass cooperated fully.  Oh, and after keeping a close watch on the pond since I cleaned it over a month ago and moved all the frogs to the Park's pond I'll be darned if I didn't see a frog sitting on a rock right beside the pond.  Within minutes I had the little feller in my net and off we went over to the Park's pond where I gently eased the little green guy into the water and wished him well:))

I HAD A FEELING GOOD PRODUCTIVE AFTERNOON

 CLEANING UP LEAVES BY THE ROAD

 I HAD TO TEETER AROUND ON MY TALL LADDER TO RE-HANG THE BIRDFEEDER

LEAF REFLECTIONS IN A NEIGHBOR'S WINDOW

With a warm breeze in the air making this an unbelievably super nice day, Pheebs and I headed off for a late afternoon walk.  Overnight rains had made things muddy but we managed to plod our way through it without coming home looking like a couple of mangy mud pies.  According to the weatherman, we have some nice days ahead.  Also, happy to say, my hip issue from a couple days ago has totally cleared up.  Well, you know what it's like with us men.  If we stub a toe, we right away think we are on the verge of a leg amputation with less than 6 months to live.      

 PHEEBS LEADS THE WAY ALONG OUR LEAF-STREWN PATH ACROSS THE ROAD FROM OUR HOUSE

 AND YES INDEED WE SURE HAD TO CIRCUMNAVIGATE SOME MUDDY SPOTS

 THE LITTLE YELLOW BULLDOZER WAS BUSY MONDAY LEVELING HOUSING SITES

  THERE WILL EVENTUALLY BE HOMES HERE

 PHEEBS MAKES HER WAY THROUGH SOME BRUSH

 AT LAST WE'RE HOME AGAIN

Music Box:)) Days Of Wine And Roses is a popular song, from the 1962 film of the same name. The best-known recordings of the song were by Billy Eckstine in 1961 and Andy Williams in 1963.  The music was written by Henry Mancini with lyrics by Johnny Mercer.  They received the Academy Award for Best Original Song for their work, as well as the 1964 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.  In 2004 it finished at #39 in AFI's 100 Songs... 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.  The song's lyric is notable for consisting of just two complex sentences, each of which forms one of the song's two stanzas.  The best-known recording was Williams' version, which was recorded for Columbia Records.  The song reached #9 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was the featured track on the album, Days of Wine and Roses and other TV Requests, which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.  

 WITH HEAVY OVERNIGHT RAINS MAKING THE GROUND SOFT THIS LITTLE BULLDOZER HAD THE DAY OFF

GROANER'S CORNER:(( COMPUTER TERMS - TEXAS TRANSLATION:

LOG ON: Making a wood stove hotter.
LOG OFF: Don't add no more wood.
MONITOR: Keeping an eye on the wood stove.
DOWNLOAD: Gettin' the farwood off the truck
MEGA HERTZ: When yer not keerful gettin' the farwood
RAM: That thing tha splits the farwood
HARD DRIVE: Gettin' home in the winter time
PROMPT: What the mail ain't in the winter time
WINDOWS: What to shut when it's cold outside
SCREEN: What to shut when it's black fly season
BYTE: What them dang flies do
CHIP: Munchies fer the TV
MICRO CHIP: What's in the bottom of the munchie bag
MODEM: Whatcha did to the hay fields
DOT MATRIX: Old Dan Matrix's wife
LAP TOP: Where the kitty sleeps
KEYBOARD: Where ya hang the dang truck keys
SOFTWARE: Them dang plastic forks and knives
MOUSE: What eats the grain in the barn
MOUSE PAD: That's hippie talk fer where the mouse lives
MAIN FRAME: Holds up the barn roof
ENTER: Northerner talk fer "c'mon in, y'all"
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- They say that an apple a day will keep the doctor away...Why stop there?  An onion a day will keep everybody away!

- San Francisco isn't just funny it's hill areas.

- Health inspector: "I'm afraid you have too many roaches in here." Restaurant owner: "How many am I allowed?"

- Yesterday I saw a guy spill all his Scrabble letters on the road.  I asked him, “What’s the word on the street?"

- I got my daughter a fridge for her birthday.  I can’t wait to see her face light up when she opens it.

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                           Al's Art Gallery