TRAVEL WITH THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))

Thursday, March 27, 2025

IT WILL BE A MAMMOTH OVERALL CLEAN-UP THIS YEAR

BECAUSE OF THE COLD OUR CROCUS FLOWERS HAVE NOT YET BLOOMED

At 9:15 Wednesday night I slipped out the door, hopped into the Subaru, and headed east out of the Park. The night sky was clear with a myriad of stars overhead. My iPhone made a familiar noise, and I knew it meant the International Space Station was in the area somewhere high above. By the time I got to Whys Line on Bayfield River Road and stopped to get out, my phone told me I had missed it by four minutes. But, that was okay because I was out there to look at the stars and the ISS would have simply been a bonus. I saw a few Constellations with Orion being the highlight. Also visible were the Gemini Twins 'Castor and Pollux,' as well as the Pleides, Ursa Major, (Big Dipper) and Leo the Lion overhead. Because of the night's cold, I didn't stay standing long on the country road very long and soon beat a hasty retreat back into the warm car and headed for home. A nice little brief outing. ..... Sunshine through the morning Pines earlier today and temps were on the rise. Might even be worth venturing outside I thought to myself so Pheebs and I headed off to Goderich. I must have accidentally turned the unlimited data off on my iPhone so I popped into the Bell store and the fella there showed me how to turn it back on. My second stop was at the bank then down to the harbor for a look-see. Following that it was a quick stop at Walmart before heading home..... I spent most of my afternoon working at cleaning up and re-organizing stuff in our carport's storage area. I have it about a third done. No small task I can assure you. In the grand scheme of it all I have hardly made a dent in what is actually left to do. It will be a mammoth overall clean-up this year that will probably last well into the Fall and then some. A big job that's got to be done.

I THINK I MIGHT JUST PAINT THIS FLOOR WHILE I'M AT IT

A Blast From Our Past It was one year ago today that a temporary 6-week hold on my driver's license was lifted after my hip surgery a month earlier. To say I was a happy camper to be back on the road driving again would be an understatement. "Yahouie Louie" Pheebs And I Are Back On The Road Again:))

Al's Music Box:)) The Rain, the Park & Other Things is a pop song with music and lyrics co-written by Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff. It was recorded by the pop band the Cowsills, and included on their 1967 self-titled debut album. Released as a single, the song reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts. It was kept from the No. 1 spot by "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees. The single cemented the group's international popularity and sold some three million copies over the years. It ties with 1969's "Hair" as the group's biggest hit, as both reached No. 2 in the US. In Canada, "The Rain, the Park & Other Things" reached No. 1 on the RPM singles chart. The song was written by Kornfeld and Duboff specifically for the Cowsills; Bob Cowsill said Kornfeld told him they had written it in two hours. The Cowsills did not play on their earliest recordings. Studio musicians were brought in to provide the music for this song and many of the earlier singles. For this record, the arranger was Jimmy Wisner, musicians included Gene Bianco on harp, Vinnie Bell, Charles Macy and Al Gorgoni on guitar, Joe Macho on bass, Artie Butler on organ, Paul Griffin on piano, George Devens on percussion, and Buddy Saltzman and Al Rogers on drums. Kornfeld had planned to use the sound of a rainstorm as the song's intro, but recordings of real rain proved to be too faint to hear on record; instead he used a stock sound of sizzling bacon to emulate rain. Originally recorded in late 1966, with Bill Cowsill on lead vocals, the backing vocals of his mother, Barbara, were added onto the finished product after the initial sessions, at Kornfeld's suggestion. The song was originally recorded at A&R Studios in New York with Brooks Arthur engineering the session. The song is known by many as "The Flower Girl". That was its original title, but MGM Records president Mort Nasatir suggested that the title be changed in order to avoid confusion with Scott McKenzie's contemporaneous hit single, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) The new title was coined by Kornfeld. In the song, the narrator states that he saw a flower girl sitting in the rain, said hello, and took a lovely walk in the park until, when the rain stops and the sun breaks through, she disappears. However, the narrator still feels happy about the flower girl, and asks in the final verse: "Was she reality, or just a dream to me?" The song was used in Lloyd's fantasy scene in the 1994 film Dumb and Dumber.

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Eight-year-old Sally brought her report card home from school. Her marks were good…mostly A’s and a couple of B’s. However, her teacher had written across the bottom: "Sally is a smart little girl, but she has one fault. She talks too much in school. I have an idea I am going to try, which I think may break her of the habit." Sally’s dad signed her report card, putting a note on the back: "Please let me know if your idea works on Sally because I would like to try it out on her mother."

Al's Doggy World

Meanings::

Kelly's Corner
KELLY TRIES OUT HER NEW RECLINER LAST SUMMER

PUTTING ON SOCKS AND SHOES FOR HER MORNING WALK WITH PHEEBS

AT DEER PARK LODGE AND THE DOG'S NAME IS GUINNESS .....KELLY WAS THE MANAGER HERE AND THIS IS ONE OF THE OWNERS TWO DOGS

Al's Art Gallery

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

I HAD BETTER BE OUTSIDE MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES

THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE OUTSIDE OUR SUNROOM WINDOW THIS MORNING

A mainly cloudy (and cold) morning saw Pheebs and I take a wee drive into Bayfield and back. Around 1 o'clock under clearing skies, Lorraine (Woodsy) headed home to Stratford and will return in a few days. I proceeded out the door and fired up my wheelbarrow. Two more loads of pine needles and broken branches to the utility trailer. Maybe tomorrow I'll load up some larger broken pine branches out by the road to make up a trailer load and then haul it all down to our recycle area. It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow but it looks like our weather is again going into the dumpster this weekend with rain predicted. I had better be outside making hay while the sun shines these next couple of days:))

A FEW WELCOME PATCHES OF BLUE SKY THIS MORNING

HEADING HOME

IT'S HARD TO TELL I AM DRIVING ON A BRICK ROAD HERE

BUT I AM

Al's Music Box:)) Running Bear is a teenage tragedy song written by Jiles Perry Richardson (a.k.a.-The Big Bopper) and sung most famously by Johnny Preston in 1959. The 1959 recording featured background vocals by George Jones and the session's producer Bill Hall, who provided the "Indian chanting" of "uga-uga" during the three verses, as well as the "Indian war cries" at the start and end of the record. It was No. 1 for three weeks in January 1960 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States and the same on Canada's CHUM Charts. Coincidentally, "Running Bear" was immediately preceded in the Hot 100 No. 1 position by Marty Robbins "El Paso", and immediately followed by Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel", both of which feature a death of, or affecting, the protagonist. Billboard ranked "Running Bear" as the No. 4 song of 1960. The tenor saxophone was played by Link Davis. Richardson was a friend of Preston and offered "Running Bear" to him after hearing him perform in a club. Preston recorded the song at the Gold Star Studiors in Houston, Texas, a few months after Richardson's death in the plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Preston was signed to Mercury Records, and "Running Bear" was released in August 1959. The song tells the story of Running Bear, a "young Indian Brave", and Little White Dove, an "Indian maid". The two are in love but are separated by two factors: Their tribes' hatred of each other: their respective tribes are at war. ("Their tribes fought with each other / So their love could never be.") A raging river: a physical separation but also as a metaphor for their cultural separation. The two, longing to be together, despite the obstacles and the risks posed by the river, dive into the raging river to unite. After sharing a passionate kiss, they are pulled down by the swift current and drowned. The lyrics describe their fate: "Now they'll always be together / In their happy hunting ground."

BY MID-AFTERNOON SKIES HAD CLEARED AND OLD SOL WAS BUSY MELTING THE OVERNIGHT SNOWFALL

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Last year, when the power mower was broken and wouldn't run, I kept hinting to my husband that he ought to get it fixed, but somehow the message never sank in. Finally I thought of a clever way to make the point. When my husband arrived home that day, he found me seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. He watched silently for a short time and then went into the house. He was gone only a few moments when he came out again. He handed me a toothbrush. "When you finish cutting the grass," he said, "you might as well sweep the sidewalk."

- What's round and bad-tempered? A vicious circle.

Bumper Stickers......IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you've got...... Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now...... Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs..... Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

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If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it will always be yours. If it doesn't come back, it was never yours to begin with. But, if it just sits in your living room, messes up your stuff, eats your food, uses your telephone, takes your money, and doesn't appear to realize you set it free...
You either married it or gave birth to it.

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