Just so darn cute!

Bitsy has natural picture posing talent.

Red background shows off those baby blue eyes to their best advantage.

We don't call her "Bitsy Blue Eyes" for nothing!

She and Tate get their pictures taken alot.
Don't they look sweet sharing the cat perch together?

Bitsy gives kisses to Tate.

Tate gives kisses to Bitsy.

Bitsy decided Tate's tummy needs a good washing.

Tate seems to be OK with that.

(I laugh every time I look at this picture with that goofy expression on Tate's face.  It must tickle a bit to have a tummy bath like that.)

He's all clean now.  Time to sit on top of him.

Tate apparently didn't agree with that arrangement! 

One potato, two potato, three potato, four...

Early last summer the garden center had red potato seedlings. I planted a few in the yard just for kicks.

We had had fun growing potatoes in straw beds years ago in San Diego...maybe planting them in real soil would give us a crop worth talking about.

After all, are we not just one state down from Idaho, famous for growing potatoes? Wouldn't it be probable that being nearby would mean we would experience a great degree of potato growing success?

I had dug up a few by the time Bernie came down to snap a few photos of our "harvest". His back was tweaked out, and there was to be a hard freeze, so I "pioneer-woman'd" up and did the necessary spade work to lift our taters out.

(BTW: My grad school, TWU, are the Pioneers. And we are still undefeated this football season!)

May I just say that digging up potatoes planted in straw beds is a whole heck of a lot easier than digging them up in heavy soil?

I'll bet you already knew that.

I dug and re-dug the dirt, determined to unearth every single blessed spud.

This was fun for about, oh, say, four minutes tops.

If more potatoes had popped up after the first turn, I might have enjoyed the activity more. As it was, I also realized that I would have been wise to have put on a pair of gardening gloves. Dirt beneath my nails: not pretty.

So there they are, fresh from the dirt, with a few other veggies plucked against the upcoming cold.

That lone shallot and yellow bell pepper sure made for a meager crop. When I think of how much good soil we hauled in to the vegetable plot, and all the watering and feeding we did....sheesh. What a rip off.

See? I really did dig out every blessed potato, and I didn't care how little they were. They were MY potatoes!

Take note: I will concede to Idaho's glory and purchase potatoes from them at the grocery store or road side stand in the future.

Lord knows my family didn't risk everything leaving Ireland to come to America back in the late 1800's so future generations could still be digging potatoes.

Especially not as woman with an advanced degree from TWU. Pioneers make for a great mascot, but I do not aspire to play out the role when really I don't have to. I maybe blond, but I'm not that dumb!

(They do look nice all scrub up though, don't you think?)

Give me lens to match my mountains....

The sun was streaming through a slit in the heavy clouds and lighting up the snow capped Oquirrh mountains across the way.
(Oquirrh is pronounced OAK-cure by the way.)

I think I would have needed both a more powerful wide angle telephoto lens to really do the scene justice. Do they even make a wide angle telephoto lens? Guess I need to find out!

The neighbor at the end of the street called out that he thought the scene was pretty amazing too, but I wouldn't be able to capture it without a specific filter on my lens.

With a little help from Picasa via darkening the photo and sharpening it, it came pretty close to the cold blueness shot with pinkish white light overhead.

The picture look a lot better enlarged. Enjoy what I often enjoy seeing at the end of my street in the winter!

(Not sure if the top pictures posted...here they are uploaded again.)