Thanksgiving Point: Part 2

Pulling ourselves away from Noah & Friends, I started getting up close and personal with the flowers.

Strawberry blossoms...

Daffodils with '50 style poofy skirts.

We were just walking along concrete pathways, enjoying the flowers planted along the edge...

Then this scene came into view.

Wow!

(To get the full effect, it is worth taking a moment to enlarge this shot by clicking on it.)

The five waterfalls roared behind the sound of a bluegrass band playing in a bowl-like setting.
We lingered for a bit to enjoy the music, then tried to decide what way to go next.

A path wound up and over the falls; I took frequent stops to capture solitary tulips along the way.

And enjoyed watching smitten parents taking memory pictures of their tykes.

Off the path were lawn areas with borders of tulips.

The colorful flowers snaked endlessly up the hillsides.

Mostly I was looking at the flowers up close; occasionally I would remember to lift up my eyes to the horizon where blooming pink trees and snow capped peaks presented a wider beauty.

(About this point Bernie asked if I was keeping track of the flower count or if I had already lost count.

I told him this time I wasn't even going to try counting the flowers this time.)

I was too busy trying to decide which way to photograph the wave of tulips.

Back on the pathway the colors keep changing...

and I keep deciding that the next flora mix was my favorites so far.

(I definitely do like tulips that point out on the tips and have subtle shading.)

B. and I agreed that it would be fun to just sit by this scene until a bird dropped by to explore the housing.

Kept on going...

Some of the tulips were a bit worse for wear from the rain and hail earlier in the week.

Fresh snowfall from those storms had touched up the white on the mountain peaks.

I was so glad I was seeing this garden with my guy.

Close ups...so close speckles of black pollen from the bi-colored stamin can be seen dusting the yellow petals.

I had missed that detail until I saw the picture enlarged at home!

The white/green/pink mix with variegated leaves: bliss!

I'm a huge fan of variegated leaves, if you haven't noticed.

Such delicate brushstroke like colors.

A photography rhythm was found:

I would take a close-up, mid range, full scene then distant shot at each spot.

You know how much I love orange.

Bernie shot this shot.

The ground was wet, but who cared?

Oohhh...deep pink and white and green is another great combo!

Such artistry!

I didn't see any solid deep purple blooms, but then again not all the tulips were in bloom yet.

Pretty flowers are improved with a baby parked before them.

Both mom and dad were snapping away.

I was kind of surprised they didn't put the little ones into the flower bed actually.

(Am I the only one who thinks "circus" whenever I see red and yellow colors together?)

These pictures were taken in the outskirts of the garden...there were SO many interesting and unexpected things that came into view next.

Come back tomorrow for more of the tour.

It just gets better and better!

Exploring Thanksgiving Point

Thanksgiving Point: A privately funded garden planted with guess how many tulips?

Give up?

Apparently there is a run on the number 250,000; yes while Red Butte was digging in that many daffodils, Thanksgiving Point was planting the same number of tulips.

What do I know about Thanksgiving Point?

Not much before we went there on Saturday late in the afternoon.

It was the same place that we went to at Christmas time to drive through a light sculpture event.

We hadn't ever seen the place in the daylight hours.

When I saw ads in the newspaper hawking the tulip celebration there I made space on my calendar for a trip. After we wrapped up our yard sale, B. and Jeff did a little chipping on the golf course while I got my weekly facial.

We re-grouped at 3:30 and pointing the car south, we traveled 23 miles down the road to see what we could see.

Lines of cars were coming up the Thanksgiving Point exit; we hoped that the crowds would be thinned out by the time we arrived.

It took a few moments to find parking, and then we hoofed it toward the ticket office, pausing only to shoot a close up of one of the many blooming trees shading the parking lot.

It didn't take much to figure out the way to the garden's entry point; the tulips led the way!

We each paid ten dollars for one of these stickers.

Worth every penny as having one on our shirt allowed us to visit the garden.

Let the ooohhh ahhhs begin!

We followed child size footprints in the concrete around the corner where these tulips were glowing in the sunshine.

But wait!!!

Not only were there tulips around the corner, there was also this amazing sculpture!

Noah's Ark!

How cool is this? Noah with the dove with a bit of olive branch in it's beak.

Best yet, the sculpture shows the animals EXITING the Ark!

It took a moment to register in my brain that I don't think I have ever seen the Ark
shown with the animals exiting.

How odd is that; isn't that moment the high point of the whole story?

I'm loving the whimsy...

People were there to greet and photograph the animals as they left the ark.

(I wonder why that part wasn't mentioned in the Bible...)

A wee lass considers her great, great, great, great, great (add a couple dozen more greats here) grandmother.
If you believe the story of the Ark, then this lady is related to you too.

(You may want to consider this post to be a virtual family reunion of sorts!)

Even those who believe their distance fore bearer were apes had their reunion...

Or maybe this is just another example of the old saying "boys will be boys"...

Little boys, one after another, took the opportunity to climb up the exiting monkey arms.

Well, I can honestly say that if all I saw was the Ark sculpture and the tulips leading up the garden and around the sculpture I would have considered our ticket money well spent.

But that was only the beginning of what wonders would be revealed as we continued on our garden visit.

Come back tomorrow to see more of the tulip show! I've got a lot of great pictures to show!

We are fine...wanna buy our junk?

At 7 am we were up and ready for business. Not as big of a yard sale as it could have been. Carloads of items have been donated to the charity thrift shop over the past year.

It was always just too cold or too hot or there were too many other projects to wrangle before. A yard sale was just too much work to consider.

Plus at this point in our lives it is hard to decide if a donation tax credit or cold hard cash is the best option.

The sale is in hour three as I write this and we've made about $150 and more importantly, got to meet a few more neighbors as well.

Isn't that really the point of these kinds of events anyway?

Our pilot neighbor popped by around 9 with his newborn and 15 month old daughters snuggled bundled into the most high tech stroller I have ever seen. Krauss the dog rounded out the party; the four of them were heading to the bagel shop for coffee and morning treat.

Gotta love a neighbor who will make a bagel with strawberry schmear run for you while you wait!

His only request: Wrap up the yard sale before his wife returned from doing surgery. He didn't want to give her any ideas about have a yard sale of their own!

So we are having a beautiful sunny morning with this view over our house....

Framed by flowering trees.

And another sweeping view of snow capped mountains is just down the street.

What is not to like???

(The brownish area at the base of those mountains is a working copper mine. Tours are available; stay tuned for a blog report from there soon!)

Um...what's with the towel on the bush?

Drier on the fritz?

Or did it just not want to be displayed with the rest of the sale items?

No; in addition to having a yard sale, we are also participating in our Community Emergency Preparedness drill.

Salt Lake City is one of the best cities in America in terms of disaster preparedness.

A major earthquake fault line snakes along the moutain range base. Up the road a ways is Idaho and Wyoming, both of which cover super volcano locations.

Add in the possibility of any kind of chemical or weather or terrorist event and suddenly a yearly drill sounds like a good idea.

Everyone gets a flyer like this one with helpful pictures to aid in emergency utility shut off procedures.

I wouldn't have a clue how to do these sort of things unless I had directions like these.

And then, just to keep you thinking, they also include a series of questions to consider.

I admit I need to get it in gear and take care of a few of these items still.

The most interesting one to me is number 19.

While the LDS population of SLC is around 40% now, neighborhoods are still gridded via LDS church wards.

Each neighborhood within the ward has at least one designated "home teacher" who checks in on each church member at least once a month.

In the event of an emergency, the home teacher can be counted on to direct resources to those in need.

I admire that each church member is encouraged to have enough emergency supplies for their own family, and then some more to share with the unprepared.

In fact I think that thinking is so wise that we are adopting it for ourselves.

Seems like just a reasonable thing to do.

****

Update: The garage sale is through. We sold 90% of our stuff!

$170 for sitting in the driveway and chatting with folks who hauled our stuff away while Bernie worked on shaping his new bonsai tree.

The day is young; we have more adventures on the horizon.

These adventures involve tiptoeing.

Can you guess where we are headed to next?

Drifts on the ground, in the sky, and my drifting mind

No, the Cat in the hat did not come by to make the snow turn pink.

The pink "snow" on the grass....

is a welcomed sight here!

Confetti from God as He celebrated His latest edition of His Season of Spring.

It was Earth Day when I took these pictures.

Plenty of people shuffled by on the sidewalk next to the lovely bits.

There were rallies and speeches and exhortations to "save the planet"....

And all I could see and think was how Spring came again regardless of what man was doing.

Overhead the flowering plum tree rained down petals until all that remained was deep burgundy colored new leaves on the branches that had been bare since autumn.

The bare flowerbed beside the plum had colors that a human would deem to be clashing with the delicate pinks and purple output of the tree.

What do tulips and daffodils care of color scheme?

Each blossom lights up with pride at the touch of sunshine beam glowing through their transparent petals.

Back home: Bunny is happy.

VERY happy, and more so with each sunny day.

The lettuce patch is growing at a wonderful pace!

By the doorway of our busy neighbors a huge forsythia bush blooms with wild enthusiasm for the new season.

The neighbors do nothing to husband its growth; it passes through its seasonal phases without any assistance from them.

Amazing, isn't it?

On Monday it was 85 degrees F. when I was driving home from work.

Wednesday we awoke to snow flying horizonally across our bedroom window view.

Thursday it rained and then the storm broke up into atmospheric ships that sailed across the amazingly blue sky.

Bernie and I went to the garden center together and admired the rapidly building plant selection. The employees are helpful; they warn against planting outside just yet. We take note of their advice, and will hold off on major planting until May.

I couldn't pass on one little purchase.

Our dear patient garden bunny needs a new treat!

My fly fisherman is storing his skis, switching out the snow tires, and dreaming of angling outing to come.

It is too soon to fish the snow melt swollen streams just yet; the "catch" today will be limited to Flashy Trout Back lettuce for now.

(Collecting lettuce varieties could get very addictive!)

It rained and rained and rained all day today.

I reclined on the couch before the fireplace and watched drifting foggy shreds sprinkle snow upon the hillsides around us.

Oh was it ever hard to get motivate to do more than watch and enjoy the fast moving storm.

Tomorow we hope for sun.

It will be Saturday, we will have a garage sale.

I hope all our stuff will be gone in a blink.

In any case, we will wrap it up by noon and then plan to be out and about exploring and enjoying our area.

Fine Feathered Friends

A bit of web surfing from link to link landed me on a site that confirmed that once again I was way ahead of fashion.

For the past ten years I have mentioned to one and all who would listen that I fancy bird names as baby names.

Perhaps it was because I went to school with a Lark, Larkie, Robin and a Piper, all of whom were very cool chicks.

Currently the name Piper is coming in at #55 out of 100 of the top girl names so far for 2010.
Phoebe is #70, Wren is #73.

Celebs have really being leading the charge on this trend though, as reported on HERE:

Did an incipient trend for bird names inspire Nicole Richie and Joel Madden to name their newborn son Sparrow, or was it the other way around? No matter. Bird names are the latest genre of nature names, now that the gardens of flower names have become overgrown.

Up and coming avian names: Lark, Wren, Hawk, Dove, Anything but the dated Robin. Then there’s also the genetic Birdie, daughter of Maura West.

As such newsy tidbits tend to do, I immediately began thinking of other sorts of bird names.
Before long I was dug in on the subject and produced my own list of "Bird Names For Babies" as follows.

(Names not suitable for first name would be fabulous middle names or nicknames, IMHO.)

Girls:

Ani
Barbet
Cassowary (definitely a good nickname for Cassandra. I love Cassowaries in real life!)
Chat
Chickadee
Corella
Cotinga ("Lovely Cotiga" is one of the Cotinga types.)
Dove
Ibis
Iora
Kea
Kite
Lark
Linnet
Lory (wouldn't those three "L" names be great for triplet girls?)
Manakin
Phoebe
Piper
Pipit
Oriole
Quail (or Quayle?)
Robin
Siskin
Sparrow
Starling
Tanager
Teal
Tui
Weaver
Wren
Finch
Yuhina

Boys names:

Bat (Bat Masterson: the cowboy. Good nickname name as his was. A mammal but whatever.)
Coot (Another great nickname!)
Drake
Godwit
Gull
Hawk
Hob ( name for a male swan, females are called a pen.)
Jacamar
Jay
Kestral
Kite
Martin
Nightjar
Noddy
Owlet
Plover
Rail
Scoter
Swift
Sylph
Towhee
Turoco

BTW, my mom had an uncle whose nickname was Chick. I seem to recall a few old time famous men going by that handle.

Well, there's my list, take it or leave it; there are no babies underway with anyone that I would hold the slightest hope of influencing anyway.
On the other hand...consider studying up on the list, then challenging someone to a pick-up game of Scrabble armed with these names.
Need proof that these names are real? See HERE.
You can even click on the name links to see pictures of the birds, if you need to reassure yourself that the bird is actually nice looking.