Pepik has very green eyes and looks like a crazy Russian to me. He was playing for my camera, poking his head out from under the coffee table just long enough for me to snap a photo before disappearing under the table again. Our cat and camera game was fun, but when Pepik got tired of it he simply laid on the floor and stared at me.

Among some of the petroglyphs that looked more recent to me, was a kitty. Indians did not have domestic cats before the Spanish arrived, and the petroglyph looks more like a kitty than a puma or bobcat. I would guess the kitty petroglyph was done sometime in the last 500 years.

I’ve never paid close attention to petroglyphs, but while hiking around in the Petroglyph National Monument I came across several in different places. The problem is many looked modern and faked to me, but, since I’m not an expert, I can’t really say. The petroglyphs in the first photo I suspect are old because of the the patina. They are on an almost flat, high surface so they were pretty subtle. I found the petroglyphs in the second photo just plain interesting and included the view to the south to give them a sense of place. The last photo is a yucca seed pod still on the stem.

My cold was worse this morning, and I really had to work to drag myself up to take Stretch in for his monthly blood work. They said his BUN and creatinine are the same, but he’s looking really good, otherwise. We will continue on the same regimen, and take him in again next month.

Tristan’s and David’s birds and fish were in the mood to pose today. Guildenstern fetched himself a beer this morning before we left the house in preparation for lounging on the couch all day. Tristan prepared the Thanksgiving menu from Fine Cooking for Thanksgiving dinner, which was quite ambitious, and turned out really well.

As some may recall, I won a giant 55″ HDTV and blu ray player in June. We’ve not even watched a dozen movies on it so far, but Guildenstern likes to zone out in front of the big screen. I was doing photos of Romeo the other night and he finally got mad at me for sticking my camera in his face, but before that he was a great model.

 

Entering the forth, but not final, week of Movember I decided to do the wet look. My Movember site is http://mobro.co/Elcheo.

 

A lady at Costco was putting out chanterelle mushrooms in the refrigerated fruit and vegetable section on Saturday. I thought they looked interesting both for eating and photographing. I looked up recipes on Fine Cooking’s website and found a recipe for Mushroom & Asparagus Shepherd’s Pie that called for a variety of mushrooms, including chanterelle. The last photo is the resulting shepherd’s pie I made from the recipe tonight. I made the mashed potatoes yesterday, so all-in-all it took three and a half hours to prepare and  40 minutes to bake. Although one could boil the potatoes while preparing other ingredients and mash them while cooking the mushrooms. That could cut an hour out of the prep time.

The Sandias had interesting clouds on them tonight. While they went through their pink phase as the sun set, this photo shows the clouds at their most interesting point.

 

 

 

 

My place holder when I first set up Photo of the Day, Etc., getting ready to switch from Caring Bridge, was a photo I call Cranes in the Mist. A year later I got geese in the mist. On December 1st, Photo of the Day, Etc. will be a year old.

I went for a walk at 6:30 this morning and the river had a nice mist rising off of it in the pre-dawn light. A great blue heron was perched like an undertaker on the far bank of the river. It stayed in place in the thick mist coming off the water, which made it difficult to get a clear photo. Then the mist thinned out for a few seconds, giving me enough time to get a fairly clear view of the heron before it noticed me and flew off. I’ve been trying to photograph the herons for a couple of years, but they are very skittish and usually fly before I have a clear field of view.

The temperature read 18 degrees F on the deck this morning, which means it was 13 or lower  in the garden. The garden was frosty white, but the morning sun melts the frost on the roses almost as soon as it hits them; however, the frost puts up a fight on the strawberries.