Hay Girl

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I don’t think this lovely scarecrow is very scary, but she does cut a good hay figure. Fall is in the air — I saw a couple of sandhill cranes fly over this morning, so I went out to the river before sunset and a small flock flew by. The problem is the river is running really high and fast, so the places they normally roost are underwater. The Martinez House got its color coat, and the cottonwoods are turning yellow.

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Mushrooms

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These may actually be “toadstools”, but since we’ve had all the rain, our yard is bursting with a variety of fungi. I find the blue mushrooms especially interesting and beautiful with their feathery texture and curled edges.

 

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Ladybug

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I got up close and personal with a ladybug after going out to check the water level in the Rio Grande at 7:30 am. The river was back to normal with no indication that the water got higher than in was in my photos from yesterday’s blog. I was going to go out and see what the water level in the river was when I woke up at 2:00 am, but it was pouring rain, so I stayed in bed. We got another 3/4 inch of rain over night giving us a total of 9 inches for the year.

The white flower was blooming on the levee in the early morning and the rain drops on the roses where like viewing the world through tiny crystal balls with my macro lens.

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SLF

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Sandias, lizard, flowers (SLF). Laurie saw a baby lizard in the leaves under the bonsai stand on the deck. It was really cute and like most young folks these days, seemed to love being photographed as it moved out closer to my macro lens and hammed it up a bit.  There was an alert for a missing child in Corrales this afternoon which had the Chanel 7 chopper circling around above us. I drove out to see if there was any action around the fire station, but nothing much was going on, so I drove north and got nice light on the Sandias. There was an alert on our phone when I got back that they found the missing child. Laurie planted a bunch of different flowers that started coming up in July, but the hail storms beat them down to the ground. They finally recovered and we now have a garden full of cosmos and other flowers. The birds and the bees are very happy.

 

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Much Ado About Nothing

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While this storm reportedly dumped 1/2 inch of rain on the NE Heights Tuesday afternoon, and while it looked impressive from our yard, it turned out to be much ado about nothing as it dissipated before it got to us and we got no rain out of it.