BIRTHDAYS

Today is my grandson, Evan's, birthday and also the birthday of my brother, Ralph. Evan is fourteen. Ralph is exactly sixty years older. He doesn't really seem that old to me. It seems like only yesterday that he was fourteen. He really has aged well. Here's a picture of him that was taken at Christmas time:

We Schmidt's tend to be partial to the months of May and June for birthdays. I was born in May, too. So were my sons, Carl and Peter. Most of the women in our nuclear family have preferred June. Our daughters, Mary and Heidi, both picked the same day (June 2) a year apart. Dickie waited till the end of the month (June 29). Our youngest daughter, Gretchen, held out until September 23. In any case, we're all having happy birthdays again this year and wish the same for everyone else!


BACK OUT TO THE COUNTY PARK

Dickie and I drove out to the county park again today to take our morning walk around the lake. That makes it a fairly lengthy exercise, but it's always enjoyable. The great blue herons that make their nests in the tops of the redwoods were in fine fettle again today. They can be very noisy. I think it's when the young ones are being fed. The quail were all over the place today, too, calling to one another. I managed to get a picture of this guy sitting on the fence as we walked by:

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

Several years ago a friend of ours gifted Dickie with an amaryllis bulb. As I recall, it was suppose to bloom at Christmas time or on her birthday, but it never did. It has been sitting around in a pot all this time in one place or another. Dickie had about given up on it ever producing, but, lo and behold, this spring it finally came to life - and it's beautiful. Here's what it looks like:

That's it for May. See you next month!

WALKING IN THE COUNTY PARK

Dickie and I went for our morning walk today out in the county park on the west side of Windsor. It's a bit of a trip for us (about six miles out), but it's well worth it. Today we saw several large blue herons (ardea herodias). They make their nests in the large redwoods on the west end of the park where they also make a good deal of noise. One hiker told us that, when he first heard them some years ago, he thought they sounded like a bunch of monkeys and wondered what they were doing in this part of the world.

The great blue heron is much larger than most herons. The adult stands more than three feet tall and has a wing spread of about six feet. I caught this one below as he was fishing at the water's edge today:

We're still keeping tabs on our latest killdeer nest, too. The nest now has four eggs, the usual number in a killdeer nest, and is about two weeks old, so in another two weeks we should have some more baby killdeers running around the local school yard. Here's a picture I took of one of the birds standing next to the nest:

We picked up some trekking poles from a local sports shop recently. They do make it easier for people our age to get up and down the hills. My doctor suggested it would be good exercise for the upper body, too. That can't hurt.

FOLLOWING THE BIRDS

Guess what? We have another new killdeer nest. Actually, it's an old one that's being re-used. Don't know for sure if it's the same birds, but I expect that's probable. In any case, we're seeing it as it develops. We knew this pair was looking around for a likely spot, because for several days we had seen them prowling around the same area. Two days ago now, we finally spotted a couple eggs in the same nest where four eggs had hatched earlier this spring. Today when we went by there were three eggs in the nest and the parent birds were giving us the dickens for standing around. In the pictures below I've set the views of the nest on successive days side by side so that you can see what we saw. This is the same nest on successive days. First with two eggs, then with three.






OUR NEW COUNTY PARK

We made another discovery today, namely, our new county park a couple miles west of town. We had stopped by before but never really checked it out. Today Dickie fixed a lunch and we picnicked there in a grove of young redwoods. It was lovely. There are two large lakes in the park where people can fish if they want, and a path that people can walk along or ride their bikes on around the lakes. We met a couple from Scotland who just happened to be riding by. They said they were staying in Healdsburg for a week and riding their bikes each day out into the countryside. One of them was from Glascow and the other from Edinburg. Here below is a view of one of the lakes:






POPPIES

I'm much enamored of the California poppy. We see them everywhere at this time of year. Here's a picture I took a week or so ago. Somehow the blooms have a waxy look: