FEBRUARY NEWS

Dickie and I spent the better part of last week out at Mary & Christopher's Occidental country abode while they were off vacationing in India. If all goes according to plan, they'll be back today. I can't wait to see their pictures. Mary tells us she got some nice ones with my Olympus digital camera.

The weather didn't cooperate all that much. It was chilly last week. We did have some sunshine and, one evening, some very pretty skies. I took this panoramic picture of the scenery to the north of Mary & Christopher's house. It's actually three pictures stitched together:





THE BIG RACE

Yesterday, February 20, the first stage of the Tour of California Bicycle Race came through our area. Dickie and I sat out on Occidental Road for three hours, waiting for the bikers to pass by. They finally arrived at about 2:00 P.M. and I took this picture of the two who were leading at the time (Jean Marc Marino, a Frenchman, and Stewart Jackson, a Californian from Los Gatos):



The winner of the Prologue on February 19 in San Francisco was Levi Leipheimer, a biker from Santa Rosa, who was leading the peloton (a french word for "small group") as they breezed down Occidental Road. That's him in the foreground in this next shot:



According to the news, there were some 35,000 wildly enthusiastic biker fans waiting for the finish in downtown Santa Rosa, where Juan Jose Haedo of Argentina crossed the finish line first. If they do it again next year, I'd like to be there! The whole California Tour is about 600 miles long and will end in Stage 7 at Thousand Oaks in southern California.



SPRING IS SPRINGING!

The countryside is green now here in northern California. The accacia trees are blooming, as are the jonquils. This one is at the entrance to our house:



And, guess what, the killdeer have returned to the rocky spaces in front of our local grade school. They've been nosing around for the last week or so. No nest or eggs yet, but we're fairly certain it won't be long now. Here's shot I took this morning on our regular morning walk:



The last stop on the far end of our walk is at a small pasture where we get to visit with this rather intimidating old donkey who likes for me to feed him grass, but acts like he might like to nip off my fingers if I'm not careful:



When we walk in the other direction from our house, we usually stroll down a road where some woodpeckers hang out. I took this guy's picture the other morning:



That's it for today!