On one of our hikes we came accross a thistle plant and this one bloom had both a bumble bee AND a butterfly on it. I took 5 different pics of it, but this is the best one. 

And we were "adopted" by this white lab puppy on another of our hikes. She had marks on her neck from a collar, but had no collar on, so we can only assume that she either got away or was ditched. I think the former must be true, because she had been spayed and I don't think anyone would go to that expense and then ditch a dog.  The park ranger thought she was our dog and warned us that we needed to keep her on a lease while in the park. I explained that she was not actually our dog . . . that she had latched on to us while we were hiking. He put her in a pen and let the front office know about her. I think he intends to keep her if no one claims her. I sure hope so because I really felt rotten when the dog began whining when we left her there.

Probably the most thrilling thing about the most recent "sister trip" Alice and I took was that we both got to pet and feed deer . . . in the wild . . . up close and personal.  Every morning about 7:30 the deer would make their way down from the hills and walk right through the area surrounding our cabin.  Then again about 5:00 or 5:30 in the evening they'd be heading back up into the hills and would again walk right by our cabin.  We got brave on the third day and went out to see if they would let us get a good picture of them.  Boy, did they let us get pictures of them. The first time we did this, one of the deer walked right up to Alice as if to say, "What kind of food do you have for me?". We were not at all prepared for that, but from then on we met them bearing apples, peanut butter cookies and finally peanuts. Unlike what the lady in the park office had told us, these deer did NOT like apples, so the rest of the bag of apples we'd purchased at the grocery store became part of our supper . . . fried apples . . . YUM.  Their loss was our gain.

I'm not sure whether or not our cabin has an internet connection, so Alice and I may or may not be posting while on vacation. But rest assured we will be having a great time and taking a myriad of pictures.  Just today and tomorrow and then we're outta here.

Oh, I'm getting excited.  It's Thursday evening and Alice and I leave on Vacation Sunday morning . . . just two more days and then we're off.  I've already started packing and tomorrow I make a couple loaves of home made bread for our vacation food pantry. You see, we actually LIKE cooking, so we always try to cook on our "sister trips". It's kind of fun trying to cook using just the pots, pans and utinsels our room provides. Saturday, Alice and I will go over to mom's and do her chores since we won't be in town on Monday and Thursday when we usually do her chores.

Yesterday, Alice, Gil and I went to Bricktown and had lunch and then walked around and took pictures . . . we're all three camera nuts. There are two artificial waterfalls and this is one of them.

Farther along on our walk we came upon several of the statues that have been erected. They are so lifelike. It's a wagon train as it comes to the river's edge.

Last year when Alice and I were at Bricktown they had not completed this mosaic at the west end yet.

Then we made our exit of brick town through the sidewalk fountains. I caught a shot of Alice as she's scurrying through the splashing water. Then it was off to the Myriad Gardens.

This is my favorite spot at the Myriad Gardens. It's sometimes hard to remember that you're smack dab in the middle of downtown Oklahoma City. All in all we had a wonderful afternoon.  

Yes, I know they're a day late, but here are a couple pics of how the yard is covered in spider webs . . . or should I say stray strands of spider's webbing.

These cosmos seeds also show how much of my yard was covered in cob webs. . . especially if you click on the picture and look at a slightly larger version.  

Here are just a few of the shots I took in my garden yesterday. As you can see there were butterflies and beas everywhere. They are really out in force right now. Another thing we have an abundance of right now is spider webs. You should see my back yard. Everything has tiny little spider webs on them . . . flowers, the fence, the trees, the bird bath, the lawn furniture. They're everywhere. If I can remember, I'll get a picture of them today and blog them tomorrow.

Another industrious bee gathering nectar from a perfect Gaillardia.

In an earlier blog Gil_L commented about how the Oklahoma State Capital dome is painted using the colors of the Gaillardia . . . one of our State flowers. You can see what she means in the above picture of the inside of the dome.

And here is one Gaillardia that apparently forgot to put on her make-up.

Our garden club took on the four small flower beds at the entrance to Superbia, a retirement village where my mother lives. It's one of our "projects". We got a lot done today, but we're not completely finished with them yet. But even at that they look 200% better than they did. We have a wonderful bunch of ladies in our garden club. We all work together and get along so well . . . not like a lot of ladies groups I can think of.

This is the largest area that we worked on today. It was just a patch of dry dirt with a few weeds before we started. We've planted little patches of monkey grass and spread mulch to help hold in the moisture. Then in a couple weeks we'll have some boulders scattered around in there too.  Then later this fall we'll plant some grape hyacinth and crocus bulbs.  It was a difficult area because it gets mostly shade and we didn't want to plant a lot of ground cover that would compete with the trees for precious moisture. We also had to be careful not to damage the root systems of the three large trees by digging lots of holes for planting shrubs. We're pleased with the results.  

 
The Gillardia is Oklahoma's state flower . . . well at least ONE of them. I forget how the story goes now, but somehow we have TWO state flowers. I love this one.  

 
And Alice tells me that Gillardia are prone to have frequent "deformed" blooms. The bee doesn't care if it's deformed or not . . . the nectar is the same.

 
And Alice seemed surprised the other day when she was down at my yard that I still had a Jolene Nacole lily blooming. Today it presented me with two blooms at once.

 
I think she said this was a Gloriosa Daisy. What ever it is, I like their bright shiney faces.

I sprayed my front yard with bug killer this evening. There were tiny, minute little white flying specks and they were devouring my purple Homestead Verbena. I hope they just ate the foliage and didn't actually KILL the plants. We'll see next spring if the verbena survived. If they don't come back, then that's pretty expensive bug food.