Outside Yours Truly in Downtown Hudson OH

I was meeting a friend at Yours Truly on Monday, but he was running late. Sitting over near the windows on the south side of the restaurant was so quiet, peaceful and fun to watch the sunrise. Yours Truly is one of my favorite restaurants to meet people. It's friendly. The food is very good. Service is great. And it's very pleasant, even if the person you're meeting is late.

It's been crisp and clear for a day or so. Yesterday was a cold, overcast, blustery day. The kind of day that when you leave your car parked for 45 minutes, you have to clear all the windows again because of all the blowing snow.

I'm looking forward to more crystal clear days.

Blue skies and cold

Icicles...brrr

We've had some nice low temperatures and the gutters are holding icicles now. Melt. Freeze. Melt. Freeze. Snow a little more. Now it's feeling like January!

Winter Wonderland! WOW!!

Now that's what I call SNOW!!

SNOW... for a day... now rain

It snowed the other morning. I was at work so I snapped this photo from my office window.

I was so excited to see snow, I went for a walk at lunch time down the sidewalks with my head back... tempted to put my tongue out to catch snowflakes... but I haven't been too crazy about doing that since the acid rain thing got publicized.

It just seemed so magically to have snowflakes swirling around. There's nothing I like better than the change of seasons. I was looking forward to going skiing at the nearby slopes this weekend, but alas. It got warm again and now we are back to rain and damp.

I've heard next week will have some low temperatures, so I can hope for snow again.

The Playful Pets

Jean.
Lucky.
Hot Wheels.

Christmas is over... back to "normal"

We put away the lights. And planted the Christmas tree. Put away all the santa memorabilia. Updated the Christmas card list.

Back to "normal."

Whatever that is.

An Extremely Wet and Warm Winter

Lucky is peeking out from the Greenhouse, while Jean looks at him waiting for the next round of tag-you're-it!

Notice how green everything is! The vegetable gardens and flower nursery are begging to get planted. Maybe we'll do a "hoop, there it is" with a mini tarp covering to get hte plants going early this year.

Then watch. We'll get a big late April blizzard! ha ha.

Flickr tool -- a cool collage

This is a neat little bit of code that I popped into this blog that picks up all the public photos at Flickr and makes it into a strip... or a collage like the one on the right. Pretty neat!

www.flickr.com More of cmcbrown's photos

Tiny Kale

Kale near the front door. I should have planted it earlier, because it's still pretty small. There are 2 of them and I think I planted them around Thanksgiving. Next year... think October 1st!!

Christmas Pets... Lucky, Hot Wheels & Jean

Deer, deer, deer. Oh Dear!

This is outside the passenger window on the road that runs behind our house. I used a flash, so all these deer must be more like 40 feet away, not 10 feet. But it felt like they were sitting in the seat next to me. Yesterday Keith and I saw about 30 deer right across the street from this field. Guess it's because we've had such a very mild winter.

Merry Christmas!

Getting ready for Christmas. Not much snow yet, but lots of Christmas spirit!

Warm December Weather!

Sunny day

I've been raking leaves and playing outside. Today is a pretty November day with blue, blue skies and hardly a cloud in sight.

A Visit from Jack Frost

We're supposed to have sun during Thanksgiving Weekend. Yahoo! This morning Jack Frost paid a visit so all of my photos have a little bit of the frosty glow.

Big Beautiful Hibiscus in Bloom!

The weather outside has been really crummy. Wet, cold and damp. So I'm taking some liberty with this blog. This hasn't really been in "the backyard" since mid October when it started getting chilly... but this hibiscus sure does love it where it's nice and warm in the office!

Big Buck in the Backyard

Day before yesterday when I was driving to work, I rounded the corner and almost came face to face (or car to nose) with a BIG BUCK. Luckily, he didn't hit my car, but continued walking along thru the field behind my house. I grabbed my camera and rolled the window down to get a photo of him. Lots 'o antlers!!



It took me this long to get the shot just before he went into the woods surrounding our house. It's just a little woods... probably less than an acre. Hard to believe a guy this big could survive. I know that there are at least 5 other deer that live in there, because we've seen them. The dogs seem to keep them at bay during the day, but I think the deer are starting to understand the whole electric dog fence system because they are getting braver and braver.

First Snow

Last night we had our first snow. Time to put the deck chairs and table away for winter.

Deer Season in the Backyard

I don't recall ever seeing so many deer as I have this fall. Yesterday I saw 3 in the morning, 7 at night... just in my short drive to work and back. They just glance up from time to time... then go back to grazing.

These deer were only about 25 feet from the road and not the least bit intimated by the flash from my camera, or the honking horns of passing by cars, or even shouting strangers yelling at them. In fact, these deer were just about as tame as the cows on the east side of the road.

This photo was taken at dusk from the car window. The deer are standing in the field just behind our house.

I used to like deer, you know, so graceful and calm. That was until a big buck jumped on my hood one December evening and demolished the front quarter panels, grill and hood of my relatively-new car (only 7,000 miles on it), breaking off his antler into the passenger side window.

The guy at the repair shop just told me, "You're just lucky he didn't come thru the windshield, the last car I did, the driver was impaled by the horns." Ever since his comment, I look at deer in a whole new light.