The night sky

Jupiter is finally starting to appear.

Jupiter and the Moon over Sparks, Nevada

Jupiter, the Moon and Venus over Reno, Nevada

And lately the International Space station has been passing overhead.

A shave and a necktie.

All I have to do is shave and put on a necktie. I can survive that. I'll attend a wedding over the weekend and then we get to go camping! One day of wedding in exchange for one night camping. I haven't been camping since a trip to Death Valley several years ago.

Mosaic canyon

The Artist's Palette

 

The Red Cathedral in Golden canyon

 A raven patiently waits for something to die at the Death Valley dunes.

It'll be good to get out of the city and see the Milky Way. It's been a long time since I got to see the night sky without a bunch of light pollution.

The moon over Furnace Creek

And see some of the critters that inhabit the night.

A coyote slinking around Furnace Creek

And a coyote just ain't complete without a roadrunner.

(I learned that from Looney Tunes)

Bloomin' crazy

The canna lilies are blooming for the third time. They were bought early in the year and bloomed shortly after that. A month or so later they bloomed again and now here they are again. They have a brilliant orange flower that sort of glitters when the sun hits the flower at a certain angle.

And a little spritz of water....

On the UNR campus

 Irises so dark they look black

I was surprised to see rhododendron here. I thought it would be much too dry. 

The prickly pear cactus. It has incredibly delicate yellow and red flowers that last only a day or two.

I really need to be sorting some of these books and getting rid of a few of them but I just hate to get rid of my books. I have thousands of them. I don't need that many books but I don't want to get rid of them. I start sorting them into boxes and then I just run out of energy.


Summer. It's hot. But the flowers are blooming. And blooming flowers means things are attracted to them.

A honeybee in a poppy.

And in a prickly pear cactus flower.

Dragonflies use the flowers as a resting place.

And the Tiger Swallowtail butterflies

A day at the park

One of my favorite places for photography is Rancho San Rafael park. The park management views thistles as "nuisance" plants but the park inhabitants like them. The thistle isn't native to the area but I'd hate to see these animals leave if the thistles were eradicated.

 Goldfinch

 The Monarch butterfly

The Tiger Swallowtail butterfly

Even the bees like them.

Bumblebee

And who doesn't like honey?

Honeybee

Well this is embarrassing!

Thirty or forty years ago we suffered the utter humiliation of being seen in cars like these.

('49 Caddy. I remember riding around in a black one of these)

You felt like you were in one of these

 Oh, the shame! (We owned a Rambler at one time.)

Unless you were really uncool and drove a truck

What we really wanted to be seen in was something like this

We just wanted to be pretty doggone cool!

But if we'd had one of these

 

We would have spent a lot of time with a car like this.