Along the Roadside

Indian Paintbrush and prairie grasses 

seen along the roadside near Little Hope (population 25), Wood County, Texas

Lady Hummer

Scarlet Macaw - Phoenix AZ

I won't be posting every day as usual for the next month or so.  My mother is starting a five-day a week radiation therapy regime and it's going to take a big hunk of time out of my schedule, but I'll be checking yours out and commenting as much as I can.

Reba

Asian Elephant

Phoenix, Zoo

Help, Blogger Friends:  Today I tried out Google Chrome upon the suggestion of a blogging friend and when I tried to open my blog site it opened in my dashboard, and across the top was "The Old Blogger Interface will be removed in the coming month.  Upgrade now."

What does this mean?  If I don't upgrade my blog will go away?  What is the new interface?  Any insight anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.  Why have I not seen this when I'm working on my blog in Firefox?

Oxalis

Aging Cowboy

Shopping for a new pair of boots

Dynamic Duo

LINKING TO CAMERA CRITTERS

Macho Man

Fence No. 23 ~ A Lazy Afternoon

Near Martinsville, Nacogdoches County, Texas

To my way of thinking often what's behind the fence is more interesting than the fence itself.  And that's the case in this picture.  In Texas often Brahma cattle are bred to Herefords (the white faces) for an astounding quality of beef.  It's hard to imagine that those slender strands of barbed wire will contain the giant Brahmas, but they do.  Thank goodness; otherwise Texas would be overrun with cattle on the roads!  I'm sure there's more than a million miles of barbed wire in Texas.

If it's Friday, it must be fences! 

LINKING TO FRIDAY FENCES

Keeping in Touch

Fancy Flamingo

Downtown

Phoenix

February 2012

Coconino County Courthouse

Flagstaff, Arizona

July 2011

City Traffic/Desert Skies

Phoenix, Arizona

February 2012

On The Grounds of Brophy Chapel

St. Francis Xavier Parish

Phoenix, Arizona

Fence No. 22 ~ Bamboo

Many zoos, climate permitting, grow the plants that are used to help feed their animals.  The Phoenix Zoo, with plenty of irrigation, can grow lots of bamboo which provides food and habitat and even fencing!

LINKING TO FRIDAY FENCES

Wildflower at Dusk

Tulip Tree in Bud

Many of you call these magnolias; we here in the South call them tulip trees.  They are from the same family but we Southerners believe the true magnolia tree has huge white blossoms, big waxy leaves, and grows to heights way in the sky!  This photo was taken several weeks ago.  The tulips tree blossoms have come and gone, but the magnolia blossoms are still to come with the summer.

Inside Terminal 3 ~ Sky Harbor Airport ~ Phoenix

The Syrup Man

Sunlight Peeking Through Shadows

LINKING TO CAMERA CRITTERS

Soaring

Fence No. 21 ~ So Many Fences

The Old North Church Cemetery in Nacogdoches, Texas, has many wrought-iron fences.

LINKING TO FRIDAY FENCES

How Blogging Makes You Smarter

Did you know that blogging makes you smarter?  Well, it does, and here’s how. 

This is another sign I found at the Phoenix Zoo in the area called Mercado de Uco, the reproduction of a South American village.  I love history and I wasn’t sure what the C.S. Bell Company of Hillsboro, Ohio, was advertising in this old metal sign, so an online search led me to the fact that the company is still in operation today in Tiffin, Ohio.  It presently manufactures various kinds of mills and crushing equipment, which is basically what it did when it started in 1858 with two employees and a weekly payroll of $7. 

In later years it became a well-known manufacturer of all kinds of bells, church bells, school bells, farm bells, and mission bells, including the famous bell on the Hawaiian island of Molokai which Fr. Damien used to summon members of the leper colony to worship.   

As years went on and the market for bells decreased, the company went back to farm equipment and among the various machinery it produced in its foundry was a machine called the Tortilla which was used to grind corn in Mexico and South America.  I’m guessing this is what this sign is advertising, but it’s purely a guess. 

 

At the outbreak of World War II when the navies of the U.S., Great Britain and its allies were in need of invasion bells, the C.S. Bell company produced what some say were all the bells used by the Allied Forces.  It is reported that there were literally thousands of bells on U.S. ships during the invasion of Normandy on the coast of France on June 6, 1944, later known as D-Day.  After the war the company once again returned to its agricultural products.

Now, I wouldn’t have known any of that had I not taken this picture and then decided to post it on this blog!  So that’s, my friends, how blogging makes you smarter!

Shielded from the Sun

Sedona, Arizona

July 2011

Seed Pods

Scarlet Macaw

Caldwell Zoo,

Tyler, Texas