Lazy Sunday Hanging Around the Campground

The heat indexes for the week were in the 105-110 degree range. Neither Denny nor I take the heat well so we held off on the gardening and lawn chores this week. Since there has been no rain around here at all, the grass isn't growing anyway. As a matter of fact, the lawns have begun to "crunch" when you walk on them. The trees are so stressed by the lack of water that some have begun to turn colors already and others, like the cottonwoods, are simply losing their leaves. By fall, there will be no leaves left to change color.

This week Patches discovered the half-feral cats that live in the mobile home park on the hill above us. There is a thicket that stands between our campground and the trailer park, but now that the leaves are falling Patches can see through the thicket to the places where the cats hide from the sun. That means she and I no longer walk the dry creek bed, but instead we wander back and forth in front of the thicket, waiting for the cats to return. Booorrrriinngggg. And also fewer photo opportunities. But here's a little of what the camera saw this week.


I planted our little lavender mini-rose bush under the cedar tree at the front of our site and it seems to be happy there.


It was while visiting our friends in southern Ohio that Denny and I realized we still weren't ready to settle down to life in a stick-built home again. We also realized that while the farmland setting was bucolic, we'd probably chose a wooded lot or one in the desert.


The lack of rain is causing the leaves to fall or change colors. This one was doing both.


A few weeks after Denny and I arrived at the campground, this tree fell across the dry creek bed. Two days ago I noticed something laying on top of the tree and when I checked it out I discovered...


...that a raccoon had picked an ear of corn from a neighboring cornfield and sat on the tree to have dinner. Litterbug.


Wow! It appears I snapped a picture of a leaf falling from a tree, right? Actually, this leaf was caught on a gossamer thread of spider silk that stretched from a tree limb down to the creek bed.


Sunsets here in Ohio haven't been too spectacular, so I've included one that I took while staying at The Narrows campground in Oregon. Notice the yurt in the left hand side of the picture. There were a couple of yurts available to rent if you didn't have a tent or RV.


This photo was taken from the same location as the one above, but just a few moments later. The photograph doesn't do the intense color of the evening sky justice.