Just found this young American singer, his name is Stephen Sanchez! Hope you like this song, " I Would Never Fall In Love Again". He is young (his birthday is in just a couple of days- Nov. 4th and he will turn 21.) I read just a bit about him and besides liking Elvis, he also admires the vocals of The Ink Spots! (Who Elvis also really liked.) He played at Glastonbury Festival in June 2023 performing this same song with Elton John. The above video is from the BBC from one month ago. (You know I have that English connection!)
Anyway, it is November, and I am hoping that you are all doing well and enjoying the autumn. October had its ups and downs but hey, it's a new month now, right? Gotta stay positive-you don't have to but it really does help in life! Oh, and laugh a lot and listen to music! (Did y'all see that comedian I told you about- Nate Bargatze was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend? So funny!)
Sourwood trees- if you don't know them, you should!
Stephen Sanchez- if you don't know HIM, you should! LOL!
I have told you about our son's musical talent on this blog. Now, for the first time on YouTube, "This Too Shall Pass", written and performed by Christopher!
There! Oh, I do hope you will be able to click on that link above and hear his song! He wrote the song, played the instruments, is doing all the singing (including harmonies) and also arranged the song himself. When we were in Nashville before we went to see Ringo Starr in concert, we went to a local bar where a young man was singing and playing his guitar. After he finished one of his songs, he looked over at Christopher and said, "I was trying not to sing too loudly, since I wanted to hear your harmonies". (C. was singing right along with him, of course!) See? I am not the only one who appreciates Christopher's great voice!
All these photos are from a local park here in Rockdale County, where we live. All made by my husband, Richard! He is also a great musician too. Where do you think our son gets his talent? From me? HA! No way!
Color me happy! You can see me smiling amongst the Yellow Daisies at Arabia Mountain. They bloom every September and we are always glad to see them. (They are called daisies, but they are in the sunflower family: Helianthus porteri.)
We also have Yellow Daisies in our own backyard! Here is a photo of what they looked like....
Look carefully at those petals above...do you see the petals are rather rounded? And the plants themselves are not that tall. These are the Yellow Daisies that have re-seeded themselves from last year!
There is another yellow flower that blooms in October rather than September and it is the Swamp sunflower (or narrow leaved sunflower) and for the first time this year...we have it in our own yard!
Ta-DAH!! It is also in the sunflower family: Helianthus angustifolious!
In Greek, "helios" means "sun" and "anthos" means "flower". Therefore, anytime you see the word "Helianthus" you know it is in the sunflower family!
Isn't it a beauty? We have it in a pot. Back in the Spring, we were walking down Main Street in our town of Conyers and there was a woman selling plants from her front yard. She had a sign saying "Swamp sunflowers" but when I asked her about it.... she said she was sold out. She must have seen the disappointment on my face because she THEN said, "Oh, but let me go and dig some up for you!". Well, you can bet that made me smile! For $2.00, I have this lovely flower blooming just now! It can grow very tall; we just saw some today that must have been 10 feet high!
Both of these sunflowers that I have shown you are NATIVE to this area! We have seen all of them growing wild, either near the trails where we walk or just growing beside the roads.
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"Yellow Submarine"!
Richard and I were treated to a wonderful gift from our son and daughter-in-law. They gave us tickets to see Ringo Starr! Oh my goodness, it was most enjoyable! We saw Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium at the end of September. As lifelong fans of the Beatles, I can't tell you how special this was for both of us! You know I waved at Ringo, and he waved back at me! HA! My son will tell you that is the truth!
So wonderful to hear a big crowd sing along to "Give Peace A Chance", although it made me feel a bit sad thinking of the two Beatles that are no longer with us, John and George.
My friends, I do hope that you are all doing well. October is flying by now and the colors of the leaves are just beginning to change and today I even had to wear a jacket while we walked! And if you ever get a chance to see Ringo, wave to him and say I told you go!
September has flown by so quickly that October is upon us and pumpkins are everywhere! Why just today at the local grocery store, we saw bags and bags of Halloween chocolate and treats. One bag had 405 pieces inside! (Four hundred and FIVE, in case you think I typed that number incorrectly!) Oh goodness, I am remembering going to "Trick or Treat" with my siblings. We walked around in our neighborhood in our homemade costumes carrying paper grocery bags. Sometimes we would encounter older couples who didn't have any candy and they would apologize and say "Please, don't play a trick on us!". Oh my, that made me feel so bad. ("No, no... we would never do that, it's just an expression!" I remember saying that to them!) At the end of the evening, it was so much fun to pour out all the "treats" and look at what we had been given!
I haven't gotten my "tiger stripe" little pumpkin yet, but I will!
This is a photo of a past pumpkin! I love it!
When our son was in the first grade, I read out to him something from the newspaper about a couple from the state of New York who had grown the largest pumpkin on record for that year. When I told him the weight and dimensions, he wondered how big would that make the pumpkin? We got some (very large) pieces of paper together and sketched the size upon it. Thinking that was the end of it, I kept reading my newspaper and then, started on housework. Noticing that Christopher was very quiet, I went to check on him.... he had gotten those pieces of paper that we had taped together of the huge pumpkin and had colored all of it in orange! Wow, that was so much work! I told him to take it to school on Monday and to show his teacher. He did so and she had him put it up in the hallway on a bulletin board. (It overlapped the bulletin board!) The class then wrote to the couple who had grown the pumpkin, and they wrote a very sweet letter back to the class!
There, that is my pumpkin story!
September photos for you....
Our cereus cactus bloomed! We have had this cactus since 1994! It is a night bloomer, so we have to really watch it, or we sometimes miss it!
We have roses AND a swimming pool in our backyard....
Okay, it is a swimming pool for birds but still, we get a lot of enjoyment watching our little feathered friends! Our yellow daisies are blooming in our backyard also and we do love them! (If you remember, I had them in pots and they have just re-seeded themselves and we have now enjoyed them for years,) They are natives, and belong to the sunflower family. (Helianthus porteri).
Here they are at Arabia Mountain! They are like this every year!
Sometimes, I wake up from a dream and there will be a few words that are somehow lodged into my brain... "Straight up with no irony" is a phrase that I woke up to recently. The day before I had liked a TV advertisement so much that I paused the TV so that Richard could see it when he came back inside from his gardening.
Here, let me show it to you....
There, were you able to see it? It is called "A Beautiful Silence", It was filmed in Yosemite National Park and while it uses actors, the young actor is actually deaf, his name is Keivonn Woodard.
"Share the special feeling that nature brings forth".
And I might not ever make it to Yosemite myself, so I am grateful to see it in this commercial. (I am reading "Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir" by Linnie Marsh Wolfe.)
Toccoa Falls, Georgia
The expression "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" is a good one. Look how great our son is with plants! Just like his Dad. (The two photos above are from 2020 just before the lockdown.)
Hey! Today is Richard's birthday! I must have a song for you with this post. It is most likely a song that Richard sings every day.... "Ain't No Pleasing You"! LOL!
Sometimes you just want to go somewhere that's pretty! I have photos here for you from a small restaurant that is only a few miles from our house, but it feels like you are in a faraway place. It is attached to a bookstore which makes it all the nicer for us. This is in a very old house that was once a fair size restaurant. Back when they filmed "Dukes of Hazzard" in the next county over, Carroll O'Connor was here almost every evening to dine. It was called "Michaelangelo's" then and he had good taste because they had very good food. (Once, he was behind me at a stop light. When I recognized him in my rear-view mirror, I mouthed the words, "I love you!" He did a deep bow even while seated in his car! That's a nice memory. Probably told you this story before but I don't see stars every day of the week!)
Abracadabra! Did you instantly think of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat? I just learned that the word has been around for many centuries. It somehow means the equivalent of "I will create as I speak" or "I create like the word". It all seems a bit misty to me as the exact origin of it, but it seems that people felt a certain power to it and would write the word in a triangular shape (like I have shown you above) and have it above their doorways so as to ward off diseases. They did this during the Great Plague of London which was in 1665. Daniel Defoe (the same author who wrote "Robinson Crusoe") wrote dismissively of them doing so. If you get the chance, I wish you could read a bit about Daniel Defoe, I think his life story would make a very good film! One of his books, "The Storm" was about a hurricane that hit Britain in 1704. It is considered one of the first works of modern journalism as he gave first-hand accounts of those who had survived the storm. Florida has just now had another hurricane and I have been watching the news thinking of all those affected. Here is what Daniel Defoe had to say about the hurricane in 1704...
"No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it".
There, doesn't that sound exactly true? And perfectly expressed?
There has been such bad news recently but one piece of good news.... did you see the story of the children that were rescued from the cable car in Pakistan? It took them a while to figure out how to attempt the rescue, but they were successful, and all were saved! They showed a photo of the cable car itself and I remarked that it reminded me of a tin of Spam, it was very small, and it only had a metal gate at either end. (I am not criticizing in any way, just observing how small and open it would have been for them, dangling like that above those mountains!)
I have had this video on here before, but I really like it, I hope you do as well! Such a peaceful tune. It is the theme song from the movie "Up"....it is called "Married Life". (Thinking of our dear son and darling daughter in law who just married in the Spring.) xx
Hope you are all doing well, my friends. So many people are getting Covid! I bet we will have to start wearing masks again, you know I still have some!
The above butterfly is a Red Spotted Purple. (I didn't name it, folks! Just telling you that is what it is! Limenitis arthemis.) Butterflies are so amazing, their whole life cycle! Now, I must tell you about something (and you might have a clue from my post title)....
Yesterday, I was astonished to witness something on the small sassafras tree beside our walkway. It was a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar. As I was watching it, it began moving on the leaf. It would appear that something was moving out of its mouth...but I have told you before that the false "eyes" are really at the BACK END of the caterpillar....so what I was seeing was the caterpillar sending out the sticky substance to enclose itself inside the leaf. Now, here is the thing...the caterpillar completely turned itself around in a blink of an eye! Truly, it was just like that! One micro-second it was turned with the fake eyes on the top and then, the fake eyes were at the bottom! Flipping caterpillars, Batman! (Sorry, watched too much TV as a kid.)
If you came across a children's play area beside a hiking trail and there were no children around, would you play? You know I did! I left this table with the blocks neatly stacked this way. It looked much better than seeing it with the blocks all scattered!
"Summer Lightning" by Ralph McTell.
Hope you like this song as much as I do! Richard can play this on the guitar and he is just as good as Ralph McTell! I promise he is!
Take care, everyone! August has been a crazy month! (I just typed "moth" instead of "month", but for me and my research on moths and butterflies, maybe I got that right the first time!)
