Some Days Are Diamonds

Take today for example. After dragging myself out of bed this morning still groggy from cleaning blue gill into the wee hours of the night I went in to work knowing I would find an empty office because all the faculty were out this morning for various reasons. None of the students came in to use the computer room either. It was like a ghost town and although I won’t complain about the quiet it I do find it to be less of an odd environment when there are people present. When I came back from my lunch break, which was quite nice by the way, there were 5 or 6 students hanging around talking and finishing up their class work. Sometimes I just want to ring the necks of some of our students. Like when they wait until the last minute to ask for something or hang out at my desk for no reason when I am clearly working on a project. Most of the time though I really enjoy having them around. I told them, since they were congregated in my office, how quiet it had been this morning and how happy I was to see them now. One of the guys was just sitting in the lobby and I asked him if he needed some help and he said no he had been to class and was actually waiting for me. Then he handed me a gift bag that contained one of those huge Yankee jar candles. He said he just had to get it for me because he remembered I had mentioned (in the course of conversation a couple weeks ago that a bunch of us were having about the fact that he and his brothers were getting their mom Yankee candles for Mother's Day) that I loved Yankee candles too. I kind of think it was his way of saying thanks because I spent some extra time helping him to get oriented at OC at the beginning of the quarter. In any case the gesture made my day a diamond day for sure.

Gone Fishin'

My friend and co-worker Patti called me at work around 4:45 pm and asked if we wanted to go fishing with her and her son. She's been talking about this sweet fishing spot for weeks; she knows everyone in the world and obtained permission to fish in a pond on someone's private property not far from where we both live. We were there by 6:30 pm and the 4 of us caught around 80 bluegill (average size 8 inches) and 6 large mouth bass. After awhile we just caught them and threw them back because Patti didn't want any of them and I didn't want to be cleaning fish until 2 am. It was a blast. We will save the fish to fry during a cookout in June.
The only thing better than fishing is catching.

Now there's some good eating.

Should we measure this one? LOL

Mason brings in a bass. (All that time he's spent in fishing club has paid off).

View of the pond.

Andrew and Patti are serious about their fishing.

Look What I Found on the Sidewalk

One of the neighbor kids drew a chalk bunny. I thought it was cute so I took a photo. There were several other drawings as well but of course this was the one I was interested in.

All About Angoras

My friend Lisa and I have been talking for months about making an angora display (and what to include and who our target audience would be) to take with us to fiber festivals and rabbit shows to promote the angora breed. I put the finishing touches on it this morning and it will make its debut at the Canton show on Sunday. Hopefully it will educate viewers on the different breeds of angoras and about their individual wool characteristics and how they are cared for. General angora care is about the same as with other rabbits with a few exceptions; in particular their need for extra cage space due to their size and that they should be kept under observation when molting so they don't develop wool block.

It's A Jungle Out There

Here's an updated photo of the rascally raccoons.
They are approximately 4 weeks old in this photo.

This is a Gray Tree Frog who lives at a private butterfly preserve in Delaware County.

This is mama robin building her nest above our back porch light and the subsequent laying of eggs in it. She flies away and then sits on a nearby tree branch and gripes at us when we open the back door. Some other bird built a nest there earlier this spring and abandoned it because we were coming and going too much. We also have another robin nest in the crook of our downspout in the front and she too flys away when we open the front door even though we are at the other end of the house from her nest. Goofy birds.

Happy Mother's Day

Me and mom at Cox Arboretum in Dayton.

Andrew back from his 200 mile bike tour (TOSRV) from Columbus to Portsmouth.

Enjoying the Garden

It sure is windy today. But the garden is still a beautiful place to be.