Sky Watch Friday

Suburban Sunset

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a neighboring house

I'm not sure if my neighborhood qualifies as a true suburb but it is certainly a residential neighborhood. These were taken one night last week during an evening stroll with WP.

 International Skies Galore!

Sky Watch is hosted by Klaus with the help of Wren, Fishing Guy, Sandy and Ivar

Shadow Shot Sunday

The prayer flags in the front yard, sending out good vibes for peace and freedom

The Baby in the Garden
and assorted other garden shadows

This one is not of my yard but across the river in the town of Gill
taken on the same day as the others.

Later this afternoon, in the family room: the shadow from a carved wooden screen on the closet door in the family room.

Happy Shadow Sunday, thanks to our hostess Tracey at

A Visit to the Montague Book Mill

A great place to idle the time away...

The Montague Bookmill
is a used bookstore housed in an 1842 gristmill, set
on the banks of the Sawmill River, a few miles north of Amherst and
Northampton, Massachusetts

The Bookmill is only a few miles from our house and yet we don't visit often enough. Yesterday it was sunny and crisp; just the type of day to spend some hours in the cozy mill looking at old books

For $19.95 and with an ancient $15 gift certificate I found, how could I resist? The clerk was kind enough to honor it. WP bought a book on deep sea diving; one of his crazy hobbies!

I perused my new book while munching on a delicious brown rice salad from the Lady Killigrew Cafe. It was partially eaten when I decided to photograph it.

A view of the Sawmill River is available from several windows, though I went outside to take this one.

My Day In Pictures

We left home at around 11:30 for brunch. As I walked to the car, I took this picture. We didn't bother to rake this year. I guess we go in for that forested look. Actually we're just lazy about stuff like that. We both work hard and we like to have fun when we can.

Took a walk around our local reservoir, which includes Lake Pleasant
This is a photo of the road that leads to the lake.


WP pointed out this unusual tree to me. It looks like it's in the conifer family but we don't know of any others like it around here.

Lake Pleasant

Green pond is iced over

and I can see my bedroom again! I was a good housefrau and removed the many items off the floor and vacuumed with the antique Electrolux. The T. Rex of vacuums!

It was a quiet, very cold, very peaceful day. Odd not to have chicks around. In our case four daughters.

Sky Watch Friday

My Western Massachusetts town is on the Connecticut River. Below is a picture one of the last surviving paper mills in a town that once had a mile's worth of them along the river. I was standing on the narrow sidewalk of the bridge, facing North East. This was taken during the 4 p.m. rush hour; I walked down to the bridge from my car which was left parked in a local lot.

I was mostly focused on the sky and didn't think to photograph the canal on the other side of the mill building.
Instead, I crossed the bridge and photographed a rather nice sunset. I drive over the bridge I described daily on my way to and from work. It's obviously not the nicest part of the river but I've got some other shots to share next week!

Thank you to this week's guest host, Linda from the blog 7MSN Ranch.

Camera Critters # 26

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A few weeks ago as W.P. and I were driving home from the peach orchard, we spotted this beautiful painted turtle crossing the road. W.P. pulled over and ran to rescue it from passing cars. We took it for a little ride to a local lake surrounded by woodse, which is a part of a local reservoir. Enjoy, critter lovers!







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Concert in the Park

After our family picnic yesterday we packed it up and went down to our town park for a benefit concert of local music. The night was hot but breezy and it was a very groovy scene. The proceeds are going to help support our local community theater, The Shea.

Headliners The Alchemystics. Excellent reggae, hip-hop and dub. Heavy grooves, great vocals, and positive messages.

(below)
Lin Preston’s Musical Time Machine

The band leader has an amazing voice reminiscent of Nick Lowe. The band sound is loud but melodic rock; all original material.
This dude has star-power. It seems he was once a rather good Elvis impersonator. The drummer is the talented Nick, Supergirl Two's boyfriend. This is a band that's going places, I think.

The lovely Alice, W.P.'s mother, diggin' the show