My World Tuesday

Perfection in the form of an apple pie.

For more images from around the world:  My World Tuesday

The sun tried to come out

SkyWatch - Part 2

The sun is setting over the duck pen around 3:15 p.m. today.  A bird flew into the picture and even though it's blurry, I left it in.

Gray skies today

Even the dog wishes it would stop snowing!  We got another foot last night.

For more colorful skies, check out SkyWatchFriday.

Christmas Morning

Notice how dark it is outside!

Amber

Alyson

Where's mine?

Got it!

Hey, that's not yours!

My World Tuesday

Prayer flags we bought in Bhutan grace our property and send out good wishes to all sentient beings.  

You can see more wonderful pictures from around the world here.

Dazzled by a brilliant act of civil disobedience

An amazing 27 year old University of Utah student did something incredible on Friday and we should be shouting from the rooftops.  

Tim DeChristopher single-handedly stopped some major BLM oil and gas leases from being sold by outbidding serious buyers.  He admits he doesn't have any money but he wanted to stop the process and it is stopped until February.  You can read about it here and here.   He won bids on 10 parcels around Canyonlands and Arches.

He explains why he did it in his own words here.  He's going to need a lot of support in the future for taking a huge risk to protect the lands we love.  

I just love creative audacity.

Almost Christmas - Winter Solstice

No longer feeling like the grinch, I succumbed to peer pressure and put up a tree and outside lights.  I do enjoy the lights, especially on this shortest day of the year.  My presents are wrapped with care and we are all anticipating the opening ritual that will be upon us soon.  

Weather Pixie

Today's fresh snow with BLUE SKY!

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. "-- Dorothy L. Sayers

OK, so maybe I'm not always having original thoughts, but these are original photos.  And, occasionally I do post an original thought.......for whatever that might be worth!

Skywatch Friday!

Except it's not Friday yet, oops!  I hit the return button by accident.  At any rate, I'll be ready for Skywatch when it IS Friday.  I spent days waiting for a colorful sunset and was rewarded with these beautiful shots of "our" mountains.  That's what I get for being a little antsy and impatient at heart about posting.

For more beautiful shots, check here on Friday!

Freedom

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."  --Soren Kierkegaard

What is freedom, really? 

I looked it up and it is defined as a lack of constraints, or as freedom from something, like fear, want, hunger, pain, depression and/or addiction.  Who wouldn't want that?  But how do we get there?

Hint:  it involves the loss of ego; hence the dizziness.  

It's a spiritual pursuit and it requires a lot of work to live in freedom from constraints.  There is also freedom to be joyous, freedom to be yourself, your truest Self, to just Be. That's another challenge.  Life seems to be full of them.

I think that the path to freedom is through spiritual practice.  What works for me won't necessarily work for someone else but we all want the same thing.

Arlo

"You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats."--Colonial American Proverb

"Cats are smarter than dogs.  You can't get eight cats to pulled a sled through snow."--Jeff Valdez

Abstraction

"I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract.  No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it."  --Stephen Wright

On such a gray day....

"Flowers are for our souls to enjoy."

--from the Sioux tribe

Skywatch Friday!

Clear blue sky to the southwest

Only ten minutes later the sun has lit up my world!

Sunday Stroll on the Flume Trail

How lucky can I be to live so close to such a beautiful trail?  

The landscape is spectacular. Every day, every season, it looks different.  Today was a late fall/early winter day.  The snow on the trail was like a soft cushion.  The temperature was in the low 40's which was quite pleasant for a day in December.  The sky was partly cloudy, sometimes a dull gray, sometimes a brilliant blue.  

Dogs are hikers too

The sun shines from the west in the afternoon on to the eastern rock formations.  Usually I walk this trail earlier in the day, then it's the reverse.

Snowflakes or dried flowers?

It was a little over three miles round trip

A bridge to somewhere

The grass dried like this, it's not the wind blowing it

Silhouette against the sky

Happy dog at the end of the hike

You can always find someone to blame....

Spud....

Skipper....

"Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog." --- Doug Larson

Skywatch Friday

St. Paul's church rooftop

Last night on the way home from work

Early this morning 

Check out other cool sky pictures from around the world at Sky Watch Friday.

There are new posts every Friday.  Submit your own!

Moon, Venus and Jupiter in the night sky

A rare moment in time and space occurred tonight.  Too bad I don't have a lens with more power, but it was worth the effort.