Bowie on Springwatch

A British program, Springwatch, recently name checked 49 Bowie song titles in one television episode. The host, Chris Packham has been playing this game, unbeknownst to the other stars on the show, for several episodes now. On other shows, he mentions The Smiths and Manic Street Preachers song titles. He does this entirely ad lib, because the show is filmed live, so he has to have a good knowledge of the artist's catalog. He says Bowie is one of his favorite artists. Can you guess them all? See below the video for complete listing. Here is a link to the story.

 Chris' David Bowie references in order: 1. Changes 2. Sound and Vision 3. Cygnet Committee 4. Aladdin Sane 5. Watch That Man 6. Scary Monsters 7. Fantastic Voyage 8. Kooks 9. Be My Wife 10. The Prettiest Star 11. Subterraneans 12. Sweet Thing 13. Starman 14. Speed of Life 15. Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed 16. Future Legend 17. Fame 18. What in the World 19. Station to Station 20. Wild is the Wind 21. Heroes 22. Golden Years 23. An Occasional Dream 24. All the Young Dudes 25. Ziggy Stardust 26. The Width of a Circle 27. Young Americans 28. The Jean Genie 29. Rebel, Rebel 30. Moss Garden 31. Fashion 32. Up the Hill Backwards 33. Big Brother 34. Blackout 35. Drive in Saturday 36. Oh! You Pretty Things 37. After All 38. Somebody up there Likes me 39. Hang on to Yourself 40. It's No Game 41. Boys Keep Swinging 42. Life on Mars 43. Repetition 44. The Man Who Sold the World 45. 8 Line Poem 46. Space Oddity 47. Across the Universe 48. Cracked Actor 49. Diamond Dogs

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I spy a headless pigeon!!?!

With a little help from friends

A blogger friend, MiKael, of Rising Rainbow Arabians, is applying for grant money to help her ranch get through some health and economic hard times. Please vote for her ranch here.

Sunday Stills ( 6-24-12 Browns)

This week's Sunday Stills photo challenge is the color brown. I decided to go with a rather unusual stone wall I saw in Santa Fe.

And here's my alpaca herd, bedded down for the night. Louise is bay black, the baby, Sophie Rose is a shade redder than Louise and Thelma is a reddish brown.

And this one is for Ed, a brown horse, Yalla!

For more Sunday Stills, please visit here.

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Sunday Stills (6-17-12 Clouds)

Today's photo challenge is clouds. Ahhh, one of my favorite pastimes is looking at cloud formations, one of God's miracles.

One day, I watched in fascination as this multi-layered cloud

reformed into a UFO.

On this morning, the clouds completely covered the mountains with a white froth.

This particular morning, there were layers and layers of horizontal clouds

or do you prefer vertical layers?

How about an extraterrestrial handprint?

Add a little sunset and you get stunning shades of pinks

and oranges, because, after all, you can't have a spectacular sunset without clouds, can you?

Gosh, I could go on and on, but I'll just let others share their photos instead. Visit here for more Sunday Stills.

Yalla! is three!

Yalla! turned three years old yesterday, but I had to work, and today, I am feeling sicker than anything, spilling out at all ends, so it's been complete bed rest, until now.

Wednesday night, I went out to see the horses after dark and brought Yalla! into the barn where I tied her up and brushed her down, including her loooong tail. When she relaxes it down, it almost touches the ground.

This is a difficult time of year for grooming because the air is so static. I often feel little buzzes when I brush the horses' coats. I like to use a grooming solution or water on my brushes cut the electricity. And then I love the shiny look and feel afterwards!

I can see that she needs to be worked more. She's nervous and restless. I admit that I am extra wary of her hind end because she has a history of kicking out at people, horses, dogs, or whatever. I am happy to report that she never threatened me, but any one with a little horse sense will always be wary rather than not.

I love the color of her coat, a deep dark chocolate brown, more like black with a hint of brown on top. Every once in a while I discover a white hair in her mane or tail and I almost panic that she is still going to gray out, but black Arabians often have some white hairs in their manes and tails. The only brown she has is in her ears and flanks. Unfortunately, she often photographs browner than she really is. Her coat is so silky soft and her muzzle is velvety. She loves to nuzzle me but I am also leery of that end because I don't want her to randomly take a bite of me.

I took some pictures of her but I got a lot of dust circles in the photos. Here are the better ones.

This is a silly one.

Happy Birthday, Yalla!

Red like Jungle Burning Bright

New Mexico and Colorado forests are burning!

• The High Park Fire near Ft. Collins has killed one lady and destroyed over 100 structures and 43,000 acres.
• Little Bear Fire in south central New Mexico, outside of Ruidoso, has destroyed 37,000 acres and 224 homes and 10 structures. This is the area where Smokey the Bear was found years ago.
• And finally, the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire where 278,000 acres have burned in the Gila Wilderness Area in southwestern New Mexico. This is the largest forest fire in New Mexico state history.

These fires are only about 30% contained. Thousands of brave men and women are working at the fire sites. Forest Fires often create their own weather and rough terrain makes access to the fires difficult. Although they say fires are good for the forests, these fires are bad for the atmosphere.

We can see the smoke in the air, hazy gray skies intermixed with our typical blue skies. Allergies and respiratory issues are rampant. I cough and cough all day long. I can only imagine what it's like down on the fire lines with the intense heat and dense smoke. Let's hope and pray they can get these fires under control soon.

On the flip side, sometimes, we get to see an awesome red sun and moon. Here is the moon one night.

Red like Jungle Burning Bright - artist: David Bowie, albm: Cat People (Putting out Fire)

Sunday Stills (6-10-12 Numbers)

This week's challenge is to photograph numbers. I drive historic highway Route 66 daily.
 

Here are our cluster mailboxes. 

I think the tree jumped in the way when I snapped this photo. I wanted to show you the cool, giant !25 sign for the I-25 Shopping area. 

This is certainly an easy number to remember. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have pursued something with my injury last year when Scout was scared by the neighbors' loose dogs and reared over backwards, breaking my ankle. I'm still paying off the surgery and doctors. After all, it happened while I was riding on a gravel neighborhood road. Oh well, I'm not the suing kind. 

For more Sunday Stills, please visit here.

We bought da wrong horse!

This is a great video from an insurance company!

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I just love this sign (front and back) at the Coyote Crossing convenience store in the town of Gallinas, New Mexico.

Rule Britannia!

In David Bowie's song, Life on Mars? he sings, "Rule Britannia is out of bounds, to my mother, my dog, and clowns".

This year marks Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, 60 years as the Queen of England. Recently, someone has created a graffiti style tribute complete with 'Aladdin Sane' stripes on a wall in England. See here for more details.


It is believed to be the work of the famous graffiti artist, Banksy, who had recently stenciled this picture (below) on another wall in London, incorporating real Union Jack bunting, to protest sweatshop conditions preparing for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations:


Regardless of who drew the Queen/Aladdin Sane, I love it! Long live the Queen! And Aladdin Sane (David Bowie) too!

Sunday Stills (6-2-12 Blues)

This week's Sunday Stills challenge was to show photos of the color blue. Here are my choices:

A peacock's head and neck is such a bright blue. I just love the crazy feathers on his head.

The "eyes" of a peacock are a special shade of blue.

Water always reflects the most refreshing shades of blue.

Here is my mom's dog, Tobey, looking incredibly cute under a blue blanket.

Here are some blue, blue skies behind a tall, almost leafless tree.

 How about some blue clouds and blue mountains on a cloudy evening in the ranch lands of southwestern New Mexico?

And lastly, my Simba, from a few years ago. I always loved this picture of him with his blue eyes enhanced by the blue wall.

For more Sunday Stills, please visit here.

RIP Terra

I've known for a long time that my dear little Terra cat has been declining in health. Age will do that. After all, she was 17 years old. Last year, I lost her brother Simba to kidney failure. Thursday night, I looked around the house for her, thinking it strange that she hadn't come over to sit with me and I found her laying in her litter box.

That's just not normal. During the night, I heard her throw up several times and, in the morning, she was sitting in the bathtub, erect and still as an Egyptian cat. Two hours later, she was still sitting in the same position. She hadn't eaten any of her canned or dry cat food since Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I knew she was failing.

I dreaded taking her to the vet. And I didn't want to take her alone.

In recent years, I've taken Gunnar, Daisy, and Simba to the vet to be put down, all by myself. I lost my sweet little Buddha dog to the coyotes last year when I let him out the door for a pee and he took off with Sandy. I could hear him yipe but I couldn't get to him in time. And now, Terra.

I made an appointment with the vet for the afternoon and went to work. I tried to work but it was so hard concentrating. When I got home, I immediately looked for Terra. She wasn't in the litter box or the bathtub. She was curled up in the laundry basket, so sweet, but I could tell that she wasn't any better. I picked her up and off we went.

As soon as we stepped out of the house, she began wailing. I was tempted to just go back to the house and leave her to die in her own way, but we were leaving for the weekend and I didn't want her to curl up in some corner of the garage where we wouldn't be able to find her. My son drove and my mom sat next to him in the front, while I sat on the back seat cuddling my precious cargo, who only let out an occasional meow.

Recently, she had begun balding. She had a big "hot" spot on her chest and tufts of hair flew around the house constantly. I wanted to take her to the vet to see if there was any kind of medicine I could give her for her hormone imbalance but I thought that it was probably part of the kidney failure. She had been making very large pee spots in her litter box in the last several months. I knew the vet would advise me to let her "go", so I waited until there was no quality of life left.

Earlier this week, Terra had caught a mouse in the garage. She would lay her prize out by the door so that we would see it and praise her. Unlike her brother, who often ate his catch and just left "parts", she always left the entire body for us. A few weeks ago, she caught two in one day.

Whenever I sat down, she was in my lap. She could sit for hours as she watched me type on the computer or snooze while I watched my TV movies. She especially loved watching Youtube videos with me. At night, she curled up next to me, in my bed. This past winter, she would often go under the covers and I would wake up from whiskers ticking my face. The tips of her ears were always so cold!

The vet weighed her and evaluated her condition. Alarmingly, her weight was just six pounds, three ounces! I remember when she weighed eleven pounds. He told me what I expected to hear, that it was time to let her go. We took her to the back room and he laid down a big, soft towel. He injected her with a sedative and left me with her so I could say good-bye. My son didn't want to stay with us so he went up front to wait with my mom. She was so still already that it was hard to know when the sedative took effect. Her breathing was slight and her eyes stayed open, unfocused. I whispered to her, calling her name, hoping she could hear me, as she drifted off to sleep.

M son came back into the room and stroked her for a while. Then the vet came in and suggested that it was time. My son said that she was strong, holding on, but the doctor said, "no, this was only a sedative. She hadn't been given the "shot" yet".

We left her laying on the towel, barely breathing, to go back to the waiting room. I settled the bill and just a few minutes later the doctor handed my son a cardboard box. We took her home and buried her in the area where all the rest of our previous pets have been laid to rest. We threw a bunch of pine cones into the grave, hoping that one day, a tree would grow.

My sweet little Terra, rest in peace.

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