FUTURE CROP

I showed you our lemon tree before on this blog.  Here's the new crop.

I wonder what a green lemon would taste like.  Never fear, I'm going to leave that discovery to my imagination.

Right next to the lemon tree, an orange tree is bearing fruit.

I'm not sure when the fruit will ripen although that one orange on the right appears to be starting to change color.  I can wait.

SUMMER BLOOMS

Bougainvillea

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Who is that invader in my yard?

Can't see him, you say?  Look closer

Freezing in position does NOT make you invisible, bunny.  Within seconds of this he took off and went scampering away, faster than light.  

He's one of many who live in this golf course community.  Within a few weeks he will have tripled in size, mainly in his ears and rear legs and he won't be nearly as cute as this.

STREET LAMP AND CLOUDY SKIES

Judy's post today gave me an idea for my blog today.  She's part of an international combine of bloggers who post a daily picture from each of their areas.  From time to time they are given a subject suggestion for the day.  Today it was street lamps.

Since there is such a lamp directly in front of my residence, I decided to follow along and take a photograph of it.  But when I went out, I noticed the monsoon-cloudy-skies so I got two subjects for the price of one.  And two photographs.

The clouds in that second photograph really seem to be telegraphing some rain showers, don't they?  (He said with his fingers firmly crossed!)

CHECKING THE STATS

This post, I frankly admit, was prompted by this post today by The Chubby Chatterbox.  Go ahead, click the link, read his post, then come back for the rest of mine.

I discovered that I began this blogging adventure on Halloween in 2008 with this post.  Fortunately that scary pirate did NOT succeed in becoming president.

This, I learned by checking my stats, is my 1,418th blog post.  But there were more, now lost to history.  I had blogged before, grew disenchanted and dumped all I had written.  They may be recoverable somewhere but right now I don't have the patience to search for them.  I find it amazing that I have written 1,417 posts prior to this.  What on earth can a person find to babble on about that much?  Of course, some posts contain only a video or a cartoon but most of them have some words flowing like a muddy river from my brain and fingertips.

As for this mutation of my blog, I discovered today that it has had 81,646 page views.  More than 50,000 of them came from readers in the United States.  Next was Germany followed by Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, Australia and the Ukraine. Since I write only sparingly (a few words at a time) in other languages I must assume that those readers are English speakers.  (Given, of course, the old saw about the U.S. and the U.K. being two countries separated by a common language.)

Well, now, what interests these people, I wondered.  I learned that my most popular post was one called simply "LBJ", about the late President Lyndon Johnson, in June of last year.  It was a fairly short post with nothing really pithy in it but to date it has had 325 page views.  The second-most popular was titled "JACKIE", and I can suspect that many of the viewers of it may have been drawn thinking it was about Jacqueline Kennedy, given my occasional penchant for political punditry.  (The three P's.)  But in fact it was about Jackie Robinson and was not political at all.

So perhaps some people come by mistake.  Some stay, some leave never to return.  While I was researching this post I noticed several names in the comments section that have disappeared.  I've lost track of many of them. One, the legendary Granny J, passed from our midst in May of 2010, leaving a great hole in this world of blogdom, or bloggery, or whatever.

Of so many others I guess their disappearances are just the way of the Internet.  Some have gone on to other universes . . Twitter, Facebook, et al.  Somehow I miss them all.

A STORY ABOUT FORTITUDE

The BRD is making a change in her life.  For 30-some years she has been making dental crowns of porcelain and gold and palladium.  Like her mother she has an artist's talent and designing new "mouthworks" for dentists was a perfect career for her.  But she has grown tired of the work and the industry has changed and she was ready for the second stage of her working life.

Her Beau Jack is a realtor of some 40 years standing and he convinced her to study for and test for her real estate license.  Not to sell homes, though that is something she could do, but to handle the endless paperwork that other realtors hate to do.  After some persuasion, she agreed to give it a try.

So she signed up for a series of classes that were conducted over 90 hours of long and intensive three-day weekends for several weeks.  After the first day she was despairing a bit.  The room was too small for all the students, the breaks were minimal and short, the bathrooms were too few and didn't always work.  But she continued on.  At the end of the grueling schedule came a test.  She aced it.

But that was only the beginning.  Now she had to take the state sanctioned tests to gain her license.  They are divided into one test for national rules and regulations and one for the Arizona state equivalent.  She studied and studied the massive amounts of paper she had already studied during the course.

Finally came the day for the tests.  She felt confident and, indeed, passed the national test with flying colors.  But not the state exam.  Her tester told her he had never had someone come as close without passing.  He said she was one percent below passing.  ONE PERCENT!

She came to our house that night.  (The test was conducted in Phoenix.) While disappointed, she was still confident.  She studied some more that night and again the next morning.  Then she went off confidently to take the state exam again.

When the phone call came, she told us she had failed once again, missing one more question than she had the first time.

But she said she would come back in two days, after more study, and try again.

This time Beau Jack came with her.  But he was not allowed to stay in the classroom or even the building.  He had to wait outside in a courtyard while she took the test.

Some time later, the BRD came out with a disappointed face.  She told Beau Jack "That's it.  I'm through.  I am never going to take that damned test again."

Beau Jack was consoling and saying "Now, now, don't say that.  You'll just have to study harder and put your mind in the right place.  You'll pass it next time."

She responded, "No, I'm never going to do that again."  Then she grinned and shouted at him "BECAUSE I PASSED IT!"

I would imagine there was laughter, a hug and probably a kiss and then Beau Jack said "wait a minute."  He went to the back of his car and came back with a chilled bottle of champagne and a stuffed teddy bear wearing a realtor's jacket.

She said "What would you have done with this if I hadn't passed?"

Beau Jack said "Hell, I've been carrying it around with me for three weeks!"

More laughter, probably more hugs and kisses, and on to a celebratory dinner before heading up the hill to home.

Congratulations, girl.  A job well done.

BLUE SKY, WHITE CLOUDS, WHAT MORE D'YA WANT?

The sky over Phoenix.  This afternoon.  Late.