On Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain. I love the forest in winter when you can see through it a long ways and the lower sun leaves great shadows.
On an earlier hike I captured my skinny self.
Winter Shadows in the Woods
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Saturday’s Critters – Best of 2024
I’m on Instagram a lot and post at least once or twice daily about all sorts of things. I violate all the rules for growing your following and all that other stuff. I’m not trying to grow a following I just like posting photos and seeing what other people post. I use an app at the end of the year called “Top 9” and it shows what your top 9 photos were of the year. So this is the results for 2024
You can see my posts are pretty random and so is what people like of what I post. You can also see that I like post photos of animals. One of our cat Lizzie, and our pom, Kodi, some geese and my favorite is the squirrel getting miffed because we hadn’t refilled the bird feeder.
So if you are on instagram and we have connected yet, seek me out at @yogiab and lets follow each other. I’m already following with a bunch of blog friends.
Meantime, check out Saturday’s Critters where I am linking.
Skywatch Friday – This and That Edition
We try and walk our dog every day. It kind of smooths him out and reduces his anxiety. I captured this sky on such a walk. A photoblogger always has at least his phone him at all times in all places is my motto.
My other motto is try your front and back porches first for sky shot.
This one I actually walked from my front porch about a100 feet to the street. No need to drive all over the place if you do not want to do so.
In November I ventured up to the suburb of Collinsville for geocaching meet up. The host had a bunch of caches for us to find. I got stuck on this sculpture. Nothing to do with geocaching I tried all sorts of different angles.
So we found nine different geocaches of several different types at the park. It only took about an hour.
A group pic that I stole of facebook. That’s me with the black hat off to the right. Note the lady holding her “geodog” off to the right. Everything is geo with geocachers, geodogs, geocars, geowifes, geotents. Also nobody calls anybody else by their real name, it’s always their geocaching handle. So I’m yogiabb. The two other guys and the other lady have each found over 20,000 geocaches. I’ve been at it for twenty years and only have about 2300 or so. Amazing. The lady to the left of me said she only slowed down finding them once after getting bit on the hand by a copperhead. I’ve never been snakebit but I have been bitten by wasps, bees, hornets, chiggers, fire ants and ticks.
And this is another online jigsaw puzzle I finished on my ipad. A rustic western scene with a little bit of sky.
And that is a wrap for this week. I am linking with Skywatch Friday
Getting Started on Christmas
Recently we visited Rhema Bible Church in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow. They put on a great show of Christmas Lights ever year. They have lots of lights and almost infinite parking and although traffic is congested it’s doable. We like to go when we can park the car and walk around.
I loved the carolers in a Victorian vibe.
Santa’s Sleigh and the Reindeer. I don’t know where Santa is.
One of my favorite things is the walk around the pond. There is always great reflections. And the ducks and geese think they are part of the attraction.
At home, my wife has decorated but that will be a different post. Looking at how she decorated the bakers rack I guess you probably saw right away that she loves Snowmen. We are invaded by snowmen.
I participate in a nice social media thing called Postcrossing. To simplify it is where you send and receive postcards from all over the world. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve sent and received about 350 cards. I do about one a week. I’ve made some new instagram “friends” and even found a few geocachers out there. And it is free!! Except you know international postage is expensive and you have to buy the cards from wherever you buy cards. Check out postcrossing.com if you are interested. The above is a card I picked up in Santa Fe last summer showing Christmas in that town. I sent it to someone in Belgium.
And switching gears a little I am back to doing online jigsaw puzzles on my ipad. I had misplaced my ipad charger and ordered another and fired up the app. I love it. I have to tell you sensory wise, the cardboard back side of real life jigsaw puzzles is a No Go for me. Plus what do you do with the puzzle when you are done. What I really love is that once you place your last piece, the jigsaw lines disappear and you can save it as an image. Plus there are no lost pieces and it doesn’t take up your tables, and the pieces all oriented right.
That’s all for this week. I’m linking with My Corner of the World.
Shadows of Tulsa’s Woodward Park
I had an hour to kill before before picking up son from his work the other day so I ventured over to nearby Woodward Park to see what I could see. The sun was getting low, which is great if you love taking pictures!!
I have taken lots of images of the greenhouse over the years. I think it is a beautiful structure. You notice I got a shadow selfie here.
This is the nearby Carriage House of the Tulsa Garden Center. The Garden Center started out life back in the early 20th century as the mansion of an oilman. Back in the day, the female servants had spaces to sleep in the attic of the mansion. The male servants were quartered in the second floor of the Carriage House. No upstairs/downstairs hanky panky here!!
This is Carl Linnaeus and his shadow in the nearby Linnaeus Demonstration Gardens.
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday
Saturday’s Critters – 7 December 2024 Edition
Hey its getting to be Christmas. We pulled the tree out of the attic and stood it up and guess what? The lights still light up!! Outstanding. Plus, it’s my tradition that when Heather turns her head I put the star on the tree. It stays up there until she notices it.
This is our Pom Kodi. It looks like he is looking at the tree. Nope, he’s looking at the door to the utility room waiting for my wife come home. Kodi likes her lots more than he likes me. Notice the topper on the tree.
Our cat Lizzy likes Christmas trees as well. When she was younger she would climb up into it. She always waited until it was fully decorated. Kind of hard to perform a cat extraction with a fully decorated tree. I thought I had a photo of her in the tree but I couldn’t find it.
Our silly Pom saw us getting on our scale so he tried it also. He even put all four feet on it. He was too light to register a weight.
And here he is chilling out in his bed waiting for my wife to come home. He thinks that I am no fun.
Here is the tree at our gym. Complete with a stuffed lion. This morning somebody added a full size kangaroo. I forgot to a photo of it so you will just have to take my word for it.
We went on a dog walk our greenbelt spotted this great blue heron looking lost. He was about 30 feet from a little creek. He let us get pretty close and then he flew up and got on the peak of a house nearby. He looked pretty comical. I didn’t take a photo because I am leery of taking photos of people’s homes,
I was at Woodward Park yesterday evening and up walked this gaggle of geese. They reminded me of a gang, marauding through the park. Luckily, they ignored me.
And that is all that I have this week. Actually, I have more, but this is enough for this week. Check out Saturday’s Critters.
Skywatch Friday – Touring the New Gilcrease Museum
As described previously I got a chance to tour the new Gilcrease Museum last month. The building’s exterior is finished and most of the interior.
One thing I love about the building is that it has views of the outside. This is from the terrace looking north to the Osage Hills.
This is looking through another window east. You can see downtown Tulsa just to the right.
From the terrace looking southwest into the sun.
This area is going to be a cafe with outside seating on the terrace. I didn’t take any photos of the new galleries. No windows and plain gray walls. Not much to see there, yet.
On the terrace looking at the exterior walls. I was struck by the wavy design and asked the guide what that was about. She said she was told but did not understand it. She said it was “architectspeak.” Maybe so. I think it does add interest to the building.
They are still building this grand staircase which is going to be in the center of the building and go to all the floors.
I can’t wait to see it when it is done.
How much does all this cost? About $140 Million. Check out the private money donated. Tulsa has a lot of very generous families who are not afraid of donating money to the right cause. There is a lot of work to be done. They are designing the interior fixtures. The contractor will turn the building over in May 2025. The concrete and other materials used in construction needs to “off gas.” The vapors could be harmful to the collection, so the museum is not scheduled to open until November 2026. I can’t wait. Check out Gilcrease.org for more details. Check out their online collection. It’s fabulous.
I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.
Shadow Shot Sunday – Partying Like it’s 2014!
I’m going back to the old days for my shadows this week. Remember 2014? No covid right? Ah, them were the days. I noticed that I posted the same shot for Shadow Shot Sunday twice in the last three weeks. If anybody noticed they were nice enough not to say anything. You know how us old guys are. We are forgetful, and lazy. So I’m going back ten years.
And I was a lot skinnier back then as well! Not so much bingeing Netflix and snacks back then.
Tulsa had this old pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River. I loved it. A former railroad bridge that was deemed unsafe by the city and torn down and replaced by a fancy new bridge. I love the new bridge as well. At least I got photos of the old bridge. The new bridge is pretty sleek but its shadows are weak. You didn’t know I was a poet did you?
I love fire escape stair shadows. I don’t go to downtown much any longer so I dug this up out of archives.
If you love shadows go check out Shadow Shot Sunday.
Thanksgiving Weekend Critters
I fired up the trailcam in the backyard. It captured this handsome tuxedo cat sneaking up on something. We have all sorts of field mice and small birds hanging around the backyard.
It looks like he is looking at the overturned barrel planter.
Earlier in the day a squirrel was checking out the wheelbarrow.
Back the next day checking out the barrel.
We had another Coopers Hawk perched on our back fence right above the wheel barrow.
He stayed there quite a while and kept looking at the ground. I’m sure he was hungry.
Here’s our little Kodi dog, the Pomeranian sporting his Thanksgiving hairdo and tie. I swear he prances around after a new hairdo.
And here’s Lizzy with a Thanksgiving nap. She’s a championship napper. Nobody naps like a cat.
I hope everybody who celebrates Thanksgiving had a good one. Ours was a little quiet this year.
I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters.
Happy Thanksgiving Skywatch
Thanksgiving is here again. I hope that if you celebrate it that you can do so with family. I’ve been lucky I’ve never had Thanksgiving without family.
We’ve had big gatherings and we have had small ones. This year it is just us three along with the two critters. My brother is nearby so we’ll go visit him in his apartment.
We are buying are dinner ready made and heating it up. We’ve done the big all day cooking thing so with just three of us, this is the way to go.
Our two critters, Kodi and Lizzy. They are not really big fans of each other right now.
So if you celebrate, Have a Great Thanksgiving!!
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday