Out of Town Hijinx

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Recently we went on a little jaunt to Bentonville, Arkansas. Home of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and a very nice urban scene going on. Bentonville is also the headquarters of Walmart and the town is growing quickly. They have lots of restaurants and other places to entertain oneself.

Redbud Tree on the city’s trails

My partner in crime, Heather.

There are tons of walking paths all over town. We stayed close to the town center so we could just park our car and walk where we needed to go.

They not only have trails they have art integrated into nature with the trails.

Very nicely maintained and landscaped.

Lots of wildflowers.

We found a very nice Italian restaurant. Great food and wonderful service. The staff probably knew we were from Oklahoma when we pulled out phones to take photos of our deserts.

And here was mine. Two scoops of ice cream and one of raspberry sorbet. Wow, it was great.

And then we walked around for a bit looking for a place to have a drink. We found a place overlooking the square.

Another shot of Heather.

I had a gimlet, I think Heather had a glass of wine. It was wonderful to find a place for a drink and then walk to our airbnb a short distance away instead of parking.

The next day we got up, had breakfast and headed to the Crystal Bridges Museum. We viewed hundreds of works of art. All of them great. Here are a few that really caught my attention.

This work of art is Robe named “Eldest Daughter” by Addie Roanhorse. It was made in 2025 using traditional Osage Ribbon Cutting techniques.

The Good Shepherd

“The Good Shepherd” by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1917. It caught my eye because we are close to Easter.

“Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn” by Thomas Moran, ca 1862. Talk about a great Skywatch Friday painting. I love Moran’s stuff.

The Song by William Merritt Chase

“The Song” by William Merritt Chase, in 1907. I’ve noticed this painting on several previous visit and it really struck me this time. I always thought it was a lady with a headache. But no, she’s listening to a piano played by another woman obscured by the column. Back then you didn’t have XM Radio or iTunes so if you wanted to listen to music, somebody had to play it for you. So the woman is listening hard to the music and is really into it.

So we had a good time. We got to spend a lot of time together and see some great art.

I don’t know when we are going home. Could be a while.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Daffodils at Tulsa’s Woodward Park and Teaching Garden

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This is my second post about the Daffodils at Wooward Park. The first time the flowers were kind of sparse. This second time they were a lot more abundant and filled in looking.

I never get tired of seeing the Daffodils. They are the first sign of spring and seem like they are up sooner than what they should be.

Most of the time they are hard to photograph because the wind is blowing too hard and they end up fuzzy looking. Today though the day was calm.

Used to be people would pick them and take them home, or often just pick them and then leave them.

Or sometimes women would show up with a selfie stick and all dressed up. They would brush their hair and take selfies. Hey, fine with me, they were not picking them. I have never seen guys do that though. Maybe I should except I would have to skip the step of brushing my hair since I don’t have much. I’ll take the matter under advisement for next year.

I liked this group of three, with one hidden

And this group of four with one hidden.

This is a small grouping at the Teaching Garden

Some daffodils along with a Redbud Tree: Oklahoma’s State Tree.

And some lonely tulips to finish off with.

These daffodils are long gone. I’m a little late posting this.

I am linking this with “Through My Lens”

A Shadowy Trip to Bentonville

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Heather and I recently went on an overnight trip to nearby Bentonville, Arkansas to spend some time together. We had a fun time.

Walking around town we marveled at how slender we were.

Couldn’t pass this shot up.

In a ravine next to the Crystal Bridges Museum is this installation of Dale Chihuly Glass.

I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturday’s Critters – New Bird Feeder

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I loved my old bird feeder but it finally gave up on my a week or so ago. It’s weakness was that it had a separate solar collector from the feeder. The squirrels like to chew through the power cable between the two and birds liked to perch on it. I spliced the wires several times and took measures to protect it but it wasn’t enough. So I got a new model with an integrated solar collector on the roof of it. No exposed wire.

A female cardinal. The camera is a big hit. I get over 300 birds a day visiting it. I limit the food because I cannot feed them all.

A male cardinal.

A crow come to call and gave the camera the evil eye.

Lots and lots of mourning doves. They tend to eat a lot.

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I rigged up my trail cam to keep an eye on the bird cam.

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Lots of birds look right at the camera.

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And an old guy with a funny hat mowing the weeds in the back yard.

And a 24 second short video compilation of some of the bird feeder videos. At the end there is a few second segment of a black swan chasing geese off the neighborhood pond. Special note, it is not 3026!

I am linking today with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters.

Skywatch Friday – Geocaching in Tulsa

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Last week one day I started with a hike with a friend of mine on the Mooser Creek Greenway. A three mile double loop where we heard a ton of birds and saw no other people.

I went home, got cleaned up, and headed out to Tulsa County’s Chandler Park in far northwest Tulsa for a meeting with an environmental non-profit that I volunteer for. After the meeting I checked my phone for nearby geocaches and sure enough there was one about 60 feet away. It actually was not where the cache was but there is some information on the sculpture one needs to determine the coordinates. Which I did.

There was another cache nearby where there are a lot of cliffs. I’ve looked for it off and on over the years because I don’t want to be climbing rocks or trees. But I decided to take a different tack on finding it and so I went down to the Lost City Trail.

The lost city trail winds in and out of the cliffs and is just plain beautiful. A scene or two in the movie “Flowers of the Killer Moon” were shot in areas of the trail.

There are steep cliffs and overhangs and all sorts of interesting stuff.

I find doing the shots over my shoulder seem to show the height of the cliffs better than straight on shots. Maybe its the sense of scale works better.

The clue for the cache is that it is in a hole. You know how many holes are in that cliff face? A bunch!! None of which I want to stick my hand into without knowing that is there. I took photos of various holes, none of which yielded anything. So I continue in not finding this cache.

I also tried my hand a few caches along Route 66 as it goes through Tulsa. One of which was associated with this sculpture.

And another one associated with this sculpture right across the street from the Eagle sculpture. Route 66 for some reason has all sorts of various

Tulsa's First Oil Well Historic Marker

And further east along US 66 there is another geocache associated with this plaque commemorating the first oil well drilled in Tulsa County. Tulsa used to be center of the oil industry in the United States and called themselves, “The Oil Capital of the World.”

So I had a pretty good time on a great day in some bright sunshine under clear skies.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Check the Geocaching.Com website to get information about it.

Saturday’s Lego Critters and Shadows at Tulsa Botanic Garden

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Saturday afternoon the family loaded up and drove to the Tulsa Botanic Gardens. The tulips are blooming plus they have a special exhibit of Lego Creatures by Sean Kinney we wanted to see. The tulips were great, maybe just a tad past prime, and enjoyed the Lego critters.

First up, a fox, including a tree shadow.

A gigantic butterfly

Little Lego Bunnies

And origami bunnies in the childrens’ area.

A snail on a mushroom

A frog on a lilly pad.

And a bird feeder with cardinals and a squirrel.

They also had a lawnmower and a rototiller and other things. Below is a video of all the lego creations we saw. It’s only a tad over a minute long.

I am linking with Saturday’s Critters and Shadow Shot Sunday

Skywatch Friday – Skies of Oklahoma

Here’s a sunset from the front yard.

And a reverse sunset (looking east) from the backyad.

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A reflection of the sky at Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. I think I used the Becasso filter on this.

And a pond at the Turkey Mountain Wilderness Area. Another Becasso filter.

And a jigsaw puzzle I recently completed. It took me a while to figure it out.

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And from ten years ago. I saw this threatening sky on an after work run on Turkey Mountain. Luckily this was to the east so I wasn’t threatened. I would hate to be on the other side of those clouds.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Shadows at the Teaching Garden

I checked out the Teaching Garden at Woodward Park the other day and found some shadows including this table and chairs.

And this deck with several different shadow patterns.

And these daffodils in the shade.

This is a legacy photo of Carl Linnaeus. The scientist from the 1700’s who invented our modern system of taxonomy for organisms. He was also the original namesake of the Teaching Garden. I googled the matter to find out why his name removed from the name of the facility and I found this document from the Tulsa Garden Center explaining the matter. It reads, in part:

“In his tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758), Linnaeus began using this system to identify mammals, and more specifically, humans.  Dubbed Homo sapiens, Linnaeus separated humans into categories where he described each “type” of human by physical characteristics, as well as behavioral and personality characteristics – something he had not done for other species.

By being published as science, Linnaeus’s descriptions of these different groups was used as a way for society to justify slavery, ethnic cleansing, and colonization – all taking place during this time – through scientific racism, a “scientific tradition in [which] biology is used not only to prove the existence of race, but also, to maintain existing social hierarchies” (Revolution and Ideology). These ideas have repeatedly been disproven and universally rejected by the modern scientific community, but their impact can still be felt today.

It goes on to say that they left the sculpture in place as an educational tool and a reminder of our past. It also has a statement from the artist, Rosalind Cook, who supports the action that the Garden Center took to change the name. They provide an academic summary of the matter and links to a bunch of resources. I support their action as well. I feel bad because they took this action in March of 2022 and I had no clue. Oh well, now I know.

I am linking this with Shadow Shot Sunday

Dumb Bunny Mommas

Several days ago, Heather, my wife noticed that there were baby bunnies stashed in one of her unused pots. She checked on them a couple times and then I rigged up my trail cam to overlook the pot.

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When I check the camera the next day, sure enough, a moma rabbit showed up at about 6:30 am. Heather had read that the mommas check and feed their kits right before dawn.

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So the mom got up there and hopped around a little bit. I’m not showing ever pic. The one above is the next to last one in the sequence.

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And then there is about a ten minute time where mom is checking and feeding her babies.

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When I pulled the chip and saw what was happening, Heather went out and checked and the kits are still alive. She checked on them yesterday and this afternoon. They are still alive and growing. So that is kind of cool but we are concerned about their future. Which the future of rabbits is not a very happy subject under the best of circumstances.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters.

Oklahoma Spring Skies

Spring in Oklahoma is not for the faint of heart. In the Tulsa area we had eight tornadoes recently. Lots of damage but no fatalities at least.

The skies of spring are often twisting and turning and giving off that strange green glow that signifies that nothing good is in store.

It makes for interesting photo opportunities though.

Plus the wind blows harder. The wind always blows in Oklahoma but the spring winds are fearsome. Makes for hard bicycle riding when you are going against them. I’ve learned not to fight going into wind. I just gear down and go slower. It’s not a contest. When I turn around and go with the wind I fly with the wind.

Linking with Skywatch Friday