I love catching water in motion. In this case, this was water flowing into my pool from volcanic hot springs.

  I’m a terrible judge of distance, but the palm trees being trimmed in this picture are at least 80 feet high. When I moved into my house, I could touch the top of them with my hand.  Two men were up in the trees trimming them.  Two more were on the ground hauling the branches away. The captured motion is the palm frond falling.
These birds are a small part of the freeding frenzy that accompanied a visit by millions of sardines to the waters of La Manzanilla Beach.  I have wonderful videos of more of the gulls, pelicans and frigate birds feeding which I will try to post later.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/motion/

Our Greeters in Mazatlan–just outside our hotel room.

How could they resist those skies?

Our room in San Carlos. Fancy concrete headboards built into the wall included reading lamps.

I loved this backdrop to the town.

View from our second floor patio of pool and ocean across the street.

I fell off my bar stool trying to get this picture. The Mexican lady at the next table looked at me with some disgust. I’m sure she thought I must be a drunk and disorderly Gringo. In reality, I had barely tasted my pina colada and was merely clumsy. (I  don’t know why the younger musician held his guitar up so high.  Perhaps he was accustomed to a higher tide.)

Blue would like me to inform you that contrary to yesterday’s post, she is not a wino! She just enjoys a glass of wine before bed. Tonight we are in Peoria, Arizona at my sister Patti’s house and she and Jim poured a very fine vintage, so all was made up for in the end.

  I never did figure out what was sticking out of this gull’s head.  It looked like a toothpick or porcupine quill that had grown into his skull.  He didn’t seem to be in any duress and he spent some time surveying our totopos from close proximity.  We didn’t throw him one because when we had done so for another gull earlier, within seconds, 20 or more gulls were swooping in for their portions.  We hadn’t realized we were the objects of such close attention, and I’m sure the waiters, pictured above, must not have appreciated it, but they were too gracious to comment.  We showed appreciation by throwing no further chips, although a man next to us did.  I got a wonderful shot of him eye-to-eye with a gull, but then realized my camera was on movie setting so will perhaps publish it at a later date. Tomorrow, on to Ontario, California to see Jeff and Debbie–my much-appreciated but not often seen stepson and his wife.

Cows I Have Known If you’ve read my book, you know the significance of these cows.  Right after my husband died, I started finding hearts everywhere, including on the the hides of the cows I passed on morning walks.  These are three of the pictures I could find, along with a sign I loved that was on the road near Area 51 in Utah!  They have campier cows there than elsewhere, for sure.  I loved this picture so much that I made a retablo of it.  Okay.  Time to hit the road again!  See you tomorrow… https://sundaystills.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/sunday-stills-the-next-challenge-cows-2/

Since I’m starting out on my driving journey northwards to the U.S. today, I won’t have time to write my daily post, so I’m republishing my April 20 post from 2013.  I think the vast majority of my followers were not followers then, so hopefully not many of you will have seen this before.  It was my post to the NaPoWriMo prompt.

Prompt: Today we were challenged to write a poem that uses at least five of the following words. In my own rodomontadian fashion, I decided to use all of them. I italicized the words as they were used in the poem so you can check up on me! Word List: owl generator abscond upwind squander clove miraculous dunderhead cyclops willowy mercurial seaweed gutter non-pareil artillery salt curl ego rodomontade elusive twice ghost cheese cowbird truffle svelte quahog bilious

Circadian Verse Non-pareil

Enough, I say! It’s bad enough when poetry stoops to puns or limericks, but now we’re asked to write of guns???? NaPoWriMo! Just say, “No!” I, myself, would journey over dale and hillery to avoid the usage of artillery! There is enough of it in every news report with vivid details: magnum, caliber or loudness of report.

It am so sick of it!!! Guns don’t fit in poetry and that is why I choose to write about fine dining under a cowbird sky on truffles svelte and mercurial with just a ghost of cheese upon my plate—a dish that’s sure to please. No salt, no clove, no quahog purloined from its oceanic lair should be added to this perfect dish. What dunderhead would dare?

Overhead, an owl drops like a comet to abscond with some small creature scooped up from the pond. He flies away, upwind, then curls his flight to fly back over and in one miraculous swoop, his talons comb the clover in search of prey that is elusive and wisely, seconds later, is reclusive.

Twice more, we see our willowy feathered friend descend while our teeth keep chewing and our elbows bend to stuff yet one more morsel into bodies slightly bilious, turning a deaf ear to talk now supercilious. Our whole gluttonous, cyclopean brood (one eye on the owl, the other on our food) is loath one morsel of this groaning board to squander on predator now circling over us, then over yonder. His wings held straight—no bend or flutter, he soars down low and eyes the gutter.

The seaweed now he surveys—that generator of frogs and tadpoles and perhaps a gator. But, finding nothing this hungry day, he dips one wing and flies away.

And so must I desert my task circadian, Lest ego turns me rodomontadian.

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