The dog ate my book report, but I do have show & tell:
Over the weekend, Polly brought a visitor to the house, Bubba, a blue & gold/scarlet macaw mix she was babysitting. Like our old blue & gold macaw Buckwheat, Bubba wanted to be where the people were, and seemed particularly interested in anything we did in the kitchen. Naturally, the dogs were very interested in him, especially when he was on the other side of the sewing room doors … you know, up to that moment I didn’t realize dachshunds knew how to point!
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While I was at the Pima Air & Space Museum yesterday I realized I’d missed a few helicopters, so I took some photos to supplement my previous rotorhead photoblog posts (which are here and here).
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Around the home drome pretty things are either blooming or coming into bloom, so I took some photos this morning. The barrel cactus flowers aren’t quite there, possibly because the cactus sits in the shade of a palo verde tree, but they’re getting ready. For the first few years we lived here I was jealous of neighbors who had saguaros on their lots, and then one day we hired some guys to clear out dead brush and there was ours, previously hidden under a mesquite tree. The pretty red and yellow flowers are on our backyard bird of paradise plants.
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I almost forgot, there are some other air museum odds & ends to add to the collection. Along with the SR-71, I’m including a photo of its starter unit (powered by two 300 hp automotive V-8s) and one of the SR’s 34,000 pound thrust J58 engines. Between the Cougar and the Blue Angels Hornet is an old aircraft tug. I don’t know how long it’s been on display, but the kids who love to “drive” it finally managed, about two weeks ago, to pull its steering wheel off! In the bottom row I included a shot of an F-105 to show what years of desert sun will do to paint, a shot of our new wash rack (it took three years to get the necessary federal, state, and county permits to build it, but we finally did and now we can wash our airplanes), and an old Navy trainer with a somewhat racist name … they say it was so named because they were all originally painted yellow, which once was the custom for military training aircraft, but c’mon, who are they kidding?
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FYI, I keep several photosets on Flickr, and the photos included here today are contained in these galleries:
You’re more than welcome to go exploring!