Friday's Post is Going to the Birds

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday to you. I hope you had a good week, and if you're like me, trying to find something to be  optimistic about after the election results.  (But sadly it's quite worrisome on so many levels.)

      For Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break this week I've got some birds to share. The first flock is from some photos I took back in mid-October when I made my last visit to my local botanical garden with some friends. We came across the garden's flock of guinea hens. I think they liked our company, because they followed us around for about twenty minutes. 

     All the time they were squawking and shuffling around our feet. I've read they are good for tick control because they eat them.  After awhile we turned off in a direction they obviously didn't want to go, and they left us. 

     Then the other morning I glanced out the back window and saw that there were 19 wild turkeys in the backyard.  This included 3 who were sitting in one of the trees.

     I get a few turkeys fairly regularly in the yard, but it's rare I get a flock this big.

     A couple were even brave enough to come up to the bird feeders. Sorry for the stripped shadows in the photos, but there was dog nose slime in the way 😦.  Of course at first Mr. Pete (who likes to sit in our big bay window and watch his yard)  had to bark. He didn't seem to bother the turkeys at all. However, when I got too close to the window they started to hurry off into the woods, so I stood back and let them come back into the yard.

The turkeys are probably worried with US Thanksgiving coming in a few weeks that  they better not let anyone get to close to them-grin 😏. (Even though turkey hunting season in NH is over except for archery.)

Boy that dog nose slime on the windows is pretty nasty, isn't it?

Have a great weekend and start to the new week ahead.

Spring Blooms

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has flown by, and in my area we've finally had some  summery feeling weather. I think we've finally turned the corner from early spring. 😏

The other day my local botanical garden opened for the season. We had our first summer like day so far this year, and there was barely a cloud in the sky, so I met a couple of friends and we went to check out the spring blooms. 

Let me start with some faces for Nicole's Friday Face Off.  I'll also be linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

These are just some of the many fun faces in the garden.

And here's 2 frogs. One is  definitely a statue, but we couldn't decide if the other one was alive or a statue.

I guess I will need a trip back to see if the frog-that-looks-alive is still sitting there.

And let me share a few other spring blooms and views with you.

The crab apple trees were gorgeous.

     It was a fantastic visit, well mostly. The black-flies have finally arrived en masse. They're on the later side this year, but they shouldn't be around too much longer I would think.  Still, our first summer like day, blue skies, and all these spring scenes made it hard to let the bugs ruin the day.

Have a great start to your weekend. 

Carnival

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. It's almost the weekend again, and I just realized that this is the last weekend of April. Eeks. 

   Today I have some more Greece photos and a page from my travel journal. Neither my friends nor I realized that we would be in Greece during  carnival weekend. It make sense when you think that Greek Orthodox Easter is May 5th, but since of the 3 of us who went, 2 of us were never associated with the Greek Orthodox Church, and my friend who is, isn't religious. It made a nice surprise and added to our travels.

    You'll see some faces  for  Nicole's Friday Face Off, and these also work for Gillena's Friday Face Off.

     I'll start with the page I made for me travel journal. The long confetti paper strings are pieces I actually picked up. I die cut the masks and the clowns (which I left white). You'll see why I added the clowns if scroll down just a bit. I also need to go back and write in the Greek word for carnival, which I just learned as I wrote this post.

This season of festivals right before Lent is called Apokries. The big celebrations occur on the weekend right before Clean Monday. I mentioned Clean Monday in an earlier post as one thing to do on that day is to fly kites. The fact that it was Apokries also explains why there were creepy clown faces all over the place. Clowns originated in Greece a long time ago. One article I read said that the first clowns appeared around 7 BCE in Sparta.

We missed any parades, but we were out on the town with a lot of other people enjoying the spring weather and the holiday decorations. This restaurant in Trikala was decorated for the holiday.

There was a lot of confetti after parades. 

And besides restaurants, stores and other buildings were decorated for the holiday.

As it was carnival,  you can't forget to have some masks.

     And while on Corfu on Clean Monday, we went out for a drive. We were headed north to explore some views of the Ionian Sea and also to maybe find a cute little town or 2 to check out. We should have known when we saw the clown we were riding into a festival.

That meant we were stuck in small town traffic.

Not once but twice.

     It was too bad we couldn't make it to the top of the island, but it still makes a good story. And trips are all about the stories, aren't they? I also think this makes a good reason to head back to Greece (and Corfu) one day. 😀

Have a great weekend ahead.

Remember Sasquatch?

 Happy Friday everyone.  It's almost the weekend once again.  They say we will have some rain at my house  tomorrow/Saturday. The hubby isn't happy because he has some outside chores he is trying to finish up, but I've been in the opposite mode, so now maybe I can do some inside things. For those of you who stop by fairly regularly, I still haven't gotten back to cleaning my giant pile that I posted the other day 😫, but my art table sounds like an even better place to be on a wet Saturday. 😀

Today I have some photos to share for Nicole's Friday Face Off  and Gillena's Friday Smiles.

You might remember back in early September I showed you my husband's first art project.  Here's a link back to that post (Friday Face Off) in case you're interested, but let me refresh this post by sharing a couple of photos again.

Since then Mr. Sasquatch has  been painted and  urethaned.

 Painting was easy, but I think my husband was a little intimidated when he went to paint the face.

After the basic face was painted there were several minor changes. A line added.  A color switch  for the mouth. I wanted to do some blending with a paper towel but I was reminded this wasn't really my project. 

He did a great job. Maybe he has a new hobby for when he retires.

Now Mr. Sasquatch is guarding my yard from any wildlife that might wander into it. (Well, he isn't scaring the deer though, so I don't think anything would be afraid of him either. Smile.)

Here's the view from up near the house.  He's a fun addition to garden decor. ❤😀👍

 I'm really curious to see how he looks next summer when everything is really green, and there's more leaves than there are now. And I bet he'll be a yeti when he's covered in snow this winter.

That's all for me. Have a great start to your weekend, and thanks for stopping by my blog.