Happy New Year!

We look forward to hearing from you in the New Year!  Let us know how you are doing! All the best in the New Year and always. Marjorie and John

Merry Christmas!

Gertie

Pam Keller, Debby Peckham, Ed Carwithen, Ken Peckham,  Libby Klatt

We helped Gertie celebrate her 99 birthday yesterday. The Wind Song Quintet (local talent) gave a lovely Christmas celebration on Saturday and we'll have a Christmas picnic tomorrow!  Snow storm coming in the afternoon.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Designer Detective Now Available

Designer Detective is at last available for e-readers on Amazon, ibookstore, and Kobobooks. Barnes and Noble is slower and I don't know when it will be up on their site.

Fiona Marlowe, interior designer to the rich and powerful in Washington DC, discovers her wealthy old client dead in his library and helps his Wild West relatives from southeast Oregon solve the mystery of his demise.

If you read it, please review it on one of these sites. I'd love to know what you think, and I welcome honest reviews. 

Horses come home, owls watch

 Today John brought the horses home to our pasture after being across Palomino Lane in the neighbor's pasture for a few months (with their permission, of course). He puts a lead on Yoda, the old girl, and Harriet and Baby Blitzen follow. It works. Gracias a Dios. It will be easier to feed and water them with the temperatures dropping.

Hooter (female)

 Hooter and Hootie watched from their respective berths in the elm and Russian olive trees. Some days now they don't come. Some days only Hootie comes. Today they both came to roost for the day. Will there be baby owls in February?  Stay tuned.

Hootie (male)

Owl scat. They swallow their prey whole then pass the skeletons and fur.

The end of the rainbow

In between rainstorms last week the sun peaked through and a double rainbow formed and seemed to end right on top our neighbor's house. She's looking for the pot of gold.

Happy Thanksgiving!

How can you gaze upon these noble beasts and still eat them?! They look a little sad, don't they? Kudos to all you vegetarians and vegans. The turkeys thank you. Happy day!

Not the owls again

Okay, okay, I'm getting a little obsessed, I know, with the owls but I had to take this photo of Hootie sitting in a 20 mph wind and his little ear tufts are blowing, too. (The ear tufts are feather, not horns.) They came in to roost about 6:30 AM this morning and both of them sat first in the Russian Olive outside our bedroom window. They had a little altercation which might be owl mating. Then Hooter sat and hooted for a while then flew on to her tree. This is the male, Hootie. He is smaller. Hooter is female, she is bigger. (I found this out on my trusty Wikipedia.) Great Horned Owls are found all over from the Arctic to South American. They are not an endangered species. They mate this time of year and nest in January and February. Those are going to be some cold chicks! The hooting this morning, we think, has to do with the mating.  For two days Hooter didn't come home. We saw her in a neighbor's lone tree Sunday morning which is about 4 miles from us as the owl flies.  She came back this morning.They sit and sleep all day in the trees and fly out low over the sage brush right after sundown and come back right before sunrise. They have quite the wing span. Awesome creatures!

Writing Mysteries

I'm blogging today about writing mysteries as a guest on Paty Jager's blog at http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com/.  I talk about my next book, Designer Detective, which will be published on Amazon about December 1.  Click on the link to go to her site. Thanks!

Owl update

The owls are still with us. Today they're nesting together in the Russian Olive tree in the pouring rain. They have their heads ducked under a tree limb. There really are owls in this tree. They are hard to see.  We are getting needed rain and maybe snow. It's a good day to spend with a good book.

All Souls Day

He seems to think I'm bothering him.

 The owls are back! Great Horned Owls with golden eyes.

There really are two owls in this tree

Almost as big as his mom

Hammin it up again

Today we commemorate the All Faithful Departed. Latinos celebrate the Day of the Dead. When I lived in Mexico it was the day people went to the graveyard and cleaned the graves and prayed for the departed and remembered them. Bakeries make cute skeleton and skull pastries. This is one of my favorite holiday times of the year. The weather is changing, leaves are blowing around the yard, ghouls and goblins sneak around in the night. Yesterday was All Saints Day, especially celebrated in the Catholic and Episcopal churches where we remember the saints. Then there was All Hallows Eve. This year it was pretty quiet here.No trick or treaters in our neighborhood. But we do have -- OWLS!  The owl I kept throwing stones at in the tree to scare him away is back. With his mate!  Hootie and Hooter Great Horned Owls have taken up residence and we have declared an uneasy truce. I watch them. They watch back. It wasn't until this morning that I saw both of them. You have to be looking for them to realize they are in the trees. I warn them about trying to get the chickens or cats. The bird book says they hunt up to rabbit size rodents. They better stick to rodents. I include the latest photos of Blitzen. He's almost as tall as his mother. He is 7 months old, and the black in his coat is getting blacker. He likes carrots especially.

First Snowfall

 Stormy weather moved in last week and John worked to finish getting the bees ready for winter. A barn owl insisted on sleeping in our elm tree during the day. He might have been roosting there all summer but we didn't see him until the leaves started falling. The duck enjoys the pond before it freezes solid. We woke up to snow this morning. Half the chickens hatched this summer so they freak out when they first see the snow. They can't figure out what it is.

Midnight and the chickens

Banty rooster crowing

Horses graze unperturbed way out in the pasture

Quail look for a handout

Greetings from the high desert

Rockaway Beach Adios

We saw this pelican on the beach. He looked tired.

 Here are a few final photos of our memorable week at Rockaway Beach OR.  We went for a stroll on the windy beach on Sat afternoon and encountered a very lonely pelican who seemed to be resting. We ate more seafood, had more Tillamook ice cream. I couldn't take enough beach and sea photos.  The moon was almost full. The sun sets always amazing. And miracle of miracles the sun shone every day. Amazing in itself for the Oregon coast.  It's good to be back in the high desert. But maybe we'll go back next year. Adios

more beach and sea

Yet more

That small stick figure is John

The pelican was on the rocks when last we saw him

St. Mary's by the Sea where we went to Sat night mass

Sun sets on our last full day

Moon set on the morning we left

Rockaway Beach 5

High tide

Bar view above Garibaldi Bay

Jetty in the distance

Kate looking for her next ocean poem

Peg looking for blackberries

Kat muses on her next ocean poem