What In the World?

 Just hanging around minding our own business, because we're supposed to stay home and keep our germs, if we have any, to ourselves.  We don't seem to have any germs, but I got a shot of cortisone in my knee last week, and they gave me drugs that I don't like, and some I do.  Meanwhile, outside, the wind picked up and smoke from fires burning all over Oregon blew in.

This is odd.  The angle or something makes our yard look huge, but it's not.  

Last month, we had a nice drive in the funny little Minx.

What beautiful blue skies we had this summer.

We stopped at the Country Store for refreshing beverages.

                                              The two cars below are my favorites in the group.

We wore masks and stayed away from each other, and had an almost normal visit.  

Nothing Happening Here

I'm way too slow to catch the humming birds that visit.  I feel lucky just to get a glimpse of them!

The blue bird has a friend and they seem to enjoy sitting on the fence while hunting for bugs.  They trade turns swooping down to the lawn below.  Another bird who likes this corner spot is the scrub jay, which is also a beautiful blue.  Is it a coincidence?

 This female Mallard duck enjoyed our yard as long as we had water in the ditch, but on this day, she accidentally landed on the wrong side of the fence, and quacked and quacked, and the male came to the outside of the fence, and they followed each other on their own side until Hero Husband decided to herd her out through the gate, which was 75 feet away (25 feet one way, and 50 feet another.)  Runway too short for duck take-off.  She did not enjoy the herding, but was very glad to get out of the back yard, and mister duck was also de-stressed.

 The hawks and falcons were happy to visit and hunt while the field across the street was mowed.  Now the grass is 6 feet high and the only hunters are cats, and we haven't seen hawks in the trees.

 This robin was an active bather who shares the bath with other birds.  Watching them splash and fidget and throw water is about the most fun we get when we aren't reading.  Oh, well, that's an exaggeration.  HH still has 8 old motorcycles needing their exercise.  I think the B-31 BSA just got home.

Hanging Out

 The sky is blue.  The temperature warm.  The bikes need some exercise.  These are four of the five lucky bikes that got to go out today.

 Campus is pretty well deserted.  A passing policeman waved.  The neighbor stopped by the end of the driveway to say he got his lawnmower running.

 We popped over to the daughter's house to return a shopping bag.  Just left it hanging on the doorknob.  No visiting.

Planted the flowers.  Left two baskets in the garage because there weren't enough flowers to go around.  The front basket was large, and used more than its fair share.  Well.  I wonder what we'll do now.

Honda CB250 Dream Comes Back to Life

The neighbors all know that HH likes old motorcycles, so when one was moving away, he looked at the rusty old thing he was intending to get around to someday, and decided that instead of hauling it with him to his new home east of the mountains,  he'd see if he could get HH to re-home it.  Such a worthy project it turned out to be!  HH would say, "It keeps me off the streets."

Here it is.  Not looking like much, but potential was there.  I think he must have started polishing a little, just to see what his chances were.

What a sad little mite.  But many, many hours of polishing and spoke shining up, and chain cleaning and everything else cleaning, and painting, and what a busy boy he was.  He'd come in and tell me just what he'd done that day, and I was generally on my way somewhere, so didn't properly record his progress, which was steadily coming along.  The wiring was particularly tricky.

That certainly took a while.  Steady work all spring and most of summer, I'm thinking, but memory is pretty protean.  He was very excited because He had the tires laying around already with nothing to go with them until this.  Serendipity!  Next the engine.

Isn't that a little sweetie-pie?  There was all sorts of attachment things, each coming with it's own unique problem and solution.  Alas, I can't remember them all.

Now he says when he gets older and frailer, this will be the last bike he sells, because it is perfection. Light, smooth, fast, economical.  There's a lot to recommend it.  Sorry I took so long to show it off.

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