Here's a photo from Hudson Gardens. The site used to be the locale for a restaurant called "The Northwoods Inn" in Denver. It was a log building and had a certain lumberjack theme. They brought soup in little kettles and you could throw your peanut shells on the floor. It was a fun treat to go there when I was little. It's now a botanical site and has a lot of native plants, lots of ponds, tadpoles, frogs, and water lilies. The restaurant moved, but replacing a log building with formica and chrome just isn't the same.

Here is the fish we caught and released, see below for more details.

This photo is a shot of the cactus bloom.

Today Ember came to visit Ana and Emma and the four of us went down to the creek to wade and look for fish. We took Jake, our dog, with us to protect us from mountain lions. We caught one little fish and found one dead fish that looked like a brook trout that was about four or five inches long. After we photographed the little fish we caught, I mean Ana caught (she wanted to make sure she got the credit) we released it alive back where we found it.

The creek is very low, hopefully we will get more rain as it seems our snow pack is or almost depleted. That means, according to our neighbor Page, who was riding an atv on the road and exercising his two bull terriers, Hadji and Gypsy, the fish are reproducing as quickly as possible before it dries up too much for survival. I noticed on the way back that the choke cherries are forming very quickly too. Hope the bears are able to store up enough for next winter before it gets too dry.

On the way back I noticed the cactus blooming by our driveway and took a shot of the beautiful yellow blossom. Now the girls are playing school and I thought I'd share the day. That way Ember's folks can log on and see what we did.

I can only upload one photo per post, so I'll publish this, and then add the cactus as well as the fish on the next posts.

This morning on NPR soldiers were talking in Iraq about the tough combat they're having now and how hard it is to see their brothers in arms being killed or
injured and flown away from them.

I remember when the Bush administration was trying to convince us to go to Iraq and I was hoping and wondering if the government had more information than we had to make such a decision. I questioned another blogger/poster who used to work in intelligence in Great Britain to know if he could tell me how much more people behind the scenes know in situations like this.

As it turns out our behind the scenes guys didn't really have that much more solid knowledge than we civilians.

After the Viet Nam war and the quagmire that conflict placed us in, and living through the television footage, it just seemed that we should be really positive about why we are putting so many lives, and I'm not talking only about our soldiers, but all those innocent Iraqis who are just trying to survive, on the line for a what could be deemed an administration's hope to be put down in history as a liberator and a spreader of democracy.

When I was younger and read about the Holocaust, I couldn't understand why we didn't help eliminate Hitler earlier. Then listening to World War II memorialists speaking about the absolute horror of war, I began understanding a little more why the decision to step into others' affairs can be so dangerous.

It seems like when we are faced with this type of dilemma in every day life, we tend to act on instinct, because we don't have time to think of the repercussions, we just pull the baby from the flaming car and then think of the possible consequences afterward. But in instances of war and so many lives at stake, we really have to think about what we are stirring up.

The soldiers in the newscast this morning said they wanted to stay until the mission was accomplished, otherwise their buddies'sacrifice, those whose lives were lost, would be for naught. And even as a democrat now, I don't really think we should leave Iraq in the state it is now in. We are responsible to get running water and electricity back to those people. We created a war theater in their country, because we didn't want it to take place here, and we are responsible to set it right. If we aren't we shouldn't have interfered in the first place. We should have weighed the options beforehand. Maybe that was done. But history is repeating itself.

It really seems like Rumsfeld et al. thought it would be a quick strike and all would be good. Similar to the strike during the Kosovo/Bosnian war when Clinton's troops were able to dissuade with aerial strikes and quell the discord.

I know this sounds hokey, but perhaps we must learn as Rodenberry taught us in the Star Trek series that there must be a prime directive the eliminates interfering with the natural progression of things.

I know in my heart we can't stand by when genocide is occurring and people can't be allowed to murder based on a race or religion. But charging in without having thought of options and having game plans is not only useless, it creates more of a problem than there was before. All those doubts I had at first seem to have manifested and that is very troubling.

Well, I'm trying to upload a photo. Hope it works, hope it looks okay. It sure is taking long, but we live in a rural area that is multiple zones away from the phone company and so it is slow and expensive. oh well. It's nice and quiet here and I really like that.

Ah the first post of my blogging experience. After reading so many wonderful blogs, following Meg Hourihan and Jack Saturn and the Pyra folks, and taking up far too much space on other bloggers' sites with my comments, I am now starting one of my own. Thanks Meg, Ev, and Google.

Today I guess it's time to fill out my profile, upload a photo and get on with it.

But first I must go tend my two Chinese daughters who are making devilled eggs for breakfast, with just the right amount of paprika.....more to come, as I get the site together.