So, by popular request, here I am:

Of course, that isn't what I look like.

Let me explain.

My sister took that pic, with my new digital camera, at a barbeque she and her husband hosted over the Labor Day weekend. Fed all of our side of the family, and a bunch of his kin who were in town for a nephew who was attending a local Academy.

They had planned on his family. We were the unexpected arrivals in town, so they took a feast for 10 and expanded it into a feast for 17.

Pretty good feat, as far as I'm concerned. Went well, good food, all ready at one time. Perhaps too little time for visiting (but that was mainly on the part of my folks, not my sister's in-laws).

She had to make two bowls of the green stuff. Which we have taken to calling it, since no one remembers the name she gave it. Jello, pistachios, whipping cream, a few other ingredients... you know, the green stuff.

Good by itself, but better mixed on your plate with my Mom's ground cranberry/whipped cream fruit salad.

Anyway, we were sitting on the patio ruminating, and passing around digital cameras. I am certain this was the first time my mother ever had one actually in her hands. Probably my Dad, too.

She's less than impressed. "Can't you print out pictures so you can pass them around?"

Being able to print them with the assistance of a computer seems a waste to her.

Anyway, comments were made about how my sister and I were peering at the camera monitors over the tops of our glasses.

A sure sign of aging. Poor close-up vision. This despite us both wearing trifocals. Which led to glasses being exchanged to compare prescriptions (Remember doing that as little kids? We still do.) Including my folks and their glasses.

So what you have above is grouse, wearing his Dad's big-framed "old man" glasses. I'm normally in smaller wire frames, after a couple decades of wearing aviator-style lenscraft.

Since I'm showing off pictures again, and that one may disappear soon, here's a couple that can stay to give this empty entry some substance.

First, the heeler sisters and the heeler sisters' sister.

Who stopped by my check station with her game warden Alpha last weekend. They don't play well together, and hustling all three into my rig when a hunter's vehicle pulled up was a risky thing to do.

The masked heeler is always trying to dominate her half-masked sister, even with hackles raised, while the little maskless heeler keeps trying to sneak around to approach from behind.

We don't know if she's wanting to smell or bite, and apparently neither does her half-masked sister.

The half-masked one, however, lives alone with an older heeler, and all she ever wants to do is play.

Thanks again to Lisa for letting me know the common name for this plant is "beebalm." I knew it had "bee" in the name somewhere.

Well named plant. Bees love it. Normally grows in a big clump, but all this remnant managed was one short, thin stem with one blossom and another bud.

Just checked it again today.

It is gone.

Completely disappeared. A hole in the grass where it used to be.

The heelers had a fit when eldest son let them out this morning, and even cleared the chain link fence (both of them, even the masked with her patched pelvis) chasing something out of the backyard.

Thought at first it was a cat, but with the little borage plant consumed, and one small plum tree recently broken off, I suspect the little mule deer buck was back today.