Huge Cicada

Millipede like Lilly Badilly!

Greener than green leafy-looking leaf bug

Intricate and awesome ant hill maze

The couch potato

Cuddling with his sister who just came home from college

Darwin’s new girlfriend, Sophia

My daughter sent me these from college, since she wont be here for Mother’s day. I love tulips!

Darwin, the Banker!

My cousin, Freddy in Montreal sent me a photo of me and my sister, Shelley from around 1967. I’m the one on the left. We spent a a lot of vacation time visiting the dairy  farm in New Glasgow, Quebec, where my paternal grandmother grew up. The funny thing about this photo is that I am deathly allergic to cats and most other furry creatures, but I seem to be in heaven here holding that cat. (Notice how desperately he’s trying to break loose from my hold.) I recall chasing the cows from the field back into the barn with the farm collie, who was named Colie. I’d help my Uncle Willy milk and feed the cows, and I’d do cartwheels up and down the space between the troughs where the cows were fed. Their heads would move in unison back and forth, watching me as I tumbled. My eyes would be swollen shut from allergies, but I loved the farm and didn’t care. I even got to see calves being born on occasion. My aunt Jay would boil my sneakers on the stove to get them clean after running through the fields of cow pies. Later when I asked my grandmother about that, she assured me that there was a pot just for that task and no food was ever cooked in it.

I remember taking a bath in an old claw tub that was tucked into a tiny room under the stairway, with an angled ceiling that was so low on one side, you could not sit up in the rear of tub there. The water came from the well and smelled like sulphur. We slept in the many tiny bedrooms in the upstairs part of the big old squeaky house. One night, a bat flew over our heads. Uncle Willy caught it and held it by its wings to show us what it looked like. My sister and I were screaming our heads off, and ever since then, we’ve been afraid of bats.

Great childhood memories. Everyone should have a family farm to visit!

What was up with that hideous haircut my Mom made me get, a pixie? Good Lord, that was horrible.

Perhaps that’s why I stopped cutting my hair at age 14 and grew it past my waist.