Royal and I Walk Through the Neighborhood

It was such a beautiful evening that I decided to take a few photos with my phone as Royal and I took our evening walk. It was already dark, so my subjects are of the "dark" variety.
This is the first thing we saw as we walked:

The moon was much more spectacular in person!
Next we noticed that some over-achieving neighbors already had their Yuletide lights out, and with it not even being Thanksgiving, we thought them worthy of posting.

We hope you enjoyed our walk as much as we did, but our favorite part was having a glass of wine on the patio while talking to Devin on the phone after we returned!
Happy Thanksgiving loved ones!!!

November Blossoms

It has been the most amazing fall in Kansas City.  The date is November 20 and there are still flowers and plants blooming all over town. The grass is green as people are still watering and mowing. The only evidence of the late fall are the leaves on the trees.

The baby Japanese Maple is now showing her colors as mother nature prepares her for her second winter in our backyard. I waited almost too long to take this picture as she was mini-magnificent last weekend.

This hidden beauty is what remains of a gorgeous trailing geranium that I tossed aside after we winterized the patio and simply ignored for weeks! When I stepped outside this morning I noticed it was still blooming so I honored it with this post. (Glen can tell you that it just kills me to watch a yard plant die. I have to hide them somewhere while they silently wither or I will bring them indoors and try to winter them, which is messy and takes lots of space).

The potted Petunias have looked better, buy they recently put on a show for our Halloween visitors as they flanked both sides of the front door. I decided the Jack 'o Lantern could stay tucked under the pot as long as the blossoms were still colorful.
So for my California loved ones, Kansas can be mild and temperate even in mid-November. Weather reports claim we will have a mild, dry winter with conditions setting up for a major ice storm...pics to follow!!

Yummy Hackberries!

This was one of my most important discoveries! It happened after my Vet gave me these pills called "Prednisone" I don't know what that is, but after I started taking them I noticed that I wasn't so picky about what I ate cuz I was hungry all the time.
Anyway, I was checking the perimeter one day when I stumbled onto these crazy black berries all over my backyard! Even though it wasn't even close to dinner time, my tummy was already rumbling so I decided to give 'em a taste. Wow! They tasted amazing, so I quickly ate as many as I could before Rhonda came outside and yelled at me to stop! (She's a little overprotective and she thought they might be poisonous, silly lady!)
Well,  Glen is a lot smarter than Rhonda about nature stuff cuz he's a farm kid. He told me they were called Hackberries and that I could eat as many as I wanted unless they gave me diarrhea. Man, that sounded awful, so I sure didn't want to get that. But whenever I'm out in the backyard I can't stop myself from piggin' out on them!
In case you ever want to try them like Rhonda did, they have this crispy shell on the outside, a delicious sweet juice with a huge seed on the inside.
Know what? When Maddie came over, I told her about Hackberries and she taught me how to graze for them. Before that, I just looked for the twigs that fell off the trees and I stripped the berries off with my teeth. But Maddie's pretty smart, too, and she said, "Hey Dummy, why don't you just eat the ones that fell off the trees that are laying all over the ground!"
I started to worry that Maddie was gonna eat all my yummy hackberries but she said, "Royal, you are a fool...look up! The trees are loaded!!"