So much to be thankful for

One thing I'm really thankful for is that I didn't get plagued with bears this fall. However, the Davis Mountains weren't so lucky. Friends there have had all their feeders destroyed plus much other damage. There may be as many as 8 bears there. At least I only had the one. Note broken feeder in foreground.

Another thing I'm thankful for is that I always find exciting new projects to do. My most recent one should keep me occupied contentedly throughout the miserable winter time. Using  my new plant book, that doesn't have decent photos and is no help with identification, I'm creating a digital plant photo guide. Going through the book, species by species, then locating a photo of that species online, and saving it to a file in a folder of whatever plant family it's in. The idea being to have a place to look to identify new flowers we find.

The book has well over 2000 species in it of 112 plant families. It's fun and I'll learn a lot. It'll be helpful for my sister too. Currently there is no comprehensive field guide for IDing plants of the Big Bend.

And of course it goes without saying that I have a thousand other things I'm always thankful for, like all my wonderful friends and birders. My new tank. The oasis. My health. My kids who are the best kids any mother could ask for. Lovely home and maturing habitat in Alpine. Technology. On and on the list goes...

My Austin son made this flashing neon sign for my other son's Triangle store in Alpine. Might be the first flashing neon sign in all of Alpine!

After they installed the sign they headed for CMO. Ten minutes after arriving a little dog they brought with them fell or jumped into the courtyard pond. They immediately had to bathe the dog since it's a house dog. Originally, they were dog-sitting the dog, but the owner moved into an apartment that doesn't allow pets so they've sort of inherited the dog.