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This page contains pictures that don't involve a either a trip or some event or our cats (pictures of which are on a separate page). It will include pictures taken around my house or Fred's, and the occasional event that did not result in much picture-taking. Just scroll down the page to get from one section to another.

February 18: A Gift from Cynthia

My next-door neighbor, Cynthia, is a treasure- and a very interesting person. When she and Richard are gone, I am happy to feed their cats (two female tabbies) for them (although she has a housekeeper who does it on the days she is there). When we are gone, she looks in on Lucky and Tyger and Zack (if we don't have him with us).

And more often than not, she is more thoughtful than I am, bringing little gifts back from their trips to Mexico, or, in the case of our recent "watching of the cats", bringing over a brace of tulips. I found my largest vase, and arranged them in it. And then Fred and I took a whole bunch of pictures.

Some of these may seem repetitive, but the tulips were just beautiful. Click on the thumbnail images below to see any of these pictures:

March 31: From Downhill Run Acres

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

A number of times this year, Fred brought me photos that he had taken at his house in Van Alystne, and I want to include the best of these here. Since I don't know the names of the plants (daffodils I know, but not many others) I won't be able to label them for you. They are all pretty, though, and I've put this batch of pictures into a slideshow.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

April 20: My Rose "John Paul"

Probably the nicest plant that Fred has given me for my patio is my John Paul rose. It is a constant bloomer, with lots of buds and blooms throughout the season. It even has some fragrance. He took a couple of pictures of it this weekend; they are below:

May 1: From Downhill Run Acres

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

A number of times this year, Fred brought me photos that he had taken at his house in Van Alystne, and I want to include the best of these here. Since I don't know the names of the plants, I won't be able to label them for you. They are all colorful, though, and I've put them in a slideshow for you.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

May 2: At Cynthia's House

Cynthia is gone to Mexico for a couple of weeks, and I am checking on her cats. On one of my trips next door, Fred came with me and he had his camera. He got a picture of me with Itty, Cynthia's young tabby cat, and Sadie, her older tabby. The third picture is of some flowers on her patio:

Summer: From Downhill Run Acres

A number of times this summer, Fred has brought me photos that he had taken at his house in Van Alystne, and I want to include the best of these here. I can't tell you what they all are, but not knowing their names doesn't detract from their beauty.

Most of the pictures are of roses and cacti- like this picture, taken near Fred's gazebo, of a cana lily. That same lily is shown at left, later in the summer.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

As for the rest of Fred's pictures of all the beautiful flowers and blooms that he has seen through the summer, I have taken the very best of all these pictures, taken throughout the summer, and put them into one large slideshow for you to have a look at. And I hope you will, because not only has Fred put a lot of effort into growing all the plants, but he has also made some very nice photographs of them.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

October 3: A Kitty Rescue

Well, the last couple of days have been pretty hectic. We had a bad storm two days ago, and the power went out over most of northwest Dallas- about 400,000 customers, including me. This is a pretty common occurrence, sadly, since deregulation of the electric market. In any event, even though Greg's power went out as well, his came back on in only a few hours, and so I spent two nights with him until my own power came on during the third day.

On the day after the storm blew through, my next-door neighbor, Cynthia, let her two cats out for a while, as she usually does, and one of them, the young one, did not return. For the last day and a half she has been looking for it. When I drove home from Greg's house on the day the power came back on, I found her in the driveway, looking around quizzically, and our friend Floyd was out there as well. I stopped to see what was going on, and Cynthia told me she could hear Itty the cat but could not see her. I parked and came around to help, and right then Cynthia spotted the cat high up in a tree in the yard of the house to the west of us, over our fence.

That neighbor has a few large dogs that were out in the yard, and we thought that naturally they were keeping the cat up in the tree. So I drove over to the neighbor's house, found someone at home, and asked them to bring their dogs in until we could get the cat down. The lady did that and gave me access to the back yard. Itty would not come down to me, so Floyd got his ladder and we manhandled it over the fence and propped it up against the tree. I climbed up to get Itty, who would not come to me, and Floyd did the same thing, but no dice. We even got Cynthia to come over and try, but all Itty did was go higher in the tree.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

We tried everything we could to get Itty down, but nothing worked. So Cynthia called the Fire Department. Now, I always thought that firemen rescuing cats from trees was more an urban legend than anything else, but I was shortly to find out that, at least when they have the time, they will come out and get cats out of trees. I found that up when I was up on the ladder, looked over the fence to our driveway, and saw the hook and ladder sitting there.

Well, the firemen assessed the situation, and then I followed them as they took the hook and ladder around to Robin Road and brought one of their huge ladders and four or five guys into the neighbor's back yard and proceeded to rescue Itty- just like you've always heard.

I did have the presence of mind to grab my camera so I could film the rescue, and you can use the player at left watch my little movie.

All's well that ends well, I suppose. I took Itty with a firm hand from the firemen and put her in my car to drive back over to return her to Cynthia (the firemen having to return to the firehouse). Cynthia was happy to get her back, and the icing on the cake was that our power came back on shortly thereafter.

I learned something, I guess, about where our tax dollars go. Rescuing Itty had to have cost the city, conservatively, four or five hundred dollars- and the firemen told me that what they had done was not an uncommon occurrence.

Those are the miscellaneous pictures for 2014.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

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