Clematis Flowers

    The flowers on my clematis vine always look like they are begging me to take their photos. I have two different colors. Both in the same very large flower pot. It seems to be the best way to grow anything in our area due to large amounts of rain that the ground always wet. But the grass grows well. 

New Tile

We put new tile in the laundry room. The 1st photo is of the old stuff that was here when we moved in. Pale yellow with squares with spots. UCK New peal and stick tile is a supposed to look like a kind of marbleized rock. Darker than I wanted but about the lightest besides white which I didn't want. I took about a year to decide what I wanted. Was a pain to do the little corners at the edge of the doors. This is the 3rd house I have put peal and stick tile in and if you are careful it can look find. The overhead light insisted on glaring on the new tile. Without the light you couldn't see it. 

 

Rambling Rose

I have been here in Kentucky for 3 years. This is our 4th spring here. We have descovered we have several white rambling roses in the yard. If they bloomed before I didn't realize they were roses. They look a lot like the wild blackberries we have here. The little blossoms are only about 1 inch across but have a smell better than any rose I have ever smelled. I don't care for the smell of most roses. The bush is almost more like a vine and spangles across the blackberries and honeysuckles that are everywhere. They roses remind me of a while waterfall of flowers. I will take more care when we are cutting back the  growth of all the things that live here. I have been careful not to cut back to much as a lot of the birds, squirrels, and other small critters shelter in the brush. 

 

Cicada Insects

I keep hearing that most of the eastern part of the United States is going to have swarms of cicada insects in the next couple of weeks. So are we have had a few but not a lot. I will say that I don't remember seeing any of them in the previous years that we have lived here in Kentucky. I understand there are several different kinds of cicadas. Some that come out of the ground and turn into the winged insect each year and then the kind like we are supposed to have now that only come out about every 17 years. Thats a long time to be underground as some sore of nymphs. I understand that these weird insects do not bite or sting, but are a favorite food of many birds and small wild animals. Today we saw a pileated woodpecker. The pileated woodpecker is the largest of the woodpeckers that we have here and this is only the second time I have seen one. The other time was about 3 seconds of seeing one about 2 years ago. My bird book says they are a very shy bird. This one was way out in the yard and the camera had trouble focusing on her. Yes, I think this was a female which makes me hope that she has a nest nearby.

In my hand is the shell of the nympth that came out of the ground . In the top is a slit where it came out of the shell and now has wings. The next photo is kind of blurry but it is a cicada with the wings and the big red eyes they have.

The left over cicada shells are everywhere. A lot of them are hanging on leaves

This one was sitting on the pavement of our driveway. 

A cluster of shells. 

 

Sping Flowers

All the spring flowers are beautiful. This is the azalea.

Creeping phlox with a dandelion in the middle. 

Clematis vines

Geranium

My first rose blossom

Iris with the house behind them.

Columbine

 

My Random Thought #3 NOISE

      I an laying awake at 1:33 AM listening to the traffic noise going down the major highway that is about 200 yards from our house. When we bought the house we figured we would eventually get used to the noise. Hubby hardly notices it. Me - it bugs the heck out of me, both day and night. This is Interstate 71. It runs from Cleveland, Ohio south to Louisville, Ky. Most of it is a four lane highway. Two lanes running each direction. We had no idea that there would be that much noise from it all the time. It never slacks off like so many roads and streets do. Not even at night. In fact, I think it gets worse at night. I know we need to move people and products from one place to another. And I have seen lots of houses much closer to the highway than ours. I don't know how people that close can stand the noise. 

    But then I think about people in big cities complaining about the noise on the streets there. And not just vehicles passing by but people talking loud, even yelling, as well as barking dogs, sirens, and worst of all gun shots. From what I see on the local news Louisville is one of the worst places for noise from gunshots. I used to think it was bad in Albuquerque, NM but that was nothing compared to what the news puts on here. 

   This has led me to think about the noise I have had to listen to and put up with in all the different places I have lived. At least here we have very few airplanes. We do have a helicopter once in a while and you can usually bet it is a medical emergency flight taking some one to one of the big hospitals in Louisville, KY or Cincinnati, Ohio, 

   When I was a small child my father was in the Air Force. Ever live on an Air Force Base or any kind of military base? Airplanes are a fact of life there. You hear them constantly. Day and night. Ever wake up to the sonic boom of a jet plane breaking the sound barrier? Or the constant whine of the jet engines as the planes got ready to take off? We learned to live with it, ignore it, and even sleep through sonic booms. 

   I have lived in residual areas where the sound of cars leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening could get fairly loud. Plus the sound of school busses and delivery trucks. We all know the sound of the UPS truck. I have never lived in a big city, in an apartment building with lots of coming and going, and sirens, people out yelling at all hours or anything like that. But I have known lot of people who have and I think that would be worse then the noise of the traffic on I-71 that we have here. 

   Think of the all the noise we listen to all the time. There is always some kind of noise. But have you ever lived or even been where it is really quiet. I have lived a few places where it was so quiet the sound of a car going by could wake you up and make you wonder what was going on. I have been out in the desert or the mountains were the sound of the wind through the trees might be the only thing you can hear. The sound of a bird would seem very loud. To just hear

the soft sigh of a light breeze can be a very pleasing sound. To go camping and wake in the night to total silence, to not hear anything at all is something that everyone should experience so they can understand just how much noise there is in the world and maybe, just maybe the engineers and scientists will start to invent things that won't be a noisy.

     In the photo the tree you see is in our yard. You can see the big trucks out on the interstate highway.