Verna wanted to make sure that people are warned about the potential danger of the Mexican Fan Palm Tree’s thorns. Last Saturday, she brushed past a pruned frond stem and ripped her forearm. There was obviously not going to be a home-remedy first-aid resolution to the injury, so we went to the emergency room to get some help. They stitched it up and sent us home several hours later.

A full-sized view of the offending frond stub and photos of all the gory details appear below when you click on “Continue reading . . .” — Please don’t look if blood and stitches are going to creep you out.

Continue reading » Verna’s Boo Boo

Another in the panorama series: the eastern part of the nine-hole golf course at the Manhattan Beach Marriott Hotel. I used my new Canon A710 and a photo stitch application to create this image from four snapshots of the course. Click on the picture for a bigger image.

Rolling Thunder showed up at the National Mall last Saturday in Washington DC along with Veterans and Patriots at the “Gathering of Eagles.” They were there in a show of patriotic pride as a counter to the anti-war demonstration planned by the far-left. Rolling Thunder is also the organization that protects fallen soldiers’ families and friends when these crazy anti-war people decide to demonstrate at a funeral.

Good for the Rolling Thunder. I sure do like their Rolling Thunder Special Edition Smith & Wesson .45 caliber ACP Pistol . . .

Click on the gun for the really big image.

Rolling Thunder’s major function is to publicize the POW-MIA issue. To educate the public of the fact that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all past wars. To help correct the past and to protect the future veterans from being left behind should they become prisoners of war - missing in action. We are committed to helping American veterans from all wars.

These pretty “Cosmos bipinnatus” flowers are growing in a flower pot on our patio. Sometimes called Mexican Asters, cosmos were grown by Spanish priests in their mission gardens in Mexico. The evenly placed petals led them to christen the flower “Cosmos,” the Greek word for harmony or ordered universe. Cosmos, like many of our warm weather annuals such as marigolds, originated in Mexico and South America. Click the image for a larger view.

Times sure have changed since I got my first home computers over 20 years ago. They were big, slow, had limited storage and were not networked. These days, we each have a computer plus a laptop (with WiFi) for travel and to use other places around the property. Verna snapped this candid photo of me as I sat on the backyard swing uploading a post for our weblog.

There’s a bunch of these in the back patio this week. They are very bright red. The Easy to grow Bulbs website says this about these flowers:

Red roses are great, but waiting until summer for them isn’t. In spring, lovers of this vibrant color turn to snappy red ranunculus. Tucked between your early perennials they’ll energize borders and provide long-lived flowers for jazzy bouquets. No thorns, no black spot, no mildew. No kidding.

I have a little decorative sculpture of a fish that sits on our fake waterfall. The sculpture is studded with nickel, dime and quarter-sized glass beads of several colors. I took this closeup of the sculpture and managed to get a number of self-portraits of myself.

The rip in my forearm is much better today. The stitches are in and the swelling is down. I think it’s healing OK. It certainly didn’t interfere with actuating the fore-end on our Remington 870 Shotgun when we went to the range today.