This is the Grand Canyon as it appeared on a summer day in July, 2008. The panoramic image came from a series of photos taken at the South Rim near Mather Point. I stitched the photos together to make this panoramic view.
Hopefully, I will soon be able to show this same panoramic view as it appears in the wintertime. Stay tuned.
Click on the image above to view the full-sized panorama.
Here is our house with the final layer of Christmas Lights. We scaled down the display this year to save a little electricity. There are four strings of colored C9s (100 feet) and four strings of little white icicle lights (about 80 feet). Around the front window is a string of twinkle lights with colored bulbs. In reserve to be used next year, maybe, we have net lights for the bushes and rope lights for the trees.
Click the image above for a bigger view.
Pine Cones and Pine Needles, that is.
We were out and about this weekend and, as usual, I had the camera along. We walked under an evergreen conifer in Del Cerro Park and I snapped this picture. Considering the Christmas Season is here, this picture makes for a very nice Christmas card, don’t you think?
Click on the image to see the original photo enlarged without the greeting overlay.
It’s been a while since we have seen these Dark Lulu Roses in the flower concession. I picked up a dozen of these last Friday when we were grocery shopping.
Very Pretty – click image for larger size.
Despite recent decline in value of most securities on Wall Street, a few well-managed companies manage to stay ahead of the game. Wal Mart (WMT) is one of those companies.
I have a few shares of Wal Mart in my portfolio. I was going to sell it last year when I reallocated my portfolio from growth to more stable equities, but Verna encouraged me to hang on to it.
I like her intuition. Twenty-two percent growth in a year is pretty spectacular.
When you look at the lackluster performance of Wal Mart’s peer group, you can see that the retail industry, in general, is not doing too well for a variety of reasons. One of the problems with retailers is labor unions, which drive profits down and operational costs up. Wal Mart, while providing competitive wages and benefits, does not have unions as a factor.
I’m glad for two things: Verna’s intuition, and Wal Mart’s sensible policies on labor.
