Gambel’s Quail

You’ve got Mail… a Male Gambel’s Quail

The Feather Files
Name: Gambel’s Quail
Species: Callipepla gambelii
Native to and Migration: Nonmigratory; lives in the hot deserts of the Southwest—the Sonoran, Mohave, and Chihuahuan—below about 5,500 feet elevation.
Date Seen: March 2015, April 2019
Location: North of Fountain Hills, Arizona
Notes:  These birds walk or run along the ground in groups called coveys of a dozen or more birds. They scratch for food under shrubs and cacti and eat grasses and cactus fruits. Their flight is explosive, powerful, and short.

When you have Gambel’s Quail in your yard, which is pretty much most of the time, it is like watching clowns. They are just very funny birds that perch in the oddest places. They prefer walking and running to flying. Their little legs move incredibly fast when they are startled .

Money, Shopping and Spending Quotations

Advertising is what makes you think you longed all your life for something you’ve never heard of before.
– Author Unknown —

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can buy happiness.
– Author Unknown –

As a businessman, he seems to have dedicated his life to the proposition that where selling to the public is concerned no idea is too stupid. (Referring to Bernard MacFadden)
– Bill Bryson –

At 20 I wanted to save the world. Now I’d be satisfied just to save part of my salary.
– H.G. Hutchison –

At a dinner party: I came from a well-to-do family. My mother was always saying, “Well, to do that, you’ll need more money.”
– Cathryn Baker Hopkins –

At the ATM they ask if you’d like to conduct your business in English or Spanish. I suggest you try Spanish, because your account balance will look much better in pesos.
– Tere Joyce –

Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.
– Robin Williams –

Dividends: A certain percent, per annum, perhaps.
– Evan Esar –

Don’t knock the rich. When did a poor person give you a job?
– Laurence J. Peter –

Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.
– Joseph E. Cossman –

Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.
-John Clapham, A Concise Economic History of Britain, 1957 –

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.
– Don Marquis –

Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.
– Robert Orben –

Every time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
– Herbert Hoover –

Forget about being world famous, it’s hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.
– Doug Coupland –

He had decided that if he ever returned to his old job he would create a special level of hell, an enormous inescapable shop of attractive but useless and overpriced items that the damned would wander for eternity in the cold delusion that this was what they wanted. And then Nerys had taken him to IKEA and Clovenhoof realised the humans had once again beaten him to it.
– Heide Goody, Clovenhoof –

He should have been born a prince with lots of money instead of a pauper with a charge card.
– Author Unknown –

I didn’t want to be rich, I just wanted enough to get the couch reupholstered.
– Kate Mostel –

I want my children to have all the things I never could afford. Then I want to move in with them.
– Phyliss Diller –

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
– William F. Buckley –

If it was easy to be wealthy, then more people would be.
– Author Unknown –

If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
– Author Unknown –

If you want to see a shorter winter, borrow money that’s due in the spring.
– Author Unknown –

If your outgo exceeds your income, then your upkeep will be your downfall.
– Author Unknown –

In God we trust; all others must pay cash.
– Author Unknown –

If men liked shopping, they’d call it research.
-Cynthia Nelms –

If you’re going antique hunting, prepare yourself for some odd smells.
– Dee Ann Stewart –

I hate to shop. I consider it one of life’s necessary evils, like brussels sprouts and high-heeled shoes.
– Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures

I haven’t reported my missing credit card to the police because whoever stole it is spending less than my wife.
– Ilie Nastase –

Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.
– Paul Samuelson –

I rationalize shop. I buy a dress because I need change for gum.
– Rita Rudner –

It’s easy to identify people who can’t count to 10. They’re in front of you in the supermarket express lane.
– M. Grundler –

It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.
– John Sinor –

It saddened me that sometimes shopping was far more perilous than dealing with zombies and vampires.
– Anton Strout, Dead Waters –

It used to be only death and taxes were inevitable. Now, of course, there’s shipping and handling, too.
– Author Unknown –

I was not prepared for the incredible variety of products available in American grocery stores. While on my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk – you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice – you just add water, and you get orange juice and then I saw baby powder – I thought to myself, what a country!
– Yakov Smirnoff –

I’ve always believed the adage, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” but I never expected it to apply to postage stamps.
– Author Unknown –

I’ve got all the money I need, if I die by 4 o’clock.
– Henny Youngman –

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’
– Steven Wright –

Living on a budget is the same as living beyond your means except you have a record of it.
– Author Unknown –

…most guys have about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once these calories are gone, they’re gone for the day – if not the week – and can’t be regenerated simply by having an Orange Julius at the Food Fair.
– Douglas Coupland, Microserfs –

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
– Erma Bombeck –

My motto is ‘Veni, Vidi, Visa’ – We came, we saw, we went shopping.
– Sally Poplin –

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.
– Robert Frost –

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
– H.L. Mencken –

Online shopping: because it’s frowned upon to be in a store with no bra, sweatpants and a glass of wine.
– Author Unknown –

Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.
– Author Unknown –

One reason a dollar won’t do as much as it once did is because people won’t do as much for a dollar as they once did.
– Author Unknown –

Overheard at Costco, as a boy pushed an over-flowing cart behind his mom: “Mom, we only brought the Jetta, you know!”
– Author Unknown –

People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.
– Joan Rivers –

Stores hire extra help for the holidays. This way, customers who don’t know what they want are helped by people who don’t know where it is!
– Author Unknown –

The grocery store is the great equalizer where mankind comes to grips with the facts of life like toilet tissue.
– Joseph Goldberg –

The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences – whoever has the gold makes the rules.
– Author Unknown –

The way to stop the financial joy riding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.
– Woodrow Wilson –

They call it take home pay because there is no other place you can afford to go with it.
– Author Unknown-

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?
– Princess Diana –

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
– Douglas Adams –

This violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.
– P.J. O’Rourke –

… there was a time in my life, decades ago, when I was so full of energy that I was going to not only END WORLD HUNGER but also STOP WAR and ELIMINATE RACISM. Whereas today my life goals, to judge from the notes I leave myself, tend to be along the lines of BUY DETERGENT.
– Dave Barry –

They came, they saw, they did a little shopping.
– Anonymous graffiti on the Berlin wall after travel restrictions were lifted and thousands of East Berliners flooded into West Berlin, Newsweek, December 4, 1989 –

Too caustic? To hell with the cost – we’ll make the movie anyway.
– Samuel Goldwyn –

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.
– Will Rogers –

Wal-mart… do they like, make walls there?
– Paris Hilton –

When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.
– Jose Batista, Burn, Baby, Burn! –

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of living high.
– Doug Larson –

When I am an Old Man… I’ll start saying things like “It used to be that when you paid more than $5000 for something, it came with a basement!”
– Tony Dierckens, Tim Nyberg –

When I first started working, I used to dream of the day when I might be earning the salary I’m starving on now.
– Author Unknown –

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop.
– Gittel Hudnick –

Why waste your money looking up your family tree, just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.
– Mark Twain –

You don’t always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don’t pay for.
– Author Unknown –

You know you’ve spent too much money on your vacation when the balance in your bank account is lower than the number on your sunscreen.
– Author Unknown –

Due Process in the Time of #MeToo

PM Trudeau supports #MeToo – Until ‘Me, Too’

Initially, American President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau voiced different opinions about the #MeToo Movement:

Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
– President Donald Trump –

As women speak up, it is our responsibility to listen, and more importantly, to believe. Sexual harassment in business and in government is a systemic problem and it is unacceptable.
– Prime Minister Trudeau, World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland –

Then, in April 2018, a story surfaced with allegations that Trudeau had groped a female reporter in the year 2000. Trudeau avoided responding to the story, but on Canada Day weekend 2018, he finally said, “I remember that day in Creston well… I don’t remember any negative interactions that day at all.”

Trudeau is said to have apologized to the journalist a day after the alleged groping. At the time, he was quoted as saying, “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper I would never have been so forward.”

Trudeau was asked if there would be an investigation into the alleged incident (since he says his policy on sexual assault is zero tolerance). He responded: “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way, but I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently. Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently. We have to respect that.”

Could it be possible that Canada’s Prime Minister  and the American President have arrived at the same conclusion in acknowledging the need for Due Process? Should a politicians past haunt them? If so, why and for how long?

The hard left is basically saying it’s OK if a few innocent men go down with the ship if that’s what it takes to bring down the patriarchy.
– Bari Weiss –

Empress Leilia Butterfly

The Flutter Files
Name: Empress Leilia Butterfly
Species: Asterocampa leilia
Native to: Central and southern Arizona (except for the southwest) as well as south Texas, Mexico and Baja
Date Seen: March 2014
Location: North of Fountain Hills, Arizona
Notes: Wing Span: 1 1/2 – 3 inches (3.8 – 7.6 cm). This butterfly was sitting on Lantana flowers. Apparently they do not normally feed on nectar, though. Either the butterfly wasn’t feeding, or it is a butterfly that isn’t what I think it is!

Broad-winged Hawk

The Feather Files
Name: Broad-winged Hawk
Species:  Buteo platypterus
Native to and Migration: The Broad-winged hawk breeds throughout much of Canada and the Central and Eastern part of the United States. In the fall, hundreds of thousands of them migrate in large flocks to Mexico and Central America.
Date Seen: May 2014
Location: North of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Babies and Children Quotations

A baby first laughs at the age of four weeks. By that time his eyes focus well enough to see you clearly.
– Author Unknown –

A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn’t act that way very often.
– Author Unknown –

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
– Erma Bombeck –

A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a perfectly good cat.
– Author Unknown –

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
– Erma Bombeck –

Although there are many trial marriages, there is no such thing as a trial child.
– G. Willis –

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
– Flannery O’Connor –

Anyone who thinks the art of conversation is dead ought to tell a child to go to bed.
– Robert Gallagher –

A perfect example of minority rule is a baby in the house.
– Author Unknown –

As the father of two young girls, I have come to the realization that they are just as messy as boys but the dirt that they create around the house is comprised of at least 50% glitter.
-Andrew K. Keller –

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.
– Fran Lebowitz –

A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.
– Bill Vaughn –

Before I was married I had three theories about raising children. Now I have three children and no theories.
– John Wilmot –

Birdies with broken wings hide from each other.
Children in trouble run home to mother.
– Author Unknown –

Calvin: Dad, how do people make babies?
Dad: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.
Calvin: I came from Sears??
Dad: No, you were a blue light special at K-Mart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.
– Bill Watterson –

Calvin: Is this milk spoiled?
Mom: Smell it and see.
Calvin: I’m not going to smell it! You smell it!
Mom: Oh, for goodness sake, here…It’s fine.
Calvin: I don’t take chances with a product that prints the date you might expire.
– Bill Watterson –

Calvin: You step into this chamber, set the appropriate dials, and it turns you into whatever you’d like to be.
Hobbes: It’s amazing what they can do with corrugated cardboard these days.
– Bill Watterson –

Childhood is a place as well as a time.
– May Sarton –

Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
-Author Unknown –

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.
– Haim Ginott

Children are living messages we send to a time and place we will never see.
– Author Unnown –

Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there’s always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.
– Marcelene Cox –

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
For babies grow up we’ve learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs…dust go to sleep,
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
– Author Unknown –

Customer to TV salesman: I don’t need remote control. With four kids, my chances of controlling it are already remote!
– Jon Cagle

Don’t argue for a later bedtime while you’re wearing pajamas with feet.
– Cynthia Copeland Lewis –

Don’t say “The last one there is a rotten egg” unless you’re absolutely sure there’s a slow kid behind you.
– Cynthia Copeland Lewis –

Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.
– Fran Lebowitz –

Having a two-year-old is like having a blender that you don’t have the top for.
– Jerry Seinfeld –

Hobbes: Did you ask your mom if you could jump off the roof?
Calvin: Questions I know the answers to I don’t need to ask, right?
– Bill Watterson –

I am fond of children — except boys.
-Lewis Carroll –

I’d get pregnant if I could be assured I’d have puppies.
– Cynthia Nelms –

I don’t care what the world knows about me, I just hope my mother never finds out.
– Author Unknown –

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
-Rachel Louise Carson –

If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.
– Bill Watterson –

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they’re probably broke.
– Rhonda Dickenson –

If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
– Abigail Van Buren –

If your parents didn’t have any children, there’s a good chance that you won’t have any.
– Clarence Day –

In each child we see ourselves for we are yesterday’s children.
– Author Unknown –

I never met anyone who didn’t have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?
– Fran Lebowitz –

I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.
– Robert Orben –

It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.
– John Sinor –

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is why it takes several million sperm cells, each one wriggling in its own direction, totally confident it knows where it is going, to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.
– Dave Barry –

It took a genius to develop an aspirin bottle that couldn’t be opened by a child capable of operating a VCR.
– Author Unknown –

I was born by Caesarean section, but you can’t really tell… except that when I leave my house, I always go out the window.
– Stephen Wright –

I was browsing in a bookstore recently when I came across a book on child raising. It was a thin little volume of about fifteen or twenty pages that used the word “love” on every page and “reinforcement of self-esteem” on every other page. I leafed through it several times looking for the word that no parent should raise a child without: “No.” It wasn’t there. Mistake.
– Erma Bombeck –

I will have the children read Hamlet as soon as it is practical. There are some useful cautions against eavesdropping to be gleaned from that.
– Maryrose Wood, The Mysterious Howling –

Jonah’s adaptive niche in the family ecosystem was to be the perfect grandchild, eager to scramble up on laps, unafraid of bitter vegetables, under excited by television and computer games, and skilled at cheerfully answering questions like “Are you loving school?”
– Jonathan Franzen –

Kids? It’s like living with homeless people. They’re cute but they chase you around all day long going, “Can I have a dollar? I’m missing a shoe! I need a ride!”
– Kathleen Madigan –

Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
– Elizabeth Stone –

My mother taught me about Contortionism – “Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck!”
– Author Unknown –

My mother taught me religion – “You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”
– Author Unknown –

Nothing seems to make children more affectionate than sticky hands.
– Author Unknown –

Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement mixer long after one’s own interest in the topic has waned.
– Fran Lebowitz –

One of the great mysteries of life is how the idiot that your daughter married can be the father of the smartest grandchildren in the whole wide world.
– Author Unknown –

One of the things I’ve discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don’t give a damn if you walked five miles to school.
– Patty Duke –

Rearing three children is like growing a cactus, a gardenia, and a tubful of impatiens. Each needs varying amounts of water, sunlight and pruning. Were I to be absolutely fair, I would have to treat each child as if he or she were absolutely identical to the other siblings, and there would be no profit for anyone in that.
– Phyllis Grissim-Theroux –

The best revenge is to live long enough to be a problem to your children.
– Author Unknown –

The best thing about children’s birthday parties is that they prove there are children who behave worse than your own.
– Author Unknown –

The best way to raise one child is to have two.
– Marcelene Cox –

The child’s philosophy is the true one. He does not despise the bubble because it burst; and he immediately sets to work to blow another.
– J.J. Procter –

The glory of springtime is the same to all. But there are many different points of view. A child sees it best from the middle of a mud puddle.
– Pearl Swiggum –

The happiest families are those in which the children are properly spaced. About ten feet apart.
– Author Unknown –

The little girl had the making of a poet in her, who, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke, said, “How can I know what I think till I see what I say?”
– Graham Wallas –

The most effective birth control I know is a toddler with the croup and diaper rash.
– Kate Zannoni –

The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.
– David Richerby –

There are only two things a child will share willingly — communicable diseases and his mother’s age.
-Benjamin Spock –

There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
– Monta Crane –

There she was in our little Hawaiian country library, same face, braces, braids, skinny sloping shoulders…Then I realized they’ve probably just run out of patterns for people now, and are beginning to repeat them over and over.
– Peg Bracken –

They say children brighten up the home. That’s right – they never turn off the lights.
– Author Unknown –

Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can’t go home again.” You can, but you’ll get treated like an eight-year-old.
– Daryl Hogue –

We had a quicksand box in our backyard. I was an only child, eventually.
– Stephen Wright –

We’ll have children of the kingdom.
They won’t be torn by war,
nor will they
kill or hate
or hesitate to love.
– Seals and Croft –

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
– Erma Bombeck –

When I was a kid… no, wait, I still do that…
– Author Unknown –

When they handed her to me and I realized it was a girl, I thought, “I’ve never understood one of you in my whole life.” She’s got a lot of ‘splainin to do.”
– Sean Penn –

Years ago, a child in a tree with a small caliber rifle bushwacked a piano through the open summer windows of a neighbor’s living room.
– Thomas McGuane –

You can always tell a home with a five-year old in it. You have to wash the soap before you use it.
– Richard Celeste –

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
– Franklin P. Jones –

Removing the Colour

Sunset – original photo

Depending on your perspective, this could be a photo of a tree with a bright coloured background, or a sunset with a dark tree in the foreground.

A washed colour filter

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky.
– Kim Taplin –

This Palo Verde tree took a real beating in our recent snow storm! It was only because it was so big that it could afford to have a few branches amputated. A smaller tree might have been completely removed from the landscape!

A Black and White Filter

Black, white, shades of grey. What is the focus of this photo now!?

Giant Water Bug

Bug Bits
Name: Giant Water Bug
Species: Lethocerus americanus
Native to: These bugs can be found in southern Canada and throughout most of the United States.
Date Seen: September 2018
Location: North of Calgary, Alberta
Notes: 46 to 52 mm (1.8 to 2 in) long. Lives in ponds, marshes and slow moving waterways. Handle with care because they can inflict a painful bite. They are attracted to light and can be found flying under lamp posts and porch lights.

Dessert and Candy Quotations

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
– Author Unknown –

A bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. “You want to be careful with those,” Ron warned Harry. “When they say every flavor, they mean every flavor – you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a booger-flavored one once.”
Ron picked up a green bean, looked at it carefully, and bit into a corner.
“Bleaaargh – see? Sprouts.”
– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone –

After you’ve eaten all the raw cookie dough, you might as well turn off the oven.
– Dee Ann Stewart –

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.
– Jim Fiebig –

A party without cake is just a meeting.
– Julia Child –

Cheese popcorn is not a dairy product.
– Dee Ann Stewart –

Dessert should close the meal gently and not in a pyrotechnic blaze of glory. No cultivated feeder, already well fed, thanks his host for confronting him with a dessert so elaborate that not to eat it is simply rude – like refusing to watch one’s host blow up Bloomingdale’s.
– Alan Koehler, ‘Madison Avenue Cook Book’ –

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250.
– Author Unknown –

Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
– J. Hart –

I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream.
– Heywood Broun –

I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.
– Graham Kerr –

Life is like an 6-slice apple pie at a 12-guest dinner banquet. If you just sit back and wait for it to come to you, chances are, you’re going to miss dessert.
– Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness –

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.
– Ernestine Ulmer –

Man at bakery: Inside me, there’s a thin person struggling to get out. But I can usually sedate him with four or five doughnuts.
– Author Unknown –

Mousse: How pudding describes itself on its résumé!
– Last Week Tonight with John Oliver –

One gloomy spring day my wife, who seldom bakes, asked our three year old daughter if she’d like to help her bake some cookies. Kaylah looked up at her mom in surprise and asked, “Is it Christmas again?”
– Jamey Gormley –

Out of love I made you a cake. Also out of milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and vanilla.
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They’re Over –

Question: What did the gingerbread man put on his bed?
Answer: A cookie sheet.
– Author Unknown –

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.
-Erma Bombeck –

Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!
– Author Unknown –

These days, you never know what’s going to happen next. Ergo, eat your dessert first.
– Author Unknown –

Think what a better world it would be if we all had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap.
– Robert Fulghum –

This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn’t say how far to separate them.
– Gracie Allen –

We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson –

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.
– Jim Davis –

You can say this for ready-mixes — the next generation isn’t going to have any trouble making pies exactly like mother used to make.
– Earl Wilson –

You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.
– Ronald Reagan –

Snowy Egret

The Feather Files
Name: Snowy Egret
Species: Egretta thula
Native to and Migration: Breeding populations in the interior of North America and along the north Atlantic coast migrate. Many western birds winter in Mexico, while many eastern birds migrate to the Gulf Coast or fly across the ocean to the Caribbean islands and South America.
Date Seen: January 2017, April 2016
Location: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Sun Lakes Arizona
Notes: Medium-sized herons with long, thin legs and long, slender, bills. All white with a black bill, black legs, and yellow feet.