“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”
Elbert Hubbard
Terri Webster Schrandt, who hosts Sunday Stills, mentioned that as a retired person, “everyday is like Saturday.” Who knew?
Two weeks ago we took our first “vacay” back to our “home” in California to see our friends. On the way to our vacay, we stopped in Las Vegas to look at houses – that’s what retired realtors do! We also had a foto frenzy in the Bellagio Spring Gardens.
#Las Vegas Bellagio Gardens Walk #3
In the last two Bellagio Garden Walks, we stayed near to the entrance of the gardens looking at the Dutch entry and then looked up at the butterflies. To see any of these posts, you can search the Walk title.
Like Terri, I love to submit to several challenges at once. I put my pictures through the blue and green sieve to meet the requirements for Tina’s Lens Artist Photo Challenge #149 Cool Colors this week. I love being one of the Cool Bloggers, don’t you?
For this post, we are going to do some birding. Lisa Colman hosts Bird Weekly. This week’s challenge is birds with a G in their title. This is a Great Big Blue Hummingbird.
Since this is a vacation for us, not a research project, you don’t get a lot of explanations with this post. We had our cameras busy, but didn’t see any major explanations along this walk. Here are several more posts of this beautiful Great big blue hummingbird standing still for all of us parading around it.
Don’t you love the shadow on the flower? These photos are also being submitted to Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day Challenge. She is giving me composition advice and this week we are working on lighting. Take a look at her new page, Tips from Cee to get some advice from her too. The designers even took lighting into account when they created this lovely display
Distinctly Cool Pictures
If it’s getting hot where you live, click on these pictures to cool off while sipping a cold glass of lemonade.
That’s what we did in the fifties and sixties when I was growing up in Indiana before air conditioning – and my dad was an air conditioning designer for Carrier Corporation. At home we used an enormous house fan mounted in the garage window to take out all the hot air to cool off the house enough to sleep at night. We also took long “cool off” rides, ate ice cream, and drank lemonade. Just a bit of TMI that came to mind just now. 🙂 Hope this helps you keep cool.
Finally to support my Always Write brand and favorite color, I have to include a bit of turquoise. As some of you know, I love to do digital puzzles through an app on my computer when I’m just dinking around or can’t sleep. This next picture made a great puzzle because it is so colorful.
Finally, I’m way too late for this, but a few weeks ago Cee had a real and fake challenge. Well, this post is all fake, but here’s one of the fakiest birds of all in the Bellagio Giadini shop next to the Gardens. Isn’t she elegant? There’s some more nice greenery in the store for Tina’s challenge and a little bit of everything else.
Coming Up This Week
- #Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays the next topic is Hope. I hope you join in. There’s still time to write or link your post (with quotes) for this week’s topic of Healing. Check out some of the fabulous posts in the comment section and pingbacks for more ideas.
- #Story Chat – Oh my gosh, Anne Stormont had NO idea of what a storm she was creating when she wrote “Nailing It.” The comment box has just exploded. Tuesday I will post the Story Chat Summary post using your comments and links to your blog. I’ve got a lot of work to do before Tuesday!
- #Challenge Interview Series I’m still working on the interview with Sandy and Amanda from the Friendly Friday Challenge which comes out May 29th.
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
Your babbling is music to my ears. Please leave a comment!