Big ol' Catch Up Post

I am getting recalcitrant around here. Way too recalcitrant. I may have never used that word before, but now i have used it twice. Anyhow, I am as unfocused as ever, so I will just toss in some random photos and try to make sense of them - or at least most of them. First, let's do "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" This suet cake attracts a bird or two, recently including a really fine looking red bellied woodpecker, but it is also getting popular with mammals. This morning, for the entire time that I enjoyed my breakfast inside, this squirrel (second picture) was having at the suet. And last night, our nocturnal suet fan, "Rocky", paid a visit.
Meanwhile, inside the house, with the warmer (finally!) spring weather, it's sheddin' season. This dog of ours is a world class shedder. I can just pick clumps of fur out of his hind legs. Fortunately, he actually enjoys getting a vacuum treatment. If we are vacuuming a room, he comes up and basically asks for a going-over.
OK, back to squirrels for a moment...What is going on with the local squirrel gene pool? Is this a trendy dye job or the real deal? Squirrel Gaga? A tail graft? What?

My wife had a birthday last week and I was determined to bake her a cake, which I have rarely if ever done before. She likes the German chocolate; the kids, who were visiting over Easter weekend, not so much. So - no problem! I baked (or, more precisely, iced) a half-and-half; sort of like that squirrel and its tail.
Then there is the weather, which has been a great source of aggravation this "spring". I put "spring" in quotes because until the last couple of days, I was wearing my winter coat. Anyhow, the rain has been falling with such volume and frequency that a goodly portion of our yard has been submerged. Here I am enjoying my new-found waterfront property. I wonder how much our property values are boosted. I have friends on Facebook saying I should stock the thing and drop a line in. I am waiting for the ducks, geese, and other waterfoul.

Finally, I had to drive about 320 miles today. On the way home, to break up the monotony, I tried that little exercise where I pull out the cell phone (didn't have my camera) and snap a picture every ten miles, just to see what shows up on that tenth mile. I am not going to bore any readers still hanging onto this post with all 17 or so pictures, but just pull out a handful that I found of at least some interest. (When you snap these pictures throughout America, it becomes apparant that most of our great land is pretty much rural, considerably undeveloped, and just hanging there by the highway, unspectacularly). OK, here goes:

A typical "side of the road" down in southeast Ohio, where they have actual hills. That is pretty exciting for a Northwest Ohio flat-lands dweller. I am sure fellow NW Ohioan Daisy would back me up on this.

I sort of like this shot of the bridge, just floating up there, and with ethereal raindrops on the windshield. It is too hard to try to coordinate taking pictures with windshield wipers, so they have to stop for picture taking.

I also liked this picture, for the simple horizontal lines. The flooded property in the background is fairly interesting, too. Here is another one of water that is not usually so predominant:

When you are traveling up through Wayne County and its neighbors, you get a lot of this; vehicles whizzing by Amish buggies. Fortunately, along this stretch of US 250, there is a nice, wide shoulder for the buggies and horses. Any pedestrians on the shoulder should watch where they are walking, if you know what I mean.

And to wrap this trip up, a couple small towns that came along during the ten mile marks. The first is Mt. Eaton, deep in the Amish country; the second is Rowsburg, between Wooster and Ashland, and it is not New Pittsburg.

Finally, and with no explanation from me at this point, here we have some square dancers dancing with pie pans affixed to their heads, and eggs rolling around loose in the pie pans. The picture, like its subject, is fuzzy.