We recently had bad weather with and I remembered that I had taken this video of large chunks of hail falling into a swimming pool last summer, making the water dance.
Chicken Soup For The Soul
I have a story titled “The Haunted Remote” about my grandparents and my great uncle in this book. Chicken Soup for the Soul has a whole line of books on different subjects (personally, I’m a fan of their books about animals). The stories are short short, uplifting, and appropriate for middle grade readers (I have a friend who is a middle grade teacher and said her class liked to hear these stories read aloud).
Cereal Box Sea Turtle
I saw this life-sized sea turtle made from cereal boxes at Piney Bay Coffee Company in Clarksville, Arkansas. The sculpture was made by artist Tyler Rideout and is a great way to make art of recycled materials.
Crawfish Boil
My husband’s cousin, Jimmy Clark, invited us for a Crawfish Boil which was a first for me. Crawfish are also called Crayfish, Crawdads, or Mud Bugs. The crawfish are boiled in a big pot along with onions, potatoes and corn on the cob, then spiced. The crawfish are eaten by hand, craking the shell open and peeling it off to yield a tiny bit of spicy meat.
Whoot! A Juvenile Barred Owl
My cousin, Natalie Maxwell McDonald, took this photo of a juvenile barred owl. You can just barely see the stripes under the owl’s neck and on the back. In fhe first photo, notice how camouflaged the bird is.
Mountain Chickadee
This is artwork by Dorothia Rohner, author/illustrator of “A Wish for Twins” and author of “I am Goose!” She drew this picture while visiting Montana.
Barred Owl
My son, Levi and his fiance, Sabrina, have a 2023 project where they are going to photograph every bird native to Iowa. They got this beautiful picture of a barred owl. The barred owl makes many different sounds, but the bird’s most recognizable call has four hoots repeated twice and sounds like “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?”
Alligator
I held an alligator for the first time while in Florida. His belly was as soft as a baby. Notice his rounded snout. Alligator snouts are round on the end and their bottom teeth don’t stick out of their mouth. Crocodiles have v-shaped snouts and their bottom teeth stick out.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
I saw this antique candle collection in a store window in the mall and thought it was fascinating. I couldn’t include the whole display in this photo. This is about a third of the candles.
Fall Frenzy Writing Contest
This is my entry for the Fall Frenzy Writing Contest. The rules of the contest included picking one of the provided fall pictures, writing about the picture in under 200 words and posting it to a blog. https://lydialukidis.wordpress.com/fallwritingfrenzy-2022-rules/
Halloween: Credit Selina Wing for Bing
The Pumpkin Gang
When doors creak open on Halloween,
Some sights can never be unseen.
A hundred pumpkins, maybe more,
Lurk behind that creepy door.
Pumpkins snicker.
Seeds are spit.
None are smashed,
All are lit.
With candy-snatching pumpkin grins,
A jack-o-lantern chant begins:
Tricks or treats.
Surrender your sweets.
No beets. No meats. No Shredded Wheats.
Don’t care if candy rots our teeth.
Give us your chocolate in little wrappers,
your caramel cubes, and sour snappers,
giggling taffy, and waxy lips,
mints, suckers, licorice whips.
Candy corn and sugar rocks,
Hand over every rattlebox.
Feed us fudge and gummi ghosties,
Malted milks and cinnamon toasties.
Surrender the candy?!
Don’t be cray-cray.
Hide your treats and run away.
But, no worries anyway…
The pumpkin gang will soon decay.
Shelley Jones Clark
