Lets Jump Together

Fact or fiction, I am convinced it works.

Have you ever heard of anyone who can add the art of dowsing or divining to their lists of accomplishments?

I have had the joy of knowing such a person and I am a believer.

Are you aware of what a Dowser does?

Dowsing dates back to ancient times, and it has never been a scientifically proven fact, but a Dowser is a person who finds underground water by using divining or dowsing rods.  In the old days, it was also used to find metals and gems.

Quite often these rods are made of Y-shaped willow branches, freshly cut or not, depending on the dowser.  Holding the top of the Y ends, the long end of the branch bends towards the ground when water is detected.

My grandfather-in-law was quite accomplished in this art.

He never failed to find the underground water, and many rural household wells were dug according to his predictions.

Sometimes the force of the bending rod in his hands would leave marks upon his forearms.

Those were the really good water sources.

He was well past his divining days when I became part of the family, but I would have loved to see him in action.

He had a gift that helped many people during his time.

He passed away a couple of weeks ago - 2 days before his 96th birthday.

We are sweeping off the welcome and are inviting you to join us on Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago I set up a page with my photo blog being the main feed.

After stumbling around and learning more about the site, I set up a network for each of my blogs, and there is a link to this network in the right sidebar.

I invite my readers to follow us.

I am finding that many people do not have links on their blogs even though they are on Facebook, therefore I cannot add them to my page, but if you add me, I can then follow you too.

I wasn’t sure how much I was really going to like the facebook site, but I have found that I like the way it pulls everything together in one place.

I was able to post links to all my websites, and can also have all the links to the stock sites that I contribute to on the My Stuff page.

I like that the site I host my photos with has an application that allows me to pull in my photos as I upload them.

It is a handy site, and I hope to make more of it as I become more familiar with it.

Any tips or advice is most welcome!

And as always - thanks for stopping by.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

-by Thomas A Edison

How true it is!  Often times things look too hard to do or one is just lazy.  Very seldom do we get a second chance, so grasp that brass ring, and give it all you’ve got!.

He has been gone for over 12 years now, but I remember it well.  As pet owners, we all put up with a lot.

Our dog had a lot to share with us - including tons of hair.

We also had two cats at the time, so the hair could get out of control if we didn’t keep on top of it.

Each summer the dog would put up with us giving him his “haircut”.

It would start with just laying him down and hacking away big chunks of hair - he would look so atrocious!

Once we used the clippers on him, though, he looked great, and you could tell he felt lighter with all the running and hopping around he would do afterwards.

But he would still shed quite heavily in the house - just shorter hairs.

It has been many years since we have had to worry about any of this, but come this winter we may have to start thinking about it again.

The feral cat that has been living around our property may be comfortable enough with us to come indoors so he can warm up.

We have been coaxing and encouraging him during these warmer months to get him used to the idea, but he is so wary.

I have found some supplements by Dinovite online, and we may start him on some of those as to cut down on his shedding - which he does plenty of on the porch.

He loves to be brushed, so perhaps we can use that to make him feel more comfortable inside too.

We use researching online as our solutions center and we will continue to look for ways to make him and us more comfortable.

Wish we had had some of these ideas years ago when our dog was still with us - it would have saved us all a lot of grief!

I heard it on the radio this morning - today is the first Global Wind Day.

The purpose of this day is to increase the awareness of wind energy as an alternative source of power without the use of fossil fuels.

It is being celebrated in 30 countries around the planet.

In our country, wind is being equated to the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

Where they are rich in oil, we are rich in wind with our wide open plains and prairies.

We do harvest this element of nature with our wind turbines, but there has been some concern over the past 30 years as the amount of wind has begun to diminish in many areas of the country.

The areas where this is most evident is the Northeast and the Great Lakes.

Scientists believe that this is due to the climate changes from the global warming and have studies from 1973-2000 to support their findings.

Since global warming is blamed for many things, how did they find that it has affected the wind supply?

First, there is less of a difference in the temperatures between the poles and the equator.

This is happening as the poles become warmer.

Second, the barometric pressure is brought down as there is less of a temperature difference between the colliding air masses.

This brings down the wind currents that run about 30 feet above the ground - where we measure our wind speeds and calculate the supply of it.

Unheard of in the past, there are endless days of no wind in the affected areas of our country.

Windless days can affect humans and agriculture in much the same way.

We need the the wind to move the air during our summer heat waves.

The ventilation from the wind also helps with the pollution levels in the cities.

As far as the agriculture goes - the plants need the wind just as much as we do.

The dew that forms on the crops overnight gets dried by the wind each day and that keeps the plants healthy.

If the dew were to stay on the plants, they would develop fungus and disease - seriously affecting our food supply.

The wind turbines that we use for energy are higher than the 30 feet that we humans exist in.  Scientists are just now beginning to study the wind supplies in those levels - a whole new frontier that has opened up.

So, this first wind day is important - a step towards using an alternative energy source that will reduce our carbon footprint.  This in effect will help reduce the global warming of our home, the Earth.

It used to be only once in a great while.  Now it is every evening, sometimes twice.

It used to be just one.  Now there are two - I would say they are a pair.

And they are so beautiful!

We are quite enjoying the nightly visits that these Gray Foxes are making in our back yard.

Each morning I feed the birds some bread crumbs under their feeders.  Most of it is gone by the time the evening comes around, but it only took a few stray pieces for the foxes to find them and make our yard a part of their nightly rounds for food.

I will say though, that I got pretty nervous one evening last week when I was taking a trip out to the compost pile.

The foxes usually show up right about 8:00 each night, so I try to make sure that nobody is outside around that time.

It was only 7:30 - I figured I was all set.

When I came around the corner of my house, I think the fox and I both jumped a foot.

I ran one way, he took off the other way.

Once inside I looked out the window to see him slowly sneaking back to finish off the crumbs.

It has been a dark, rainy week here, but that has not stopped the visits, and I am hoping that the early arrivals they have been making is due to the weather.

As much as we enjoy seeing them, we know that encouraging them to come around is not good for them or us.

We will keep an eye on it to see how things go, but the ground birds may be lacking a few meals until the foxes drop us from their nightly rounds.

I thought I would use this post to share the most popular posts in this blog.

Since it is a wordpress blog, I originally installed a plug-in that tells me the most popular ones and their counts.

I was surprised by some of them on the list because a couple of them are fairly recent, and they have been viewed enough to pass some of the older ones.

If you missed some of the earlier posts for this blog, I hope you will take a minute to visit some of the links below.

This list is on order of how the posts are counted at this time.

Giant Millipedes

Atomic Bomb Underwater

Sable Island

Unbelievable!

Happiness Quote by the Dalai Lama

Keep the Crows Happy

Earth Lights at Night

Driveway Moment?

The plug-in gives me the top 8 posts only.

Thanks to my friends for making these pages the most popular!