Friday Foto Friends: Skies, Cranes, Cats and Butterflies!

 Good Morning everyone! It's a beautiful Friday morning here in our neck of the woods.  Currently 81 degrees at 9:30 a.m., but it "feels like" 86, which means it's still hot and humid here!  We should get some thunderstorms this afternoon...thankfully!  We need the rain so badly here on our Still Waters Pond!

Here's how the skies looked this morning as the sun was rising actually behind us in the east, but reflecting on the clouds in the west, making it look like there was a sunrise over Still Waters Pond!

It's always a surprise when I see the sunshine in the west in the early morning like this! 

As you can tell by these and the following pictures, Still Waters Pond is still in need of a lot of water!

Where you see all that green grass is actually where there should be water!! We just haven't had enough rain this summer to fill it back  up like it should be.  I'm hoping that will change soon as we head into September.  Thankfully we haven't had any hurricanes here yet, but September is usually the time they develop in this area, so hopefully if they do they will only bring us some much needed rain and nothing worse!  So thankful that Hurricane Erin stayed out to sea, but still I know it did some damage along the coastal areas along the shores of the Atlantic. Praying no one we know has been affected by flooding or other damage.

Here's how the skies looked over the pond a couple of afternoons ago...I like how the sunlight was shining through all those clouds...

I think we may have gotten a good thunderstorm out of this, but still it's not quite enough.

Come rain or shine, our sweet porch kitties don't mind, as long as we remember to feed them on time! LOL

And also as long as no one disturbs their nap time, which is practically any time at all...

Yesterday afternoon I noticed this beautiful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly enjoying the nectar from our Bottlebrush bush.

I was so happy that it hung around long enough for me to go out and get some good pictures of it.

There were also some bees enjoying the flowers...but I stayed as far away as I could from them!

Apparently they don't bother the butterfly and there were plenty of flowers for everyone:

I hope you don't mind so many photos! We just don't get to see these very often, so I like to take advantage of these photo ops when they occur!

While I was out there watching the butterfly, the Sand Hill Crane family came walking up along the shore of Still Waters Pond...

One of them apparently prefers to walk in the pond instead of on the shore, but it is still so shallow out there they could pretty much walk all the way across the pond!

Since they saw me out there, they figured it must be 'dinner time', and yes, it was. We usually throw them a handful of bird seed in the afternoon and morning (if they show up).  

And believe it or not, this one below is "Trumpet", the "baby" crane, who is now definitely as big as his parents. He was actually standing in our little "kiddy" pool getting a drink of water when I took these pictures!

Mama Crane also went to the pool for a drink, and Blackie our kitty just sat on the porch and watched. The cats and cranes don't bother each other. They seem to have respect for one another.

Oh, I guess I came to the end of my pictures for now.  So I will pause to say thank you to all of you who have been so faithful and kind to read my posts and make such wonderful comments.  I don't always leave replies because I'm not sure if you come back to read them or not, but I do read every comment and appreciate you all so much. I can't seem to figure out how to connect through email to you directly from my blog. My computer wants to send me to some other place and it takes so long to get it figured out that I give up.  Please know that I appreciate each and every one of you, and I look forward to hearing from you and also to read your blogs if you have them. I know there are some who make comments who don't have blogs, and if I can make a connection with you I will, but if there's no blog to connect to, there's no way to send a personal message. Still, I enjoy hearing from you. I am always surprised when I find out how far reaching our blogs really are! This is a happy place, and I thank you each and every one for your friendship here.

I need to get moving...hubby has a doctor appointment in a few minutes, so it's time to go. I am feeling much better than last week, and am so thankful. Tomorrow we are traveling an hour or so away to meet up with our extended family at a restaurant for lunch and for an August birthday/anniversary celebration! There are so many in our family who have either birthdays or anniversaries in August that we have made it an annual tradition to get together to just celebrate family!  I'm sure I'll have pictures to share from that!

(internet photo)

(internet photo)

Amen.