THE NEWS....

Greetings! Rosie is now 5 months old. She's almost as big as her mother. It's almost time to wean her. That's going to be interesting. Time to hit the books again. When Rosie was first born I read several books that focused on training and the initial year of life. But now, it seems that the time has come to go deeper. She has changed a lot. Her first 3 month.....I would characterize her as 'wild' and 'stubborn'....but now she's different. She still has her moments. If something scares her.....she bolts (runs as fast as she can). She's become very easy to handle. Her mother....Champagne.....probably weights a 1,000 lbs.....but I can lead her with one finger. It's amazing that such a powerful animal can be so willing to follow and be lead. I'm very proud of Rosie...as you can tell.....I look forward to seeing her everyday.

As for the rest of us.......everything is good. We're just really busy. Between Denise's school and the work that I do.....we are wiped out everyday. We really look forward to the weekends. We have Carolina and don't have to work. Nice combination.

My only comment on this last picture is.....I don't have a thing for spiders or anything like that. Most of the time I'll just kill one rather than look at it. This picture really turned out nice.


Click on the pic....it blows up nicely!

OCTOBER DAYS

Greetings! I thought I would share these pics. These four pics are from two places in Gadsden that I've always wanted to visit. The first and second pic are from a small island viewable from 759. If you're driving toward Gadsden....it's on the right.....away from Gadsden on 759...it's on the left. But seeing as how we are in a drought and way below on rainfall....the Coosa is very low now. Several feet lower than normal. What is normally an island is now more of a peninsula. I do a lot of driving all over town......I've always admired the land and water behind the mall and directly across 759. My father in law was nice enough to take me out there one day last week. As it turns out....he used to graze cattle on that land when he was younger. He told me of the days when there wasn't a body of water out there...but two intersecting rivers....Black Creek and Wills Creek. They joined together and together they ran into the Coosa. He told me about the Indians who used to live in the area.....that particular spot was very popular for them to congregate. I was privileged enough to find an arrowhead there....a very nice one. We even found a road where cattle and wagons used to move on. It was amazing to see what's normally not seen. Especially driving up/down 759...it's easy to not notice. The pics above is a view from inside the small cluster of trees. It was a very beautiful day.....very breezy and comfortable temperature. The pics below is a view from the bank (normally a bank when normal water level). If you look out there next time you drive by you'll see a really nice sea wall and lanterns that run the bank of the river (at normal water levels). If you continue on around....you'll eventually get to where this photo was taken. It's hard to tell...but 4 or 5 feet ahead of me is a 5 foot drop. The low lands are really green with new vegetation. Eventually you'll get to a spot where water still runs between the two......it's only about a foot deep. We found a spot to walk across that wasn't too muddy and we didn't sink down into the mud just on down to the right of the photo. Besides the arrowhead.....we found lots of golf balls....really old glass bottles....lots of huge clam shells...some 6 to 9 inches long.........a large turtle shell (empty)......lots of aluminum cans.....and no snakes. I was shocked to not see any snakes. I had always heard the island called 'Snake Island'.

Denise's family has some land down on the Coosa river. At one time they had a pier. But years had not been nice to the pier and it's pretty much in ruin. Water levels being low as they are, provided an opportunity for us to go visit the pier and walk around under it. I was amazed at how much the river had dropped. There was a good 15 feet of shore to walk on and another 5 feet of super shallow water. It was very nice. Carolina was with us this day.....she really enjoyed the adventure. Below is a pic that Denise took. It's one of those creepy spiders! All we took were photos. Left everything else as it was. "Leave only footprints....take only photos" as the adage goes. I had a quick flashback to my liberal college days! Sorry. Walking down on the Coosa river is something that I had always wanted to do. For sure.....I'll be back down there again!