I love my digital camera! I mean, I really REALLY love my digital camera! It’s just a cheap, point ‘n’ shoot…and I only have a very basic photo editing program. But that doesn’t stop me from taking a gazillion pictures!

I make cards from a lot of my pictures. I make them to sell and I make them for my own personal use. Today, I made a birthday card for my sweet grandson, Skye. Inside, I wrote something about sending him a big, birthday hug. Sorry this one is so little.

I like making these cards lots better than I like spending all those dollars on commercially made cards. I like to think they mean more to the people who get them from me, too. And they’re super easy to make. I like that, too.

Something else I like is taking really close-up pictures of things.

Like this.

This is an agave plant. It is also known as a century plant. It is said that they only bloom once every hundred years. That's not exactly true. Don't believe everything you hear. However, they must be one of the fastest growing plants in the world. They have a central stalk that just shoots up and up and up....like Jack's beanstalk...until they reach 20 or 30 feet into the sky. Then, they grow short branches which are covered with orange blooms. Then they die. Yep. That's it. It's all over. But we love 'em while they last.

Isn't this pretty? It looks like a great piece of abstract art. It's a rock. Rocks rock!

This is a saguaro cactus. Saguaros are those gigantic cacti you see in so many old western movies and on so many Mexican Restaurant signs. Guess what? They grow no place else on earth except The Sonoran Desert. So, when you see them in a movie that's supposed to be in Texas, you can snigger and tell everybody, "Those don't even grow in Texas!" Won't you feel smart!

OUCH!!! I nearly got TOO close to this barrel cactus. There's a million ways to get poked and stuck and jabbed on The Sonoran Desert. Ya' gotta be real careful!

And finally....

I love old, crumbling adobe walls. You can find lots of them around here. There's just something lonely and sad about those old walls. I can't help but wonder what stories they could tell.

Go have fun with your camera! And

Don't forget to be

GRATEFUL!!!!!!!