Another morning of work...

I wouldn't call this just another morning...strange things happen in the desert....i just have a bunch of photos that i have taken at work. Some are on the range, airfield, at the pond. i have tried to mix up wildlife with sunrises and bombing shit so noone gets bored:)

Well, it is of course a bombing range...

...and an air force auxillary field.

I think i can, i think i can.....:)

I LOVE this bug/spider thing i came across in the desert. he looks like he is from the future. I will call him future bug! Hey, off subject-have you seen the movie The Fourth Kind-super trippy you should totally watch it! Heads up-DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT watch the movie BAd Leutenant w/ nik cage.

Adaptation is soooo COOL!

Ahh, the saguaros are in bloom...and everyone knows about it!

These are our desert iguanas. they are everywhere, warming up on the range roads in the morning-driving through them is like running the gauntlet. they are also found our dog walks around the neighborhood.

This guy almost wound up in my pocket and taken home to add to our collection of pets! He was soooo f-n cute wandering around slowly first thing in the morning. i would feel nothing but guilt taking him out of the massive desert he lives and putting him in a glass box-but he'd still be cute and i could look at EVERYDAY!!!

.....he was so cute i found earrings to match him:)

This is an american avocet in breeding plumage-really pretty water birds.

A crescent moon with some cholla on the foremountain makes a great sunrise.

This is when i stopped taking pictures of him--i didnt even realize that he was really lunging at me until i downloaded the pics:p (sorry- a little out of order).

This is the view from an observation point that i had not visited, not bad:) (to get the full effect you should double click on it since it is a panoramic).

this is a Sonoran gopher snake-it was atleast 2.5 inches thick and like 3 feet long. Luckily he was only on the road to try and warm up. i gently moved him-yes i am a snake saver!

this is a collared male Sonoran pronghorn. the problem with these guys is that they are pen bred and raised. in the pen they are fed by a FWS white truck that pulls up and people come out and feed them. we have recognized that the collared males have grown accustomed to this and this is why when we encounter them-like the picture above-they don't go running away at 60mph like the wild animals do.

I hope this finds everyone doing well. i am taking Bilis on a girl's camping trip next weekend and looking forward to showing her how much fun girl's can have..she is totally daddy's girl.

NOW POST MF's!!!

Introducing Bryson & Bilis...

And here they are, father and son, seeing Paul interact with his son was pretty amazing. It was nice to see his sensitive side and just to watch them interact as a family. We think they are on the right path:)
Bryson Hayes Tidwell-Shepard, Yep, that is an 8 day old baby..pretty ugly!

'Uncle Shyama, i want.....'....this i believe is B. Hayes practicing on his uncle for the future:)

Auntie Amanda and Baby Bryson

This is Lynx lake where we camped in Prescott while visiting the baby. It was pretty nice with the campsites spaced out and this lake you could rent canoes and go out on it. we walked the loop and saw some pretty cool stuff.

Manzanita

i liked the view, there was a bald eagle that was roosted looking for breakfast but he was just too far to get a good picture of:(

love is in the air...or in the dirt

This heron swooped right over us and perched herself like 10 ft above our heads and started hissing, i think we were too close to her nest!

Introducing Bilis Castro-Shepard!! not sure how i feel about the hyphenated last name, maybe we will just call her Bilis Shepard. Bilis is pronounced Belize- 2 part meaning- beautiful like the country but the spelling is tagalog for 'hurry', this is appropriate seeing she is a greyhound mix, we think she is greyhound/lab mix.

She is clearly already his dog! Shyama's routine has changed some:) He takes the dog out every morning and starts doggy boot camp. She has needed to be trained to walk on a leash, not go to the bathroom in the house, and making new friends. She never spent enough time in he previous house to know that going to the bathroom inside is bad, she is learning. She is doing much better on the leash-she still gets a bit overwhelmed when we take her on a walk, too much stimuli. and, i made the mistake of inviting another dog over to the house instead of meeting up in a neutral place:( we are going to meet at the park next time! She is still learning how to not annoy/follow around the cats-Player has made sure to keep her in her place, reminding her who is in charge, esspecially when he blocks the doorway to a room and she has to dart by him only for him to slap her in the face:( She does not beg for food and is being crate trained. we hope to bring her home with us to Chicago for our road trip back to AZ! here are some photos of our new addition...

nap time

play time

This is how Player feels about the whole dog thing....his face permanently looks like this!

silly girl.

Hope your are doing well! We were looking forward to going to brewfest this weekend with Justin and his peeps but like the whole Portland thing had to call it off. We are just not in a place right now to be taking vaca's:( Hoping that will change as soon as the economy picks up and Shyam gets a job.

Keep up the blog, MF's

More of the same...

Here are some random shots of a hike and some work pictures, mostly critters and flowers....what do you expect from the biologist?


Not usually into spideys but this one had the shape of a daddy long legs but had the most beautiful colors!! he was purple with black and white specs on his legs!


Taj-It's the poppie that grew from concrete:)..get it?! This gal was amazing standing straight up outta a massive rock on our 12 mile excursion, we were planning on doing 8 miles but decided that we didnt want to turn around since the 8 miles would be there and back, instead we opted for the loop which was 12.5 miles and then it dumped us 2 miles from the car...suffice to say it was one of the longest day hikes we ever took!...but now we consider ourselves hardcore:)


LOVE HIM!!



Strawberry hedgehog cactus!



I loved this ocotillo bloom!



A very curious Canyon wren, what a pie!



Gotta love it!



So, i know it's dificult to see but there is a FAWN!!! They were at the base of my OP and it was amazing! i have to admit i wanted the fawn to be cuter than it was. Although, i do understand that these animals need to be able to run immediately and fast! so he was bigger than i suspected..still cute:)



but this guy totally made up for it! He was/is by far the cutest thing i have ever seen!! still waiting on a friend to tell me the species....

love you guys and take care..I'm sure Shyam will come back with some cool camping pictures and you will be able to see some different stuff:) ac

Hey guys! Hope everyone is doing well. I think the weather has improved for most of us, so we will all be able to get out a little more. And thanks for the concern Amanda, there has not been any flooding where I live luckily. My area is prone to flooding and I did have about six inches of water under my car the first week I moved here in November. But nothing now.

I didn't really have anything going this month, so I compiled some pics and put them together in this posting. And most of them are of the mouth-watering bbq I made a while back. :)







On the left is about 60% of a Boston Butt that I got. I figured there was no way I could eat an entire one in any reasonable amount of time. And I am glad I did because it took about 2 weeks to eat all the bbq I did make. I didn't season it or anything being that it was my first attempt to make homemade bbq. So I just put it in the casserole dish and popped it in the oven for about 10 hours at about 250 degrees or less. At first it smelled really bad and I thought I had done something wrong, but that was the blood slowly cooking away (or whatever blood does). After 10 hours or so I opened up the oven to see this beautiful piece of cooked pork. :)










Out of the oven an into the pot to cool a little bit. Once it was a little cooler, I used a fork and my hands to just shred the pork. In the picture to the left in the pot, you can kind of see the bone on the left of the meat. It literally fell right off the meat. I've heard of the meat falling of the bone, but never the bone falling out of the meat. Anyway, once it was shredded it was ready to fix.








Ahh, the final result. A nice pot of pulled pork bbq with a can if Simpler Times. Nice fuckin combination if you ask me. The pic of my car is to show the work I had done on it. I wish I took a before shot to compare to, but I couldn't bare to see my car in such bad shape so I never took a picture of it. The work was unbelievable. Apparently, the guy who did the work used to paint Ford Buy-backs, and if the paint did not match, then Ford did not buy back the car. So he is very good at what he does. I also got the engine tuned up and four new tires. She is ready for road! (once I get current plates that is)













To the left is the spot where I would like to put the fire pit. Of course the Holly Bush would have to go in order to make room for the pit. And that means the first thing I would do in the backyard is cut down an old tree, and that kinda sucks. So, I have put that project on the back burner for a little while. On the right is all the things I have been up to the past few weeks. I took a few classes at the Norfolk Department of Public Health in order to be certified by the city to be a food safety manager. It was not necessary at my job, but I felt that it couldn't hurt to have on the resume some certifications. Plus the CPR and First Aid is just nice to know.

Wish I had more exciting things to show, but it has been kind of a grind this last month. The weather has just changed to Spring last week so I will try to get out and take some nice pics.

Take Care,
sh

Spring Bloom vs. Spring Training...

I have to admit that i have never seen a desert bloom until this season and it is just amazing! We have had more rain this year than last year already and it is supposed to keep coming so the blooms will continue!




<-----Mexican poppies, Desert lupine and Owl's clover. Below is hat mountain, we take this drive bi-weekly doing raptor surveys

These are Ajo lillies-just amazing springing to life in the middle of the desert..outta stones and dirt. They can get to be 4 ft tall!

<-----not sure about the species but thought they were amazing coming out of the rocks

spring bloom of Mexican poppies

This is Alamo Lake-Shyam checked it out last week in hopes of finding good camping for when Justin arrives..i think he was a bit disappointed. beautiful body of water though!

...and look what he ran into while looking...feral mules or wild ass-whichever you prefer! i mean who gets lucky enough to run into wild ass when you're not even looking for some:) nice one, babe!

We finally made it to a spring training game the last weekend of the season and i may be tempted to drag him out for the remainder 4 games i had such a blast! Thanks for sucking it up honey-its gonna be so much worse when we are sitting on the couch indoors watching baseball:)

Hohokam Stadium-this is the Cubs Spring Training stadium where they hold all of their home games in Mesa, AZ.

Hooray for baseball and Sunshine!

Not a bad view at all....

And here is Shyam representing my city!!

Decide for yourself; nature w/ wildflowers, cacti, and mountains or baseball, butts and beer? Sunshine included in both:)...i think i need a round 2 of both to decide:)...keep ya posted:)