Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Marko Inspires........

A few weeks ago, we received something mysterious in the mail.



It is a "Thank You" card from an animal shelter in Kentucky.













They are thanking us for a donation made in Marko's memory.

The donation came from a couple in Wisconsin (!!)



We do not know them, but we want to let them know how pleased we are that Marko inspired them to do something nice for other animals.



Can anyone out there shed any light on this???

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Alice and the Frog

We went to visit our good friends, Dragan and Alice, who now live in the Indianapolis area. We go to visit them from time to time as a short get-away. They have a really nice house with a cool deck. One of the nicest features of their house is the beautiful pond Dragan made in the back yard.
 



 It has fish,



lilly pads,



a bridge,



(John looking for frogs)

waterfalls ,















and frogs.





We sit out on the back deck after a barbeque with a drink and Serbian music playing, and listen to the water in the pond, walk up on the deck and feed the fish, look at the lilly pad blossoms and try to get a look at the frogs -- of course at night the frogs also serenade us. The frogs hide most of the time.

Dragan and Alice talked about some real big frogs that were in the pond -- sometimes if you are lucky they come out of the water onto the gravel shore or on one of the lilly pads. We kept checking that evening and never saw a big frog.

The next  morning Alice and I are out on the deck relaxing. Alice says "Look, Regina. One of the big frogs is out sitting on the gravel." I look and look and don't see it. Then she tells me, "He is near the bridge." So I look again and sure enough, there he is! I am thrilled! I grab my camera, creep slowly and quietly nearer and nearer to the pond so I can take a picture...














Wanting to get a better picture, I move ever so slowly towards the pond, crouched down near to the ground. I whisper to Alice "He is so big! I am getting great pictures"



I continued to use stealth tactics to get pictures of this huge frog without scaring him off....











Alice then says to me "Throw a rock at him, and make him jump." I tell her, "No...I don't want him to jump back in the pond. I want him to stay here."

Then Alice says, "It's not real!"

And I take a better look.......



And I realize it is a fake, decorative frog! By this time Alice is laughing so hard I thought she would start crying....

She got me! It was a good one -- I was buying it!

Did I mention Alice is a good friend????