CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. My wife was sitting on the deck yesterday evening, playing games on her IPod Touch. She started hearing a hawk's strident cry, or so she thought. After locating the sound she saw a mockingbird imitating a hawk's cry. He was scaring a bunch of squirrels, who are deathly afraid of hawks. The squirrels were squawking in anger and when they would subside the mockingbird would cry out like a hawk again. Most amusing. I didn't know birds had a sense of humor.     We bought a game for the IPad yesterday. It's very popular at the moment. I think it's overrated because you really don't do much. It's called Super Mega Worm and you control a worm that is trying to eat all the humans on earth, to prevent pollution. The price is 99 cents so you are not out a lot of money if you hate it.     Hey, maybe they should come up with a game that has mockingbirds tormenting squirrels.     CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. It's a beautiful morning here on the mountain. It's 56 degrees and a nice blue sky. Reminds me of a morning in Trinidad, Colorado after a big storm. That was in July.     I wanted to tell you gamers about a site called You Tube Plants vs. Zombies Channel. I suppose it's an official site for that game, which you know I really like. There's a fun video from their fan convention. I'd recommend it to anyone, really.     I'm getting a real lesson in geography here on the blog. As you know from previous posts, Google allows us to see the number of hits from different nations, although not anything specific about the folks. (Again, I have no desire to intrude on anyone's privacy.) So, I noticed the other night that I had a visitor from Burundi, which is very cool. It's my first viewer from the African continent and I dug out my encyclopedia and read about this East African nation. It was very interesting and as I went to sleep ...

    Hey, everyone. I thought I'd share my recipe for cheeseburgers. I like to add some spice to the meat so I add several things. 1. salt 2. pepper 3. Cajun spice 4.Heinz 57, just a little 5.Greek spice, (Cavender's) 6.ketchup, just a little 7.mix the meat, pat out the patties, then after grilling on one side, put Montreal steak spice on them before you put the cheese on. 8. serve with a dill spear and an ice cold beer, maybe a few chips. 9. take a nap From the green retreat. CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. Just went for a walk in the woods. The general lack of rain is making for dull fall colors. The prettiest trees right now are the birches, which are a pale orange. They are short, scrawny trees but are very nice in the fall. One variety of these is the paper birch. They have bark that peels back of its own accord and looks remarkably like paper. You would like them.     During our walk we found some fresh scat, very fresh. It was probably from a pretty large animal and most likely not an animal who eats plants and berries. It was deposited at the entrance of a thicket of mountain laurel.     I thought I'd talk about a few apps for the Apple devices. By the way, I understand that the Iphone went on sale in China this weekend so hello and welcome to all you folks from China who have wandered onto the blog.     Oregon Trail is a game that has nice graphics. You travel across America during wild-west days in a...

    Here at our place we have these odd bugs that look very much like a stick with legs. They are whoppin' big things, 6 to 8 inches long. They're called stick bugs. They'll give you quite a start if you feel something on your head and feel around up there and contact one of them. They like to ride piggy-back on each other and I don't know why that is. I'm not crazy about them.     Last night I told you about the army of raccoons that ran away as I came home. Evidently they returned later because I found two tiny footprints on the dust of my car. I was relieved that they didn't write "Wash me".     Today I was changing the filter on my water system. My well is good despite the dry weather but I have iron water that requires a pretty good filter, a 5 micron. This takes out the sediment and makes your toilets look more civilized. Anyway, as I was doing this I heard a tremendous crash. It sounded like it was quite a way off so I didn't investi...

    Hey, everyone. I came home after dark tonight and saw an odd sight. Raccoons were running all over the place, like a jail break from a prison. They were running in funny zig-zag paths as though trying to dodge bullets. Quite funny looking, really. They may be looking for water off the air conditioner due to the severity of the dry weather. I didn't realize that several coons would congregate like that. There were at least 4 of the little guys. It's hard to believe that folks hunt and kill them just for their tails. I know that raccoons are tremendous fighters and will whip a dog, sometimes several dogs, in a heartbeat. One night after grilling steaks I woke up in the middle of the night and caught a coon trying to get in the grill. I chose not to contest his right to do so.     One never knows what can be seen at this place, the green retreat. Goodnight from CE Wills

    Not so long ago I saw an odd sight, here on the mountain. I was driving along, not far from home, in daytime hours. A car was approaching me and was in it's proper lane to do so. Something seemed very wrong about it and I squinted my eyes trying to figure out what was odd. As it got closer I saw that the guy was driving his car in reverse, one arm thrown across the seat-back. He waved as he passed me by, as most folks do up here. I was a little blown away.     A few days later I had the opportunity to ask a local person about this. They laughed and said, "That's old so-and-so, all his forward gears are out of his transmission so he has to drive to the grocery store in reverse."      This incident, while minor, and amusing, serves to add just a little more color to the green retreat. It's always surprising and rarely dull.     On the subject of video games for the i-devices: I bought Nin Jump yesterday. I had been tr...