I saw this black MG 1600 parked on the street on our way to climb stairs.

New leaves on the elm tress provide a soft green background for a carriage ride on the ditch bank, under a mostly cloudy sky.

A fire riser with an empty can made a nice red/green combination. The latest in the construction behind the office is that they are building a huge cistern to catch water that will be used to water the roof garden. I had reported that the piers were drilled down 10 feet and filled with concrete. I have since corrected that after I learned they drilled down 40 feet and filled them with concrete. The two piers on either side of the shovel are about half exposed.

Lady Banks is our first rose to bloom this year. Usually she blooms right after Austrian Copper, which is normally closer to the end of April. Lady Banks has tiny yellow roses that bloom in clusters. I took all the photos just before sunset with the lens set at ƒ/1.4 giving the roses a soft glow around the edges. Laurie gets credit for the title.

The wisteria is blooming, along with the different colored tulips. The cats have been getting in some tip top lounging. Also, take some time to visit David's blog, Through the View Finder ... with feline assistance and read his daughter's very well written, and very touching story "Riding Lessons: Lessons on Life".

Rosencrantz and Spunk napping in style

Four cats on four corners of the couch, almost. Lola, Diné and Rosencrantz in three corners and Spunk in the middle between Ronsecrantz and the sheep.

Guildenstern taking in the afternoon sunshine streaming through the west window in the dance room.

There was a full, "blood moon", eclipse early Saturday morning. The eclipse started at 4:15 am MST and the moon set at 6:53 am long before the eclipse was over. The moon would have been too low for me to see the full eclipse from our house in the valley, so I dove far up into Rio Rancho where I had little light pollution and a full view of the horizon. When I got out of the car and and set up my cameras on the tripods, there was a cold wind blowing lightly. I took my first photo at 4:48 am, and as the eclipse progressed, so did the wind, which shook the cameras enough that I was not able to do long exposures. There was also a thin layer of clouds above the horizon that the moon was setting behind, plus the wind picked up enough to start kicking up dust. Thus, the weather conditions made it impossible for me to get clear shots after 5:20 am. By 6:25 am, when I took the last photo, the wind was strong and steady, very cold and I was freezing. I could see the moon was getting more obscured by the dust and clouds on the horizon, so I packed up and headed home.

Today's photo is the progress through the full eclipse approximately every 12 minutes from the first photo taken at 4:48 am to the last photo taken at 6:25 am. The third to the last moon was taken at 6:02 am, which was the full eclipse, and as blood red as the moon got. 

Lola is like Godzilla compared to petite Najar. No wonder Najar peeks timidly over the edge of the counter as Lola/Catzilla tears up a piece of paper. Lola used to be a lot more petite, as you can see in the photos of her from 2011.

While Lola used to be much slimmer, she still had that Catzilla side to her personality.

Lola loves lying on my computer. I'm not sure how she got the "Kitty Prints" blog open.

Lola helped me clean up our outdoor kitchen after the raccoons ransacked it in 2011.

Lola likes to rub on us, roll around near us and paw at us to get our attention. She picked up a "sticky note" before settling into a cute pose.

And she makes me happy... Happy Easter!

The boa has been nicely begging to be fed. We are starting to get the interesting tulips, and a wild turkey was in front of the bay windows and flew onto the fence getting the kitties in a tizzy.

I raced home with Lola and drove up just in time to get the moon coming up behind the towers on the Sandias. Lola? You ask. Lola belongs to our neighbors who have been living in New Zealand for the past year. They have decided to stay another year and the person who was taking care of Lola couldn't keep her for another year, so they asked if Lola could move in with us. Lola used to spend a lot of time on our deck, and she would come in the house on occasion. After I got the photo of the moonrise, and let Lola out of the carrier to meet the kittens, I went out and found a neon tulip swaying in the wind in the soft twilight just after sunset.

Lola acted like she remembered the place. Rosencrantz came in and gave Lola an "Oh! Hi Lola. I haven't seen you for awhile!" look and went on about his business. She didn't even register with Spunk at first, but then when he saw Najar standing a few feet away from Lola he did a double take, puffed up and went into " there's a new cat" mode. He and Lola touched noses, exchanged hisses and Spunk has been observing her from a distance. Lola gets a little overwhelmed when the other cats start getting in her space and she growls and hisses at them, but the other kitties just keep their distance and basically ignore her.

She has made herself at home, is demanding attention from me and Laurie, and I suspect she will be playing with the kittens in a few days. She was not at all cooperative when I was trying to get photos of her, but I did get one useable photo. I also had to look up "Lola" by the Kinks and play it a couple of times. Lola rubbed on my legs while the song was playing.

I finally got around to printing Spunk's and Najar's negatives from the photo shoot they did on March 23rd. If you haven't been following Spunk's venture into film photography, I ended up making a deal with him to process and print his film after we discovered cats don't do well trying to process film. After Spunk reviewed his negatives on March 29th, I made time to print them on April 1st. While Najar was not interested in reviewing the negatives, she did take some interest in the prints. Not only did Spunk lie on the counter and study the prints, he decided it would be fun to pose in the same positions as depicted in each print.

While I've been stuck between 2:38 and 2:40 all week on the stair climbing, Jay broke 2:00 on April 1st (no foolin') which is very impressive.