Farewell my dear friend

It is with a heavy heart that I wanted to dedicate a page to my friend Val Kaeppler. 

Val's favorite color was purple. I love that she had on a purple coat in this photo.

Val was a friend through my world of dogs, Salukis in fact. 

Val & her husband, Steven created beautiful dogs out of the kennel name of  Laa Yudaani Salukis.

They weren't as interested in showing dogs as they were in Open Field Coursing - which is where you set the dogs free to test their hunting skills. 

More than that though, Val was an amazing person of amazing strength & preseverence. 

She fought cancer for many years, now the fight is over. 

I truly took it for granted that she'd live forever...

Val, I love you & will miss you dearly. Your soul lives on in my & the hearts of others. 

Val used to work at a nursery, her passion were cactus blooms. She lived in New Mexico with her husband, Steven. I was hoping to take a trip to NM sometime this year to visit. I'm sad that this won't come to be now. 

Below are photos of her & Steven's dogs, along with some cactus blooms that she has taken photos of. All photo credit of the dogs & flowers go to Val. I borrowed them from her facebook page. I hope Steven doesn't mind. I just wanted to take a little time to share Val, to treasure her, to remember her by...

 I especially like this photo.

The Scissortail Flycatcher showed back up yesterday. He brought his mate. I think they are nesting somewhere within feet of my RV! I'd like to think that Val sent them. At any rate, I will think of her each time I see them as I know she'd adore their beauty. 

In Texas, I found out they are called The Bird of Paradise - quite appropriate! Such beautiful little birds.
And they got close enough for me to get decent shots of! 
I did a little more research on them to see how you could tell the difference between the male & female. 
The female's tail is 2'' shorter than the males is. They have REALLY LONG tails!  

 Female Scissortail Flycatcher

Male Scissortail Flycatcher -- note the difference in their tail lengths.

I will think of Val each time I see these beauties. I hope to see little paradise babies someday soon! 

I'm going to go clean out the old bird feeder to fill it. 

But they are known to be invaluable for bug catchers! They'll get plenty of that here.

~As always be kind to your pets, clean up after them on your travels & respect your neighbor~

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