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Last week I was digging up a few new potatoes when I lifted a bit of potato plant and jumped about a foot in the air.

A box turtle had found a nice shady cool spot to hide. Jed promptly picked him up and declared him his new best friend. The turtle, not to happy about being pulled out of his shady hiding spot withdrew into his shell, although he did keep an eye on us for quite a while.

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Jed then asked me to take a picture of him and the turtle. (Please ignore the not-so-good pseudo haircut. I had just bought a new pair of hair scissors and he was in dire need of a haircut so we played barbershop the other night. I placed him on a barstool, clipped a towel around his neck and attempted to trim the hair around his ears and across the forehead. The front is a bit too blunt for my liking but it will do until we can get a REAL haircut. As a side note to this side note, the Barbershop game almost backfired on me. As I was finishing up his hair he asked when when is it going to be his turn to cut MY hair. I quickly dodged the bullet by explaining that mama's do all the hair cutting in the house. I'm allowed to cut his hair and Daddy's hair and no one else is allowed to cut hair. Thankfully he bought it.)

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After hanging out for awhile, the turtle tried to make a getaway. I had to do a lot of persuading to get Jed to agree to let him go. He really wanted to keep him forever and ever. We finally moved him to the edge of the woods. We said our goodbyes for a good 15 minutes which including having the turtle promise to come back and visit. (See, the turtle was getting away so fast that my picture is blurry.)

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Looking at all the turtle poses and pictures today, I started playing around. I'm always looking for photos that I can do black and white for my mantle. Here is what I started out with followed by the finished product. Not too shabby for someone who hasn't a clue what she is doing.

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ETA: UGH! I have got to figure out how to keep the formatting of the paragraphs changing mid-post.