Jane Wendy Ballard

Retired, Married, Childless, Unknown Author. Good SOH
Hate ignorance & injustice
Love music, good food/wine, nature, photography, science.
No scammers. No porn.

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@Flippineckers Happy Thursday and may your coffee quota be from the best beans in the World. Wishing you a beautiful day with the rain you need and desire. We had a real downpour last night so we are happy not having to water plants this morning! 😍

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@Glastomichelle I missed the sunrise as it was not up at 3am when I went to bed but was up well and truly by 6am when I had to get up as I couldn't sleep. I can survive for a while on three hours sleep but need to catch up and hope to see either a decent sunset or sunrise!!
It looked beautiful

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

I have just typed a reply three times and each time it disappeared even though I pressed CANCEL to stop all being lost.
Next post I copied and it all went through first time. Lesson learnt, always copy before pressing POST!
After three hours sleep and no breakfast I'm not amused.

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@SamaHoole I believe we are living in the wrong part of the world both for diet and for weather!!
At least we had heavy rain last night.

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@Flippineckers It poured in the night so thankfully most things are looking happier.
It is a very windy and unsettled Thursday afternoon here and I shall be glad to get away from this wind. We get it so much here living by the plughole of England!
Enjoy your day there & I hope you get rain soon

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@Flippineckers Thankfully it absolutely poured in the night so most things are looking happier here on this very windy and unsettled day.
There is mizzle in the air, rainbows, cloud and blue skies. The wind is really chilly too. Other than that it is just another Thursday.
Have a great one.

[Beatrice Groves @beatricegroves1]

A serene hare among wild carrot flowers - so delighted to see this!🐰🥕🐰

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

What an amazing capture.

[Martine🦋Brennan🍄 @BrennanMartine]

Sallow Kitten from Saturday night, Laois. A nice fresh one 🙂#teammoth

[Ireland's Trees & Mythology @Tree_Folklore]

Where we visited by a fairy?

I believe in them already but if be interested to know what you think.

We do not get glow worms in Ireland and genuinely there was nothing there to see at the time.

Mag Mell (The Plain of Honey) is one of the gateways to the Celtic Otherworld and opens up when the setting sun shimmers on the sea. There was also a rainbow at the time 🌈

Our visitor was recorded on three different cameras (mine, my wife's and daughters) and all photos were taken between 21:02 to 21:07.

It seems to appear from the direction of the sea at 21:02 )I was trying to photograph the sunset) and then appears to hang around my kids for a few minutes.

Tell me what you think.

Clockwise from bottom left our visitor arrives.

Then seen near my oldest.

And then hanging around my youngest two. I have always said that my younger son is pure enough to get into The Otherworld.

[Dr. Clint Steele @drsteele56]

Costco Lawsuit Regarding
“Clean” Plant Based
Protien Powder
Containing Heavy Metals :
Here’s What You Need To
Know #plantbasedprotein #protienshake #heavymetals #brainhealth #fyp

[Sheldrick Wildlife Trust @SheldrickTrust]

A lovely little peek into elephant devotion: While Lodo took a nap, ‘big brother’ Sattao stood protectively over him, almost soothing him to sleep. (An even sweeter detail: Sattao is now living wild; he popped by for a visit and took it upon himself to babysit!)

This is common behaviour among elephants. More often than not, it is females giving the care – but as you see here, males also have a strong nurturing streak.

Growing up in our care, these little survivors have found a loving family – one that will support them for the rest of their lives.
Meet the orphans we've rescued and raised: https://
https://t.co/bLHU93tQlq

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

In 1984, 17-year-old Lisa McVey was abducted while riding her bike home from work in Tampa, Florida.
Having already survived years of ab*se before that night, Lisa used every bit of her resilience and intuition to stay alive. During the 26 hours she was held, she began carefully studying her captor, Bobby Joe Long, and slowly worked to gain his sympathy by calling him “sweet,” speaking softly, and pretending to understand him.
Her strategy worked. Long, unexpectedly moved by her approach, released her. Lisa ran straight to police and provided one of the most detailed victim statements authorities had ever heard, recalling his voice, his home layout, his behaviors, the blindfold he used, and even small sounds she heard. Her information became the key that finally led investigators to Long, ending his months-long spree of se**al attacks and m*rders across the Tampa Bay area.
Bobby Joe Long was later tied to the abductions, se**al assaults, and mr*ders of at least ten women in 1984. He was eventually arrested, convicted, and later received a d**th sentence for his crimes.
Lisa McVey, who survived something that most people would not, transformed her trauma into purpose. She eventually became a law enforcement officer, dedicating her life to protecting others, especially vulnerable children. Her story is now widely recognized as one of the most extraordinary cases of survival, courage, and intelligence ever documented.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1917. The U-boats are sinking the food faster than it can be shipped, four fifths of your country's bread arrives by sea, and by April the government works out it has about six weeks of wheat left. No navy, no factory and no minister can make a loaf. Only you can. In August they guarantee your price and tell you to plough the old pasture, and you plough it, and 1918 is the biggest harvest this island has ever taken off itself.

The year is 1921. On the first of October the guarantee is repealed, quietly, the war won and the ships sailing again. Wheat falls from eighty-four shillings and sevenpence a quarter to forty-four and sevenpence inside twelve months. Farming still calls it the Great Betrayal. Between 1918 and 1922 a quarter of the land in Britain changes hands.

The year is 1939. They are back at the gate inside one lifetime, and this time they bring a committee that grades you A, B or C on your own ground. A C means they take it off you, and around two thousand seven hundred farmers lose every acre they have. Two pounds for each one you plough. By 1944 you have lifted the country from a third of its own calories to nearly half, which is the whole distance between a nation that can be starved into surrender and one that cannot.

The year is 1951. The BBC starts a daily serial about a farming family, written with the Ministry of Agriculture out of its own pamphlets, because a country still on rations needs you producing more and the dry talks are not landing. Seventy-five years on it is still broadcasting, and Ambridge has outlasted most of the farms that inspired it.

The year is 1984. On the second of April a quota tells you how much milk you may sell off your own land and fines you if you sell a drop more. The right to milk a cow becomes a tradeable asset with a market price. Your neighbour sells his and takes a job in town.

The year is 2001. Six million animals slaughtered, ninety thousand a week at the peak, the army in Cumbria, six mass burial pits. Your flock is healthy and it burns anyway, for standing too near somebody else's. The cheque covers the animals. Nobody pays for the forty years of breeding inside them.

The year is 2021. A television presenter buys a farm for a laugh and does more for public understanding of agriculture than every ministry since 1917. First year's profit, a hundred and forty-four pounds. Millions of people watch that number appear on screen and work out that the food is cheap because somebody up the road is being crushed.

The year is 2024. In October the Chancellor caps the relief that let farms pass down whole, and men in their seventies begin calculating whether it is cheaper to die before April. The tractors come down Whitehall. The country grows about sixty per cent of what it eats, roughly where it stood in 1939, the last time the ships stopped.

Now it is today.

A minister stands at a podium and says the government backs British farming.

This island has not been successfully invaded in a thousand years. Twice it has come within weeks of being starved into surrender, and both times the answer was the same men standing in the same fields.

Both times the gratitude expired the moment the danger did.

We put your work on the radio, then on the telly, and priced you out of doing it in between.

[Dream_Explorer @dream_explore13]

Post a photo you took… that you LOVE 💚

#DreamShots #XiaomiPhotography #ShotonSnapdragon

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@dream_explore13 Temple at Hampi. March 2008.

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@Flippineckers This has to be a Coffee Mug's Bunny holding that which is compulsory for the holder to drink and get a proper morning's start.
May all new days be happy and filled with coffee.

[Mandy Simard @MandyLSimard]

Have you ever actually heard a monarch caterpillar eat? 🐛💚

Turn your volume up and enjoy a few seconds of nature’s own ASMR as this little one munches on fresh milkweed.

It’s amazing how something so tiny can make such a satisfying sound!

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

@indian_pitta What great captures. You must be so pleased with your morning session.

[Jane Wendy Ballard @HickoryHector]

So beautiful and rewarding when they flower

[Frank Sengpiel 👨🏼‍🔬🧠🌵🦋🦉🦊🌺 @CactusFrankS]

I think it's about time that I do my Twitter handle justice, so here is a collage of cactus (and a few other succulent) flowers from the last two months.
@CactusSucculent #cacti #succulents

[Steve Clemans @Steve09812]

It is with profound sorrow that we bid farewell to Jeanne Gibson, our beloved Rosie the Riveter, has passed away today, July 29, 2026, at the remarkable age of 100. With her passing, we don't simply mourn the loss of a beloved friend, we honor the life of an American hero whose courage, dedication, and unwavering spirit helped shape history, and will continue to inspire generations to come.📷📷
At just 18 years old, Jeanne left her home in Minnesota in the summer of 1944 and answered her nation's call, becoming a welder at Todd Pacific Shipyards in Seattle. With determination and grit, she helped build destroyers that strengthened the Allied war effort during World War II. She later continued her service with the Army Transportation Corps in Juneau, Alaska, embodying the resilience and patriotism of the Greatest Generation.
Yet Jeanne's legacy extended far beyond the war. She earned her Ph.D., dedicated three decades to teaching, earned her private pilot license, and spent the rest of her life proving that courage, determination, and purpose know no age.
In 2024, Jeanne and her fellow Rosies were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, one of our nation's highest civilian honors, recognizing the extraordinary women whose sacrifices and determination helped secure victory during World War II.
To all of us at Pacific Historic Parks, Jeanne was far more than a Rosie, she was family. She traveled to Hawaiʻi time and again to share her remarkable story with visitors, inspire local students, and ensure that the sacrifices of the Home Front would never be forgotten. Her radiant smile, generous heart, and boundless enthusiasm touched every life she encountered.
She had a special gift for encouraging young girls, reminding them that no dream was too big and no obstacle too great. Through her words and her example, she inspired generations to believe in themselves and pursue lives of courage, service, and purpose.
Jeanne remained a tireless advocate for preserving the legacy of the Rosies, volunteering at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park on "Rosie Fridays" and ensuring the stories of the women who helped win the war would continue to inspire future generations.
In one of life's poignant moments, just days before her passing, Jeanne was celebrated with a Wall of Honor banner at the park she loved so dearly and recognized during a San Jose Earthquakes halftime ceremony honoring Bay Area heroes. It was a fitting tribute to a woman whose life was defined by selfless service, quiet strength, and extraordinary grace.
Though Jeanne has taken her final flight, her legacy will never fade. It lives on in every story she shared, every young person she inspired, every life she touched, and in the enduring example of courage she leaves behind.
Our hearts are with Jeanne's family, her fellow Rosies, and all who were blessed to know and love her.
Rest in peace, Jeanne Gibson.
Thank you for answering the call when your country needed you most. Thank you for showing generations what courage looks like. We will remember you always