Photography
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Monday Garden Musings
It is fairly quiet in the garden these days. After the cold snap, everything took a hit. I like this time of year because it isn’t so overwhelming. The grass doesn’t grow 10′ in a day and the vines aren’t trying to suffocate each other. It’s more relaxing. A little bit more reverse lens technique for some closeups: A fly buzzing the loquat flowers Plantain flowers Hibiscus grandideri about to bloom A less mature H. grandidieri blossom Chalice vine Variegated vanilla A little fern, a little recruit… I’ve been enjoying these garden blogs lately: Chiot’s Run The Inadvertent Farmer Fennel and Fern: they have a blog but it appears their…
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Blogging is my Scrapbook
Going through my old scrapbooks the other day I realized that blogging has become my scrapbook. I abandoned the hardcore scrapbooking phase I went through a few years ago and it seems that it has been reflected here on my blog instead. It has changed for me over time, blogging. I remember the days of blogger and live journal and it was quite a different era. There weren’t any pro-bloggers, people who made money writing. These days it seems there are people making money at writing on their site, giving their opinions, and while all of that sounds great, I’m glad to just be here writing for myself. I think…
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Washed Up
I’m a little lonely today. It’s cloudy outside, the sun hasn’t peaked out and said hello, the cats are curled up, and everyone is out somewhere, doing something and I’m not. Reviewing the rest of the Cayo Costa photos make me a little depressed. Call it two weekends of not getting outside, that’s probably my problem. So, I’m savoring the washed up fauna that found its way onto the shore… Oystercatchers…the first time I’ve seen these birds. A gannett…not sure if it was injured or feigning injury, but it was nice to see the bird up close. An ancient animal, horseshoe crab… Even the man-made objects get washed up…
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Wordless Wednesday
Play along here
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Garden Bits—in Reverse
I had the day off for a doctors appointment and spent the morning mowing the back yard. It was seriously over grown, weeds had over taken half the yard. I also surveyed the frost damage from last week. It always takes two to three days for the damage to be known and sure enough the tell-tale signs of browning and curling were beginning. The ylang ylang took a hit as did the tropical almond and other tenders. I once had a starfruit seedling that bit the dust after a 45* night. Very tender tropicals. I think most everything will recover now that it has warmed up, but I will keep…
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Battle of the Bulls
We were at Dinner Island WMA on Sunday afternoon, driving around with our friends Randy and Kathy, when through the cattle pasture we heard this high pitched noise. Eventually we came up to the two bulls making the noise, in the midst of what seemed like a territory war of some sort, or maybe one was miffed the other took his gal. Who knows, but it was hilarious to watch them! Check out the puffs of steam coming out of his mouth—see it was cold here! Lots of throwing of dirt…it was great entertainment! The photo challenge is up over at Meghan’s blog: Strangers on the Street. I know there…
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Sewing—Up Close
I got a wild hair last night. I decided to try reversing my lens. Chris actually bought a mount for this awhile back and has played around with it, but I never did. I wasn’t even taking photos last night, was actually working on an uber large quilt (more on that in a minute), but I saw these… And decided I had to give it a whirl. I mean, itty, bitty quilting pins??? Perfect! You really need a lot of light for this so I put some lights on it and turned my ISO to 1600. If you have a mount, you could probably get away with it being lower…
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Sanibel Sunset
Until I get the comments working again, I’ve put in my old commenting system that you can use. I’m finally trying to finish up our Christmas weekend trip to Sanibel. Here are the sunset photos from the day after Christmas. All but the last were taken at Blind Pass, the pass between Sanibel and Captiva islands. The last was taken at the last public access beach on Captiva. This one is Chris’. I like it…very wild and untamed look to it. I always feel a little reluctant to leave the beach after a sunset like that—a sad goodbye to a great day.
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Sunset—New Years Eve on Turner River Road
I know, comments aren’t working. boo on you wordpress…trying to get up up and running soon. Chris and I got off early on New Years Eve and decided to hit Big Cypress National Preserve to capture the last sunset of the decade. We also were aiming for photos of the Blue Moon but were unsuccessful due to clouds in the east that prevented a decent moon rise from being seen. The only glimpse we saw was for a few minutes but it was still partially hidden between the clouds. By the time it was up and shining, it was dark and we couldn’t find a decent place to take a…
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Shore (Love) Birds
The Wanderers on Sanibel.