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 a close eye on things for awhile.
We had two iguanas take up a roost in a hanging basket about a month ago and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them in awhile. We also had a black racer snake chilling in our front flower bed but I haven’t seen it in awhile either. I was nervous about running them over in the tall weeds, but I didn’t see anything. *phew*. We’ve hit a few snakes before that haven’t moved from the mower; I always feel bad about that.
After all of that I brought my camera out and did the reverse lens technique out there. This time it was sunny and I could set the ISO to 100 and all was well. Ok, minus the wind, which makes this even tougher without a mount! I had the tripod, just no mount. I think my endeavors turned out pretty well!
This little weed is what has taken over the yard. Bidens alba. It’s a great plant for butterflies and I do keep some of it around, but it seeds itself everywhere and has a tendency to become, well, weedy!
Blackberry lily berries…love this plant!
Amaranth…I got a plant from someone at a garden swap a few years ago because it is an edible grain and I thought I’d try it out. But man, does it seed itself everywhere. I haven’t been in the yard in awhile and the containers are full of little seedlings. Not to mention they have spikes on them so you have to be careful how you pull them out.
Sophora tomentosa, necklace pod, pods…a native to Florida.
Basil flowers…I should go collect the seeds.
White beauty berry. I transplanted this a few months ago from the tiny pot it was in to a much bigger pot and it hasn’t quite recovered. I think the rainy season will see it to better days.
I think I’m going to try this shot again because I couldn’t get the white in focus as much as I wanted. I am not sure what little egg sac that is, spiders maybe?
As for the frost and freezing temperatures, Saturday was bad, but Sunday seemed to be worse. I had ice on my windshield that morning and I found frozen puddles in the center part of the state on Monday morning. I’m actually very nervous for Little Slough and all of the ghost orchids. I’m hoping the water kept the area warm enough, but the wind was pretty bad and since it is winter the trees have defoliated. We’re going to go out and check in a few weekends to see how things fared.
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 are at least two people who read that I could persuade to participate….Robin and Eliana. ooh, and Shelly. There really aren’t any rules other than to break out of a rut and try something new. I’d say use whatever camera you’ve got and try being creative. We’re trying to put together something weekly, so hopefully it’ll work out.
I’ve got more reverse lens stuff to post later today…stay tuned!
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 or if you had a tripod, but the depth of field is so tight in this, you really can’t shake all that much.
What I did:Used this link on MCP Actions, that I saw a few months ago. It’s like instant macro without a good macro lens. And the bokeh is groovy, too. I tried it on the cats but they moved too much, but the ones that I did get showed some awesome, tiny hairs! My goal is to get a closeup of one of their eyes.
Good Things for Today
-Meghan is going to be hosting a little photo critique/contest of sorts very, very soon. In fact, you should actually subscribe to her blog because I have a feeling it will be a great up and coming photography blog. She’s got a fire lit under her—good things are coming her way! She also has a little giveaway that is super simple to enter. Try it!
-More photographic experimentation over at Kern Photo. Excellent bokeh!
-An interview with a photographer that is new to me, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir. Yeah, I can’t pronounce that, but it is a great 30 minute bit.
As for the sewing thing, I am on a mission to finish a massive t-shirt quilt of all of my college shirts. Or the ones I salvaged. Sewing large quilts is probably not the best idea; I don’t know why I came up with it. It’s going to be hard! I also have to work on another quilt for the new niece, who’s new name I am resisting because she was Abigail in my head for almost two months before I was told they changed it. The tiny, unborn person already had a name and identity and now I’m having a hard time thinking of her any other way. I wonder if the only aunt has any persuasion in that matter? I doubt it! hah! Don’t forget—->only aunt!!! The one who will spoil her rotten and let her stay up late and eat all the junk food in the world and go on shopping sprees…!!!
Still working through others photos but I am in the midst of some things around here, too, so here’s to hoping for more writing this week.
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.
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 photo.
Alas, all I have are a few sunset photos from that night. My favorite is the first one:
The clouds made the sunset, I think.
The wind was producing some very awesome clouds and on our way out we saw a rainbow up in the clouds from the ice. Alright, some Google-ing produced the real name, circumhorizon arc. This was our second one in about three weeks; the last one we saw with my dad when he was here a few weeks ago. We didn’t get the cameras out in time, though.
Stay warm everyone. Looks like today we’re going to make 75* just in time to turn around to 57* and 55* over the weekend. Ick.
Ok, so the title is slightly kitchy, but it came to me as Belinda Carlisle was singing to me on the way home from work today. Sanibel is heaven on Earth. It is one of the places that furthered my interest in marine biology growing up. We went to Sanibel and Fort Myers beach for vacation a few years when I was growing up and we loved it. I always thought when I moved to Florida that I would be living over there, but we never have. I hardly ever get to go, maybe once a year; it’s a good two hour drive from the house and we are often doing other things.
But, Sanibel is what beaches should be like—full of sea detritus waiting to be explored and poked through. I know I am one of the few, and I do know of others, but I love the smell of things rotting on the beach. Sargassum washed up—-yep, love it. Poking through dead sea urchins…oh yeah! I know, I’m weird, but it is such a good smell. It’s the ocean. The ocean doesn’t smell all floral and pretty, it’s raw and untamed.
Sea star—not star fish.
A live shell—gastropods (snails) build their own shells. When they die, hermit crabs use their shells for a home.
Not the first time I’ve seen something similar to this washed up on the beach. We saw a few pieces of it…I’m wondering if it is blubber of some sort?
A moon snail—not sure on the species. I need to brush up on my shells
Really, I’m pitiful with the identification
A bone we found near the unidentifiable blob…actually several bones. My thought was that they were flipper bones from a whale or dolphin.
Macro algae
I’m thinking this is a sea squirt of some sort or maybe a really odd looking sea cucumber.
When we left Marc and Eliana’s house on Friday night we decided we’d meet them at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary at 7am on Saturday morning. From our house it is about an hour and a half drive and from theirs, add at least another forty-five minutes.
We weren’t exactly bright eyed and bushy-tailed when we got there. It was early.
Chris and I arrived first and hit the boardwalk after I downed the majority of my coffee since disposable materials aren’t allowed on the boardwalk. He set out for the cypress dome and I wanted to see what I could come up with in the fog that had rolled in across the open prairie. I wasn’t too successful with the fog but I did get some shots that I enjoyed.
Marc and Eliana are birders, something which Chris and I aren’t very good at. Well, we aren’t good at the little birds like finches, warblers and the like. They are pretty good at noticing the calls and it helps that their iphone has a spiffy app for bird calls so they can double check to see what bird it is. I think we racked up a bit of knowledge that day!
We saw a minute amount of wildlife, mostly at the first half of the trail. Eliana and I spotted two Big Cypress fox squirrels in some cypress trees, chewing on the cypress balls. I haven’t seen very many of these squirrels—they’ve been replaced by the more common grey squirrel. They were fun to watch for awhile and I know Chris got a few good photos. As we were going up to tell Marc and Chris about the squirrels they told us about a very docile red shouldered hawk that was being kind enough to sit still for photos. We switched places and started taking photos of the hawk.
This is the area where the super ghost orchid is located. Since it is out of the blooming season we had a bit of a time trying to point out just where it was off in the distance.
I think this is where Marc was looking for the yellow crowned night heron. A volunteer had set up a scope at the pond to let visitors check out the birds. This time of year is peak birding season here in Florida, when all of the migratory birds head south to stay cozy for the winter.
Reflection in the duckweed…
Stay tuned for the rest of the trip….
Does anyone have any good podcast recommendations? I’m looking for some podcasts that are free but of a high caliber. It can be gardening, outdoors, crafts, photography, well, just about anything that you can tell that is of interest to me. Send it my way!
Rarely do we get blessed with such great clouds. The strong wind on Saturday brought rippling effects to the clouds and the sunset for our hike made a beautiful ending to the day.
