Mom says we missed Wordless Wednesday. She says it’s Thursday now and I need to move on, but seriously, I think Wednesdays are perfect days to showcase me, especially during my cute puppy days.
Cause everybody knows that puppyhood doesn’t last forever.
Mom called my name, so I turned right around.
So I have tasked mom with making sure she posts a picture of me, her Adventure Girl, every Wednesday.
I figured I better speed it up, in case there were treats.
And, because she messed up already, I am requiring additional photos today. Sort of an advance on future Wednesdays, just in case she loses track of time again.
Just the THOUGHT of treats made me leap for joy!
I’ve only lived with mom and daddy a month and I can already tell I’m going to have to keep them in line. They mumble something about being retired but that’s not going to fly with a puppy in the house!
I’m coming, mom!
I’ve got so much to tell you, but for now, over and out,
Really mom? One piece of kibble for all that?
Your feisty chewing whirlwind Adventure Girl, signing out!
Wednesday I suddenly found myself with a few hours free in the afternoon. And we had sun with the rest of the week predicted to be cold and rainy. What should I do?
What would you do?
On the road looking for interesting barns.
I decided I should head out in search of a few photogenic barns. I wasn’t sure where I’d be going, but just going in search of barns felt great. I told myself it didn’t matter if I found any. I had a full tank of gas and nowhere I had to be.
The barn’s kind of boring, but the tree is nice.
But after a couple of hours I wasn’t thrilled with what I’d found. I seemed to be in familiar territory and hadn’t seen anything new. Then I turned one more corner and found this one. It was perfect.
This was exactly the kind of barn I’d been looking for.
Maybe I wasn’t going to find any more great barns, but it was still early, going on 3:30. I knew I wasn’t far from Overlook Park in Midland, where another photographer had seen pelicans this winter. I’d been there twice before, searching for the pelicans, but hadn’t seen anything more interesting than geese and ducks.
But she’d told me, just recently, that it was always dusk when she saw the pelicans. Would it be worth it to hang out there until the sun went down? I decided to go see.
Can’t get too close, but it was fun to watch the ducks.
Overlook Park, located in Midland, Michigan, is basically a parking lot perched on a hill looking out over the retention ponds of DOW Chemical. I’ve seen eagles and hawks and geese and ducks and deer there. But never pelicans.
Most of the action was happening way over there.
When I first arrived there was one other car parked there, somebody with binoculars scanning the ponds. I pulled in and immediately saw something big headed our way. It landed in a tree on the outer edges of the park, not so far from the parking lot. I thought maybe it was a juvenile eagle. But I was wrong.
Do you see it in the top of the tree on the right?
It’s a hawk, I think, though I’m no expert on differentiating between hawks. As soon as I got out of the car he (or she) spotted me and I knew right away it was going to take flight. I wasn’t wrong about that!
We have lift-off!
I tried to keep it in the frame, but that was just about impossible.
Beautiful bird.
It flew off to my right, into the woods where it could have some privacy. I sighed and returned to my search of the water, looking for pelicans.
I wondered if the pelicans were way over on the other side of the pond, with the hundreds of geese and ducks over there. If they were, there wasn’t a chance I’d ever see them. Even as I considered what else I could shoot, hundreds of geese lifted up, at once, in groups of a dozen or two and flew overhead.
I’m always fascinated by how nature just settles right in next to industry.
The noise was amazing. I don’t know if they were headed to their night roosts, or just stirring up trouble because they could. After they moved on I hunkered down to wait some more. The sun was going down and it was getting colder.
A steady parade of deer headed out to the end of a peninsula and settled down for the night.
I wondered if I’d be lucky. I had no idea from which direction the pelicans would come or where they’d land. So much of the water was far away from where I waited. I reminded myself this wasn’t Disney World, the pelicans weren’t on the clock. There were no guarantees they’d show up at all.
Meanwhile I was entertained by some adorable diving ducks. You’d see them swimming…
Lots of little ducks
…and then suddenly they’d disappear, leaving only a ring of ripples to show they had ever been there.
Where’d they go?
Then they’d pop back up again somewhere else. It was so fun to watch.
Hey! Wait up!
Still…I was there for pelicans. Would they come in as the sun went down or arrive under the cover of darkness? Would it be at the other end of the pond? Had they migrated on to somewhere warmer? Were they even still in the state?
Would they show up at all? How long should I wait?
I got to see the VanGogh exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Art Wednesday, thanks to a friend who had tickets. Given the show is sold out I feel very lucky.
We’re here!!!
My husband, two friends and I drove down to Detroit in the morning, a few hours before our ticketed time to view the VanGoghs. We wanted to wander the rest of the museum first because there’s so much to see there.
Waiting behind the Q-line to turn into the parking lot for the DIA.
We saw a lot of really interesting and pretty stuff in the couple of hours that we wandered the other galleries.
Mother and child, one of several we saw during our visit.
There were a lot of sculptures, many of them were Mary and child. But there were others as well.
In the middle of a room, surrounded by huge paintings stood a pensive Abe.
And of course lots and lots of paintings, from different periods of time and from all over the world.
I loved the light in this, and his face as he looks at the image of someone he loved.
We visited one of my favorites, which turned out to be one of my friend’s favorites as well.
This is a wedding dance, with so much going on that you could stand in front of it for a long time and see more and more.
But we were there to see VanGogh, or Vincent as he signed his work, so I’ll show you a few of those.
This one, the Novel Reader, is involved in a court case to determine just who owns it. You may have seen that story in the news.
Most of his famous pieces were there, but I was just as interested in those pieces I hadn’t seen before.
This one, called The Picnic, reminded me of my parents who went on a picnic for their first date and have a photo very similar to this painting.
Some were small, in different mediums that his big oil canvases.
This was the only watercolor I saw in the show.
But of course there were a lot of large oils as well, including this one that isn’t what you think.
Called Starry Night, different than the other starry painting we’ve seen so often.
I loved the rows of trees in this one, they reminded me of the olive orchards in Italy. Turns out they were olive trees in France outside the hospital where he lived for a year.
I loved the blues and greens with the hint of red, all tied into the trees and shadows and movementin this one called The Oliver Trees.
I loved the faces he painted as well. I could sit and study them for hours.
He couldn’t afford to pay for models, so he painted himself, more than 40 times.
But of course we had to move along, there were plenty of people waiting behind us.
Another of my favorites, called A Pair of Boots. I have a photograph of my husband’s boots on the porch that I’ve thought about painting…
The whole thing was just so much fun.
So much to see…
Thanks to my friend for the tickets and to both friends and husband for the good company!
Friday night we attended the Ann Arbor Symphony’s Christmas Pops at Hill Auditorium where I’ve enjoyed many AA Symphony concerts with my aunt. Friday my husband sat on one side of me but there was an empty seat on the other side.
I was lucky enough to hear Sleighride and Christmas Festival again, pieces I play every year with my own community band. I have to say I think CCB’s whip instrument was more effective than the one used Friday night, but having strings really makes those pieces extra wonderful.
At one point Silent Night was filling the auditorium, voices and instruments singing softly, the sound rising up to hover near the ceiling and I thought about my aunt and how she would have loved this concert. I wished she could be there, I could imagine her, dressed in holiday red, grinning back at me as we silently acknowledged just how good it all was.
I got sort of misty-eyed.
Then I noticed some movement in the lights up near the stage. One of the big round lights near the ceiling was flickering faintly. And, as I watched, it blinked. Twice.
And I grinned.
Because I knew right then and there that my aunt had figured out a new way to grin back at me. Merry Christmas, Aunt Becky, I think you had the best seat in the house.
A friend and I got to visit the Meijer Sculpture Garden this week. The conservatory building was all decked out for Christmas, which is why we planned our visit.
There’s been lots of expansion to the building since I was there, notably a huge room with giant marble sculptures of faces on all four walls.
But the main attraction were the Christmas trees, each decorated as they might be countries from around the world.
They were all beautiful, and it was so much fun to stop and examine them.
All those trees, lined up or tucked into corners sure got me into the holiday spirit!
And then we wandered in the desert room, filled with catus and seasonal poinsettias…
…and the tropical room filled with jungle plants and more poinsettias….
…and watched a model train wander through a village filled with iconic Grand Rapids buildings made out of natural materials…
…surrounded by more poinsettias.
We even spent some time trying to figure out a couple of art installations.
Even after reading the notes on the wall we didn’t really get it. But it was fun trying.
We stopped at the gift shop, where I stared at a bag of marbles for a long time, remembering all the games we used to play back a few decades when I was in grade school. I still like the way marbles feel, and almost bought this bag, just for fun.
But I didn’t. We bought lunch instead and then headed home, taking the back roads the better to find some barns. Of course we found one…
.
..or two…
…or three.
So fun!
Thanks, Linda, for driving us around on our latest adventure. Let’s schedule the next one soon!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and along with holiday lights and temporary lots filled with fragrant greens, there are holiday concerts happening in towns everywhere.
Thursday afternoon, while scrolling through Facebook I noticed an announcement for a community orchestra concert in a town just twenty minutes from me. I didn’t know the city of Fenton even had a community orchestra.
The concert was free. What did I have to lose?
Excited to hear the program.
Turns out it was nothing but a win for everyone that attended, both the musicians and those of us in the audience. A multi generational musical organization, much like my own Clarkston Community Band, the group had a wonderful, full, sound, and played a variety of music, some of which most of us recognized.
I couldn’t help but smile through the whole thing.
Was the performance perfect? Of course not. There were times intonation was off, a few, rare, wrong notes. A squeak. But I learned something. I learned that, as an audience member, these small errors didn’t ruin the experience. Each little blip disappeared under layers of beautiful sounds, the overall enthusiasm of the musicians and music director, and the obvious love and support from the people around me in the audience.
A large crowd turned out to support their local community orchestra.
I left the auditorium with a big smile on my face, humming Leroy Anderson’s Christmas Festival, something I’ve played multiple times, but had never heard while seated in an audience.
Testing the sound system in advance of our concert.
And on the drive home I thought about all the concerts I’ve played where I’ve been focused on the parts that didn’t go perfectly, felt bad afterwards because something had gone wrong. The reality is, for most in our audience, the overall experience at our concerts is probably good, maybe even great.
And if members of our audience leave our venue with smiles on their faces, maybe even humming a bit…well…then the concert was a success.
Making our audience smile.
My own Clarkston Community Band played our holiday concert Friday night. We had less than an optimal number of rehearsals, and though I practiced, I was still nervous. The nerves were well founded, as I lost my way on one piece of music, missing almost an entire page of music before I could join back in.
Santa shows up with the world’s largest whip slap percussion instrument!
But the reality is, one 2nd clarinet’s loss of concentration did not ruin the concert. Most likely no one but the clarinet playing next to me even knew. And the overall feeling of the evening was happy, fun, perhaps even joyful.
Sleigh Ride is guaranteed to make an audience smile.Especially with a whip that can be heard into the next county.
Cookies and cider at a reception for Santa afterward didn’t hurt either.
Smiles all around.
Happy Holidays, everyone! May all your days be warm and inviting and fun. And look around your community, there’s likely a group out there that would love to have you in the audience!
Last week the weather people started talking about a wind advisory for Saturday. Lots and lots of strong wind, they said and I wondered if there would be big waves over on Michigan’s west coast.
Heading out to surf Lake Michigan’s waves.
I wondered if it would be worth driving over there to see. It’s a long drive, between 3 and 4 hours, depending on where I go. Still…it was going to be warm, unlike other drives I’ve made to see storms roll in.
St. Joseph lighthouse, taken from a safe place with a long lens.
So about 10 a.m. I made a snap decision, grabbed my camera and jumped in the car. Even on the way I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d go…but construction on the roads made the decision for me.
People NOT in a safe place on the other breakwater.
I ended up at St. Joseph Michigan, where I’d never visited before. I knew there was a lighthouse out on the end of a cement breakwater, and I was hoping to see big waves crashing over it.
A beautiful place with dunes and a big sandy beach.
But what I found was very different.
The wind was coming from the southwest, and just south of the lighthouse pier was another breakwater, which did what it was supposed to do, and broke up the waves before they reached the lighthouse. So…in reality it was sort of boring, even though the wind was blowing very hard and just as I left the rain began to whip sideways.
And then it started to rain.
I figured the trip was something of a bust…and was going to head back home when I decided to just stop by Grand Haven on the way (even though it isn’t exactly on the way home. At all.) for a sort of drive-by look to see what the waves were doing there.
Of course there was a barn waiting to be noticed along my way.
Well. Even though I’ve been to Grand Haven before, seen waves crashing there before, I was thrilled to see it again. The red lighthouse against a changing sky is always photogenic.
My first glimpse on Saturday of the iconic lighthouse under dark skies.
When you add white capped green waves, well, it’s just stunning.
Lake Michigan’s green, almost tropically colored water froths around the brilliant red building.
I don’t know how many images I took…but it was a lot. Sometimes I was just holding the shutter down while trying to stay upright in the gusting wind.
Wind gusts changed the image, always something photogenic.
I actually turned around to go back to the car a couple times then turned back because it was so mesmerizing.
I was not alone out there on the beach!
I tried to find different angles, moving up and down the beach…running away from the water whenever a rogue wave slid up the sand overcoming where I’d just been standing.
Standing safe behind the rocks at the base of the breakwater.
The sun actually peeked out for a brief moment just as I was leaving, so of course I stayed. But the wind was getting stronger and I had plenty of images.
A bit of sunshine makes the lighthouse glow.
Luckily I was inside the car when a huge burst of wind began throwing sand around and people began running for their vehicles.
The dark clouds moved off to the east.
I smiled all the way home, even though I arrived long after dark.
The library here hosts a photography contest every fall. Residents of our township submit up to three 8×10 images which are numbered and affixed to big display boards.
#1
We have the month of September to submit photos. Then they are on display at the library through the end of October.
#2
People get to vote on their favorite. There’s an adult and a kids division.
#3
The only rule is that the images have to have been taken in our township.
#4
I love looking at all the pictures. Lots of times I think, “darn! I’ve seen that exact image and always thought I should stop and take a picture!”
#5
The first year I submitted three images, things I thought were artsy, interesting, technically good.
#6
I realized right away when I saw which images won that the people voting are not judging skills, but rather are voting with their hearts on things that touched them.
#7
So I changed my strategy and tried to see my photos from a casual observer’s point of view.
#8
What would catch someone’s eye? Make them smile or even laugh?
#9
What image would make them come back and look again?
#10
All of these photos are from around my yard. You’ve seen most of them before. I have to pick three.
Change Is Hard 