Over the past couple of weeks I’ve captured quite a lot of goings on in my backyard.
My husband gets all the attention, but I’m more beautiful if you take the time to look.
These are the kinds of things I never got to watch when I was going to work every day.
I should take some of this back to the missus.
The kinds of things I always imagined were going on and wished I could wittness for myself.
This place has the best drinks.
So I’m feeling quite lucky that I’m around to enjoy the fun stuff happening right outside my windows.
I swear this kid eats like a horse.
I hope you feel lucky to see it all too.
It can stop raining any time now.
In fact, I don’t have more words to fill the spaces, so I’ll just pile on the images.
Pink brings out my feminine side.
I’m sure you won’t mind.
Do you think this peanut is too big for my mouth?
Enjoy.
I’m just a kid, can someone tell me where the best diners are?No tree is going to outshine my colors!My preferred food does not appear to be in the feeder lady!You’re going to fix that – – right?Well if I’m going to be ignored I’ll just turn my back on you… you’re watching, right?A mother’s work is never done.Doing my pilates.I’m ready for my post-workout massage now.
I hope you are grinning now. I do every day, there’s always something going on out there.
I recognize that not everyone has a National Cemetery close at hand to visit. And I know I just shared with you the one near me.
It’s a new day.
But that was before volunteers placed flags on the graves of our veterans. Flags that glow when the sun is just rising on the Sunday before Memorial Day.
Adding color to the memories.
And because you couldn’t all get there I decided to go for you, and for me, to see those glowing flags and reflect for a moment or two what it all means.
Our local version of Arlington.
What does it mean, on this Memorial Day weekend, that so many people are on opposite sides of so many issues leaving no middle ground to talk?
Row upon row of lifetimes.
Yet, both sides profess to love this country, a country that allows for differences of opinions. Just, apparently, not those opinions so different than our own.
Nature’s flyover.
When you walk among the white headstones in the early morning light, alone with no sound but the birds and a distant train, you have to wonder if we’re all so very different. If maybe, rather than different, we’re just stubborn.
Quiet company.
Still. I know it’s complicated, I have strong opinions too. Things that seem so obvious to me. But, it turns out, things seem obvious to the other side too.
Talking louder doesn’t make you right. Or wrong for that matter. Just louder.
Expressing an opinion.
In this quiet place, on this quiet morning louder seems obscene. Even the birds and animals that roam here at night are quietly moving to the outskirts as the sun comes up, willing to give the place back to the humans for their special day. We might learn from them how to share the world.
Live and let live. Both sides. Everyone.
Time to move on.
It’s easier to listen in the quiet, and it’s quiet out here. So many people, so many families represented. So many stories to be told if we care to listen.
Missed every day.
The folks out here cared enough to give a part, or the whole, of their lives to keep this country safe. And strong. We should care enough not to harm it now. We need to stop yelling, trying to make our point, and quiet ourselves the better to listen.
Sometimes it’s hard to let the light in.
So many people are missed this holiday weekend. So many families bear the burden and deserve our respect and understanding.
Dreams, achieved or not, make the world worth living.
Both sides must move toward the middle in order to preserve what these families gave to us.
Both sides.
Life is made of shadows and light together.
It’s a choice we each have to make within ourselves. Find a quiet place this weekend and think about what it all means to you.
The light will always shine.
And if your family is missing someone today…know that we’re all out here sending you hugs.
You are all so nice to be worried and I appreciate all the helpful suggestions about my lost pictures. I should have been more clear in telling you I do have all the pictures on the old laptop backed up on an external drive. I just never deleted the files on the laptop. I have a hard time deleting anything.
This is the way my birdfeeder looks when I’m shooting through the window, there are often reflections that bisect the feeder, but this was my first sighting of what I thought was a juvenile rose-breasted grosbeak. They love safflower seeds. Notice there are none on the feeder.
I also have most of the pictures over here on the new laptop too. So really, there was no reason not to delete a boatload of stuff off the old laptop to make room for the few pictures I wanted to find.
So I did.
I put some safflower seed out. And I waited. The cardinal was very pleased, it’s one of his favorites too.
I found most of what I remembered and downloaded those to the old laptop, then looked at them over there and emailed myself a few of them which I then downloaded to my new laptop.
I waited while other birds showed up looking for lunch.
Seems convaluted but it sort of worked. The hardest part was trying to find the photos I remembered from a couple weeks ago looking at little thumbnail images. But I got most of it.
I think.
Lots of other birds showed up.
I wonder why I have such a hard items deleting stuff when I know it’s being stored somewhere else and it’s just taking up valuable space.
And when I’m taking new pictures and sorting through them the image has to be really really bad for me to delete it. And if it’s family or Katie, well, even really really bad images get to stay.
Finally! See him down on the baffle, right at the level of the deck railing in this shot. See the beginning of the rose patch on his breast? He’s not at all sure about all the bird activity up above. In fact that might be another grosbeak landing!
Why is that?
I think one of the reasons I love taking pictures is that it preserves that moment in time, a moment that is already gone by the time the shutter shuts. And each moment seems so precious that even if the image is bad it’s still some sort of preservation.
Finally they both showed up. (This is the other one, and possibly an adult femail.)
I don’t think most people feel this way and I wonder where it comes from.
Anyway, today’s images are brought to you from deep in the memory card and a couple weeks ago when I had a juvinile rose brested grossbeak at the feeder. Maybe I had two, there’s one image with one on each end of the feeder.
They were adorable to watch.
They were only here for two days and I’m glad I got to watch them and capture their cuteness before they went on their way. I hope they come back next spring!
Immature male cardinal? Or just an older molting guy?
I went out to one of my parks (not Katie’s, she doesn’t get to claim all of them) yesterday to go for a walk. It’s been too long since I’ve been there.
I think the last time I did four miles out there was late spring when the skunk cabbages were coming into their own and the air was fresh and little spring flowers were blooming along the edges of the forest.
Well, the air was still just fine, but the skunk cabbage is past it’s prime and now the flowers of late summer are in full bloom.
Four miles might have been a bit ambitious on a hot August morning. But I forget I’m not so young anymore, and only months ago I walked 4 miles regularly so it didn’t occur to me to be more conservative.
Heading out was marvelous, a breeze in my face, lots to look at. I didn’t really want to turn around at mile 2, but some part of my brain decided to be an adult and demanded I make the smart decision.
I was beginning to feel the need for a restroom break, and there was a bathroom at mile 3, only one more mile down the path. If I turned around I’d have two miles until I got to a toilet, but my brain calculated (it’s a proven fact that math is hard when you’re hot and sweaty and have to go to the bathroom) that if I went a mile further I’d have to walk six miles total, and six is a number much bigger then four.
So I turned around, and was doing just fine until that last 1.25 miles. Which is uphill and mostly in the sun. With no breeze. That mile was pretty miserable.
As I got to the steepest part of the walk, only a quarter mile long, but still, part of my brain began arguing with the other part. There was a lovely bench under a big old oak tree part of the way up.
I could sit on that bench for a spell. That’s why they put it there. For folks like me who could be categorized as elderly. Yep, could sit right there under that tree. Bet there’s a breeze there.
The other half of my brain argued back. Not going to sit on that d*#% bench. Sitting on the bench would delay arrival at the bathroom. And the car with it’s bottle of water.
But it’s a nice bench, there in the shade. No one else seems to want to sit there. It’s calling your name.
Not sitting on the d#*% bench.
Luckily my feet were not listening to the argument and just kept moving.
Oh but wait…there’s a big image of a painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts right there next to that bench. They’re advertising a collection being shown. There’s a short article next to it. You could go read all about it. In the shade. With the breeze. And you don’t have to sit on the bench.
A good solution, might even say a compromise, that pleased both parts of my brain and my feet didn’t mind either.
All the images in this post are from that walk, taken with my phone camera while moving along on a hot summer morning.
Covid has made me random in many ways. Random meals put together from whatever is here rather then running to the store to pick up a missing item. Random camping trips to get away while remaining isolated. Random walks through the yard instead of parks to avoid running into other people.
The sugar water is getting a little low, lady!
That’s not all bad, you understand. Some things we’ve learned to do during this strange time would benefit us to continue once the world returns to normal. If that ever happens.
Things like eating at home together instead of catching a meal on the fly. Doing with what’s in the pantry and not wasting gas and engery rushing to the store every day. Talking to neighbors on walks through the neighborhood instead of waving at them from your car as you drive somewhere else.
Three stages of bloom.
Recognizing your home is not such a bad place to be, even while yearning for exploration and adventure.
I was weeding when I noticed a large monarch butterfly hovering around a hydranga tree filled with beautiful white blossoms. Such a pretty image I went inside and got the camera.
Pink zinnia impersonating purple coneflowers.
Of course he (or she) wasn’t anywhere to be found when I got back outside. But lots of other things were.
The images in this post were from that brief weeding interlude. I should be content in my yard, it’s a pretty amazing place.
In the wild part of the yard.
But the road has always, and continues to, call me.
I have a friend in the UP (Upper Peninsulia of Michigan for those of you not from around here) who has a group of women friends that gathers regulary to camp, along the shores of Lake Superior or the banks of a river. They kayak and sit around the fire and talk and I wish I could be there too.
Centering.
I think I need to put together a group like that down here in lower Michigan. A few other women who like to camp and would like to camp together somewhere once in awhile.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my camping solitude too, and Katie and I love to spend that time together. But sometimes it would be nice to have a group of people who would like to explore together.
The light bounces.
So who’s in? Could we manage to socially distance while camping? Dogs or no dogs, tents or RVs, who’d like to go…and where?
A couple weeks ago I posted about the flying bits of gold I saw across the street over the neighborhood pond. Cedar waxwings, birds we don’t see very often, were chasing insects in the fading evening light. (For this post you really should click on the images to see them larger.)
Such a beautiful bird.
Two nights ago while eating dinner I caught a glimpse of gold over the pond again.
Their golden color glowed in the setting sun.
Last time I struggled with the dim light and the quick slivers of golden wing.
Artsy fartsy image.
Focusing was pretty much impossible.
Heading out looking for dinner.
So this time when I headed over with my camera fitted with the long lens I knew better then to try to get them flying across the pond.
Incoming!
And I knew just where the dead tree was that they landed in regularly to rest between flights.
A fly-over.
So that’s where I stayed, right below that tree, catching them coming and going.
Whatcha doing down there lady?
Still, I had to move the ISO up very high so there’s quite a bit of grain, especially when they’re cropped.
The lowering sun lit the birds up as they rested.
I like to think of those as art. So many of them show the elegence of these birds, in an almost stylized manner. I think some of these look like paintings rather then photographs.
And I’m OK with that.
Juveniles joined in as well.
Each of these images makes me smile. I hope you’re smiing too.
