Seamus Helps Make Charlotte's Birthday Cake

The 29th was Charlotte's 1st birthday! Here, before the important day is Seamus and Anna baking her a cake. As you can see Seamus is lots of help. He really like to get with both feet.

Sunshine and a Few flowers

With the return of the sun, we get poppies visited by busy bees. I'm glad the bees are not affected by the coronavirus and can continue working away. There are already many threats to their lives and they certainly don't need another one. While a bee's life is a hard one, at least they get to work outdoors in a beautifully appointed and colored "cubicle" often scented quite sweetly. That's more than most of us can say. 

Snails!

One of the features of living in a temperate rainforest is there are times when, in addition to raining water, it seems to rain snails.

Found Things and Critters at the Beach

Although I cannot name nearly anything we saw at the beach at low tide, it was all interesting. These bits of sea plants make interest compositions.

More Beach Fun

This is fun stretch of beach in large part because this is a marine reserve and lots of scuba divers come here to dive and visit with the underwater bits. They were certainly out on this day (although you don't see any in the photos here).

A Day at the Beach

Like everyone else in the world, we are really tired of being at home and looking for any excuse to get out and any place to go. We decided this weeked to make a family outing to Edmonds to the beach at Brackett's Landing. Normally, it is a narrow beach but today with the significant low tide, it was a wide, if messy, one.

Wet Flowers in the Front Yard (Again)

As I noticed the other day when discussing the image of the fence with the plants growing through, it is often the intrusions and mistakes that make life interesting. Here, we have catmint poking its lavender blossoms up among the leaves of a Harvest Festival Red St. John's Wort. Although the blooms clearly have nothing to do with the leaves around them, there is a naturalness to the grouping.

More Wet Plants Up Close

Some green leaves with water drops is always a good way to start the day. These sorts of leaves are good for this since they are pretty hydrophobic on top and we get good beads of water.

A Few More Leaves With Water on Them

Of all the images I took during the failed IR attempt, the one above is my favorite. I really like the detail in the central leaf and the water drops really add to the clarity.

I think this fits the season...graduation. I'm quite sure that every graduate at every level from elementary to graduate school feels like the central leaf above looks: the focus of the world and special. And they are. All the families and all the schools in the world are focused on their respective graduates.

Pulling Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

I mentioned last week that I was working a way to bring a little something new to the images in the blog. Well, that has pretty much flopped. I ordered a couple infrared filters to try out and after much waiting for the delivery, trimming and assembling the filters in the frame and taking a few test images... a mess. The images are just crappy. Hence you don't see them here. Either I'm doing something pretty wrong or these Fuji cameras are just not suited to this sort of photography.

Moving on.

So while I waited out in front of the house for the 4 minute (4 minutes!) exposures to end and then another 4 minutes for the sensor to make a dark slide to subtract out the sensor noise, I took some water-on-the-leaves kinds of images. I hope these are to your liking.

Recent Images in B&W

Since we are now going through a rainy spell, I've gone back to some of the recent flower images and tried my hand at B&W conversion for them. I hope you enjoy these.

A Wider View

I've shown you so much of our little town from a few inches to a few feet away, thought I'd take a wider view today and show you some of it in panorama. Above is Avenue A (streets are numbered and avenues are lettered). From the location I was standing, looking in between the church and firehouse towers is roughly the direction of Mt. Rainier from here. Were there no clouds on the horizon we might well see it.

With a wider view comes clutter. I have mentioned before that only towns and road make spaces in the continuous carpet of evergreen forest. As a result, these are on the places you see wires. Endless wires overhead. It is a bit like noticing that the only place you see corrupt politicians is in politics. Put a corrupt politician in their backyard and you lose sight of them pretty quickly.

And Now, for Some Flowers

The summer flowers are showing their faces around town now. The delphinium in the front yard brings a splash of color to our home.

A Few Things I Saw While Walking

Isn't is still amazing that in the 21st century we still have people that cling to talismans to guide their fates? I suppose these people have always been with us and always will be. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that one of our neighbors has put a horseshoe on their rock wall. There are millions who cling to a book (like those written by Ayn Rand) or a person (Trump comes to mind) for guidance in much the same way. So much magical thinking the world is really depressing.

More Along the River

When I get the shutter speed about right, there are some nice abstract patterns of foamy swirls in the river. I liked the way the stump and ferns in the foreground worked with the opposite shore to create some depth in the image. The blurred swirl in the center is a nice focal point.

Along the Stillaguamish

Although there were a fair number of people out along the Mt. Loop Road who had parked their cars to go hiking into the forest, it was possible to find places to stop and get out for a few minutes to enjoy the river.

Twenty-Two Creek

Not so very far (as the crow flies) from the Mt. Loop Road lies Lake Twenty-Two. We can both imagine how this place got its name (I certainly don't know). But it empties into the Stillaguamish River by the Twenty-Two Creek. Looking upstream, this is the creek as it prepares to cross under the road.

This is a nice waterfall. I just sich i had found the sign on the fallen tree before I output the image and removed it. Otherwise, a respectable photo.

Into the Rainforest

On our first outing during the lockdown, we drove out to a tiny place called Verlot. Today we went that way again, drove farther and did it without rain. As a result, we've got a little glimpse of what it is like to live in a rainforest.

Raptor Foundation

Back in 2015 as we were getting started good in this business of house and pet sitting, we had a sit in the small village of Warboys, not far from Cambridge, UK. Near there is the Raptor Foundation where I spent most of a day photographing their large raptors perched and in flight. In flight is hard, but here are two of my more memorable images of perched birds.

Between Rain Showers

As the spring flowers fade and the summer flower begin to bloom, I'm trying to diversify the portfolio of flowers you see here. Today, in between showers, I found a few images in the front yard.

Above is the Lupine growing out by the sidewalk in front of the house.

Backyard Bugs, September 2010

Back in the dark ages of 2010 when we lived in Virginia and covid wasn't even a twinkle in father coronavirus' eye, I spent some time one afternoon, chasing bees and moths around the heather near our back door. While these are not amazing photos, they are at least a reminder of happier days without isolation, lost jobs, disease, and the widespread loss of loved ones.

And Now...for Something a Little Different

Not even a half a block from our front gate is a view of Mt. Rainier. You've seen this view before, but I thought I'd try again on this pretty clear day. I, of course, chose to do this in mid-day and the light was terrible. Yet, with a graduated neutral density filter and some patience on the computer, I got an image in which I can at least see the mountain. So I agree with the twitter account Is The Mountain Out? and we can indeed see the 70 or so miles to Mt. Rainier.

You know it is a tall mountain when there is still abundant snow on it in mid-May. the much closer sections of the Cascades are nearly all clear of snow. Of course, they are only 5000-6000 ft, not the 14,000 feet or so of Mt. Rainier.

Window Peeping

A happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. I hope that you are being well taken care of and are getting a much needed day of rest and appreciation.

On a recent walk along 1st street, I passed a bar (Who's on First) with the front door open. I guess they were cleaning and preparing for an opening one day. A quick snap through the door and we have a scene that might be from nearly any decade in the last century. Bars just don't change very much.

A Few Things I've Noticed

I know that I just showed you one of these ornamentations on a neighbors fence, but this one has such a great spider's web on it hat I couldn't resist.

Normally, there are tons of spiders out and about this time of year. This year, not so much.

Corners and Fences

In our section of town, the city has put a small flower garden in most corners at intersections. This kind of spruces up the ol' fireplug and give it a reason for being just there.

Also, you can see in the background that with sunny weather (=summertime, remember) is bringing out the people onto the streets. Things are not so lonely when out and about.

Finally, Something Besides Flowers!

In my efforts to keep the blog active, I find myself taking walks around the neighborhood that increasingly overlap one another. This makes it hard to find new things to photograph. But I'm hanging in there.

Local Flowers Again

I don't know about life where you live, but we are still in isolation until the end of May (at least). While some businesses are starting back and a selected state parks are opening soon, for the most part life continues the same.

Camano Island

Our weekly outing (actually, it's been more than a week), was off to Camano Island just a little ways north of us. A quick look at this section of beach on the island tells you that these trees must wash up pretty regularly. Otherwise, folks would pay to have the beach cleared off so they could enjoy it. I'm guessing they don't do that since it just comes back to this state.

By the way, that large looming white mound in the distance is Mt. Baker.

Canaan Valley, Davis WV, June 2011

On a hot weekend in June, once upon a time, E and I drove from Staunton to Davis, WV to escape the heat and see a little springtime.

More Flowers...Are You Tired of Them Yet?

I seem to be stuck in a rut of a walk about the neighborhood photographing flowers. Today's foray was done using the macro lens on the medium format camera rather than the normal focus lens on the smaller one. It was a bit a of a challenge since there is a breeze and moving flowers are hard to get in focus.

A Little Science Time with Seamus

It is time to pull out the heavy artillery and start teaching Seamus a little about science. We started with a wool sock and a PVC tube to do a little water bending.

Get a thin stream of water flowing and rub the pipe with the sock and when you bring it near, magic happens!

Flowers

Kind of cool and overcast the last few days. That combined with our babysitting/teaching duties has made it hard to get out for more photos. I finally made it out for a short walk around the neighborhood to see a little color and texture growing along the sidewalks.