You Capture: SKY

This week's You Capture theme was sky. This is what it looked like last night around 7:30 pm after a major downpour, flash flooding, the works! Beautiful really.

Sunday Playday

It's hot here. My thermostat runs cold so I'm not complaining at all but the kids are. Sunday I decided to dump all the Christmas decorations out so that I could use the storage containers as personal pools for the kids. It kept them busy for much of the afternoon. The mama robin that made her nest just a few feet away was NOT happy with this new play place though...
All of their excitement was disrupting their feeding schedule. Mama robin nervously hovered in the trees waiting for them to leave. She made a few attempts to make a landing by flying over them but then changed her mind within a few feet.
While the kids were at play I was able to walk the length of the house and find other signs of life...
Hey what are THEY doing?

You Capture: Depth of Field

I stumbled upon this really cool website (clink on the link above) and decided to participate in this week's photo challenge. Depth of Field. It really kicked my butt because the camera was NOT doing what I wanted it to do. Ha ha...I'm afraid that I"m being a bit resistant and have a difficult attitude towards change towards my new camera which is a replacement for the one that was broken months ago. It isn't anything fancy just a point and click like my old one but it has taken some learning. Well, as I worked towards this challenge I constantly found myself saying...but my old camera would have...but in the end I came up with this...


This is the top of one of my bean poles...where the spider that finally ATTACKED me by JUMPING at me was hiding.
I really don't like spiders. I don't but this "jumping spider" as I have named them seemed small enough for me to deal with. And he was outside. I tend to do better when they are in their own environment and not imposing on mine.


This is what I was really going for before the whole spider incident.

Slow Down and Take a Closer Look

My front yard is a hillside chock full of weeds. Every once in awhile I go outside to pull weeds. I do it simply for exercise because they grow back faster than I can possible clear them all. Oh I have plans for this expanse but for now it is just too expensive, too huge, and too time consuming of a project to do on our own. For right now it is an acre packed with weeds. Thankfully the house rests at a dead end and the two neighbors don't mind.



But wait. Slow down. Let's take a closer look.
These just started blooming. Are they a variety of bleeding hearts maybe?
And these clusters are ready to open.
I love my new camera because it has a one centimeter macro button. I didn't even realize this was a bee until the picture came out. I guess my eyes aren't that great.
My daughter P was roaming the hillside picking flowers while I was crouching in the weeds. When I stood up she came running towards me with this wonderful bouquet! And then she tells me. "Each flower is doing it's own unique flower business. " And then she proceeded to tell me why she picked each variety.
I love that in some parallel way we were able to both see the splendor growing on the hillside.
The bouquet was our center piece at dinner last night and one of the topics of our conversation. Thanks to the hillside of weeds!

Muzzle Lickin' Good

If only my kids had this ability to clean up after themselves! Imagine my boy without a food stained shirt shoulder and my girls with clean shirt sleeves. And the corners of their mouths wouldn't look like a glazed donut all the time!

My son is 4 now. For his 3rd birthday we gave him a real hammer and a box of 250 nails because he learned pretty early on that the toy tools don't quite get the job done like daddy's do.
So watch out when you come to our house because you might just step on a board of nails. This artwork is everywhere. There seems to be more of it this spring because we have been building a deck.
Here is the piece he worked on last night while I was fixing dinner.
And a piece from a week or so ago that sat out in the rain.

Picture This

I was playing around with the macro mode on my new camera the other day (Thursday) and this is what I came up with as I was sitting amongst the weeds. I really enjoy observing insects because they are always moving around as if on some urgent mission. So small but yet they are wired to get whatever job they are programmed to do done.

Withering

I finally got a new camera because my other one broke 6 months ago. So, I found some withering daffodils to capture. I liked this one the best. She looks like she has a head of hair. And can you see her snout? Nature constantly reminds me how much dying is a part of life. I'm not fascinated so much by the permanence of death but rather the cycle. In order for me to have become who I am now, layers of my old self have withered away or have taken on a different form. The part that remains today is partly memory grown together with new growth. Just like this flower. I remember it in the prime of its beauty. Her face held high towards the sun soaking in all the pleasures of the day. She was happy. Next year she will be back again only stronger.