Getting up early…

I don’t get up early in the morning very often anymore for the simple reason that I don’t have to.  And since we’ve started letting our pug Olive sleep with us, I could sleep ‘til the cows come home because this pug is not an early riser.  As a matter of fact, sometimes she looks at me as if to say, “Really?  I can’t believe it.  You’re getting up now??”  But she manages to shake herself awake enough to get up and go when I’m ready.  And being a dog, once up she forgets that she wanted to sleep in.  After all, the next nap is just around the corner for her.

 

The thing is, though, when I do get up early, I almost always think I should make a habit of it.  The light in the early morning is just so wonderful and the photographer in me thinks I ought to take advantage of that.  Unfortunately, the old, cranky person in me has her way most of the time.

 

Last week, I had to get up early two days in a row and on one of those mornings, I managed to think to take my camera along when I took Olive out for her morning walk.  Here you go…

This is the first little whitehead I've seen this year and it managed to put itself in one of my planters.

The light through the ash tree leaves makes them look like stained glass. 

Unfriendly fences…

Some fences have a friendly look about them and some do not.  These particular fences are ones I’ve picked up along the way that seem like they are adamant about keeping people at bay.

  Well, whatever…I didn’t want to go there anyhow.

Linking to Friday Fences.

Spring cleaning redux…

All these flowers have gone away for another year but they live undisturbed on my hard drive.

Spring Cleaning…

Cleaning out my hard drive, I came across some photos that I was reluctant to extinguish so am sharing them with you all.

One day not too long ago while I was walking the pug, I heard the unmistakable sound of the Pileated Woodpecker hammering away.  I spotted him and went in for my long lens but he was so far up in the tree, I couldn’t get a good shot.  Still, I like that I got a good look at him anyhow.  Here he is:

Mr. Cheeky just sits and wrings his hands trying to figure out a way into the bird feeder.  How can something so annoying be so downright cute??

Our early spring brought out the bugs early.  

Here’s one of our horsey friends.  He stood and posed so nicely.

Sunday's here again...

My entries for this week’s Sunday Scavenger Hunt are in. 

Yellow was the first prompt.  I decided to go out and snap what remained of the yellow spring flowers in honor of Earth Day and a couple of lemons.  Earth Day every day!

I’m not sure why people think pugs are grumpy or sad.  I must be something about their mugs.  But, believe me, they are pretty much the jolliest little dogs around and our pug Olive is something that never fails to make me smile.

We don’t really have anything around us that is ancient but the cut glass bowls that my mother-in-law gave me are antique.  They belonged to her mother at one time.  

Please don’t laugh when you see my splash picture.  I was home alone when I tried this and it didn’t occur to me how difficult it would be to drop a lemon in a bowl while trying to take a click with the camera and not get wet.  I was not very successful and actually had to change my clothes after I was done.  This photo is the best of a bad batch.

I collect colored glass balls because I love the way they look in the sun.  I particularly like this one because it sort of looks like the sun to me.

Linking to Sunday Scavenger Hunt.

Ode to our magnolia…

When we moved into this house more than ten years ago, it was in the middle of December.  Consequently, we really didn’t have any idea as to what was planted in our yard.  Over the next year, it was fun to see what popped open in the spring and hung around in the summer.  The person who lived here before must have been a pretty good gardener…something I am not.  There are bulbs that come up every year, daylilies galore and there are gorgeous white azaleas and rhododendrons that, when they bloom, look like clouds that have fallen in front of our house. 

And in our back yard on the edge of the woods there is a magnolia tree.  I fell in love with this tree the first year I saw it in bloom.  So I was horrified this past October after the freak snowfall when we realized that the tree had snapped in two under the weight of the heavy snow.  But apparently, the loss of a limb, even a major one, is not enough to have this tree give up the ghost and it bloomed again this year.  The blooms are not as profuse as in the past years.  But the magnolia did set its buds and brought forth some flowers that are beautiful even if they are a little brown around the edges because of our dry spring.

 

I suppose that the tree never had a moment’s thought that it wouldn’t bloom as I had feared would happen because of such major damage.  Such is the tenacity of wild life and my personal tendency toward despair sometimes.  It has been an uplifting sight looking out at the blooms that are now beginning to fade and drop to the ground because that is what they are supposed to do while the waxy green leaves are beginning to emerge.

 

Nature’s perseverance and persistence always puts hope in my heart and I stand here in awe of it.

Bare and beautiful…

Now and then for a little pick-me-up, I bring home some flowers from the grocery.  I’m not a gardener but I do like flowers and a little color in my kitchen here and there sure is nice.  Last week I decided on some tulips.  So I bought them, brought them home and put them in my favorite blue and white pot.  They were jaunty and uplifting.  I enjoyed them.

But then about four days after I brought them home, I came down to the kitchen in the morning to make my coffee and only two of the tulips had any petals left.  The rest of them had dropped them off during the night and they lay in a heap on the counter.

Not to let that discourage me, I took them outside and tried to make the most of them.  

Another week gone by...

So here’s another Sunday Scavenger Hunt.  It seems like the time between Sundays is going faster and faster.  But in spite of that, I managed to find something to go with each prompt this week.

Simple:  What could be simpler than a branch in water?

Grain:  Well, that’s what this is…grain.

Transportation:  I took a Qigong class yesterday that I really enjoyed.  On the way home and feeling very mellow, I was thinking that I didn’t have anything for transportation for today.  So I got out my little Nikon and took this photo.  Here I am driving on Podunk Road.  Yes, folks, there really is a Podunk Road and it is out in the country in Central Massachusetts.  I don’t really need the GPS here since I take this road frequently, but there it sits anyhow.  It does come in handy now and then when I forget where I am.

Stitch:  Today is Jackie Robinson day in Major League Baseball.  All the players wear Mr. Robinson’s number 42 today.  It honors a great ballplayer and a great American.  So what would be better today than the stitches on a baseball?

Bubble(s):  Very simply, here are some bubbles in some seltzer water.  I thought about buying a bottle of bubbles so I could experiment, but never got around to it.  But I do like fizzy water so here we are at the end of another Sunday Scavenger Hunt.

Linking up to Sunday Scavenger Hunt.

Baseball and Friday Fences…

For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning.

  ~John Thorn

What does this quote have to do with Friday Fences, you might ask.  Well, I sat here this morning thinking about baseball and wanting to put up some photos of fences here on my blog to link up to Friday Fences.

In baseball, of course, the fence is an important part of the game.  Some players desperately “swing for the fences” when their team is down.  There is even a play by August Wilson about baseball called Fences.  Fences are important in baseball. 

And I’m thinking about baseball today because today is the Boston Red Sox’s home opener.  They have gotten off to a pretty sorry start and I am hoping that today they decide to turn things around.  But regardless of how the Red Sox do, I will watch them all season because I am first and foremost a baseball fan and secondly a Red Sox fan.  In baseball, you take the bitter with the sweet.

And that is much like life. 

On our trip this week out to Deerfield, Massachusetts, Carrie and I drove around some beautiful countryside and saw some wonderful country homes.  I managed to take some pictures of a couple houses in Historic Deerfield.  These are really gorgeous, old, well kept houses behind these fences.  But we also saw a couple of properties that were not so well kept.  The contrast between April and September, I guess.

And for good luck, I am including one of my photos of Fenway Park's Green Monster...one of the world's most famous baseball fences.

  Good luck, Red Sox!

Linking up to Friday Fences.

Leaving reality behind…

While I was looking at my photos from the trip Carrie and I took out to the butterfly conservatory Magic Wings in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, I was overcome with a feeling that I had to do something out of the ordinary with some of the pics.  I usually don’t overly process my photos.  Usually I just crop and adjust the exposure enough to make them look the way I remember seeing them in real life.  But you know, with the available software out there, it’s kind of fun to take a flight of fantasy now and then.

So here are a few of the pics from that day that I got carried away with.  I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but I had fun.

Carrie the Butterfly Girl

Barns of Deerfield…

Carrie and I spotted a couple of cool barns on our trip out to Deerfield, Massachusetts last week.  I’m going to do a quickie here and post some pics.  Then I have to go to bed.

 

Sleep well all!

Linking to Bluff Area Daily Barn Charm

The fragrant new life was obvious and pink…

Notice how I managed to make a sentence out of the prompts for The Sunday Scavenger Hunt this week?  Okay, so it doesn’t make sense but what the heck?! 

Anyhow, here’s what I came up with:

We stopped at D’Angelo’s last week for lunch while we were running some errands.  If you aren’t familiar with the chain D’Angelo’s, they serve pocket sandwiches, grinders and such that are made to order when you order them.  It’s good, fast food.  This is the first restaurant I’ve ever been in though that used a Keurig to make the coffee.  I’m not a fan of the Keurig because I hate to think of all those little plastic things being thrown into landfills, but it does make a bit of sense in a place like this that doesn’t serve all that much coffee.  It beats having the coffee sit on a burner for hours on end and then being thrown out.  So this was something NEW to me and I enjoyed my NEW cup of coffee.  Wish they didn’t use foam cups though.

Also at D’Angelo’s, Greg got a soft drink of some sort and they gave him a pretty interesting cup.  What it says on the cup is what I hope you all get out of LIFE…a little something special, satisfaction, a fair chance and some ice cold refreshment when you need it.  After all, isn't that what we all want?  

My first thought on the prompt FRAGRANT was the scent of some kind of spring flower, but I have to admit that more than that I enjoy the smell of garlic cooking.  So that’s what I decided on for FRAGRANT.

  A gift from the gods…garlic.

But not being able to leave the flower thing behind, here’s what I came up with for PINK.

You may not be able to see it in this picture, but it is OBVIOUS to me that my daughter Carrie wishes I would put away my camera.  She was too polite to say so but I knew what she was thinking.

Hooking up to Scavenger Hunt Sunday.