Posts Tagged ‘images’
Try Guessing
It’s back! Everyone’s favorite image-guessing game is once again resurrected. It’s simple to play. All you need to do is guess what is depicted in the image below.
Do you trust your first impression, or ponder the possibilities? Can you hold off long enough to wait for the answer to come to you, or will you look for the solution right away?
You are in charge, but it is strongly recommended you come up with some kind of guess before clicking on the image to find out what this could possibly be. Guess your best, and enjoy the mental exercise! What do you see?
.
.
.
Cyndie’s Handiwork
She enriches my life immeasurably in countless ways and today I would like to share a few morsels of her splendor. The produce garden Cyndie hastily planted last spring during the distracting interruption of a knee replacement surgery has now run its course. Last of all the plants to be pulled from the dirt was a stalk of Brussels sprouts that offered edible buds roughly the size of peas.
They were delicious, but at that size, and based on my gut’s eventual reaction, I fear I may have eaten too many in one serving.
Something interesting showed up on our counter and I had to ask what it was.
“A pumpkin!” she says.
In trying to figure out how to describe the size from memory, I decided it could compare to a tennis ball. Looking at the photo again this morning, it reminded me more of a clementine orange. Cyndie disagreed and pulled out a clementine to show me them side by side as proof. The little orange was definitely bigger.
She felt it was more like a lime and pulled one from the fridge to compare. Nope. Even the lime was bigger.
We’ve concluded the little pumpkin compares closer to a ping-pong ball.
Apparently, the dry year we’ve had has squelched the size of some of the garden produce.
One of the best contributions Cyndie provides in support of my blog (beyond the endless fodder for entertaining stories) is the great images she captures on her phone.
The other night as the moon was climbing through clouds while she was walking Delilah, she snapped this gem:
It’s like a painting.
I am a really lucky guy to have this artist’s handiwork in my life.
.
.
Pretty Peak
We are witnessing pretty close to peak colors around here now. It’s hard to tell if the next day will become even more brilliant or if leaves will have abruptly dropped to the ground en masse.
There are a few straggling trees still holding green leaves but the ones that blaze the best colors are maxing out. We are doing our best to soak up the scenery with full in-the-moment appreciation, never knowing when the polychromatic party might end. The critical ingredient for maximum spectacle is direct sunlight, so the degree of cloudy skies in the next few days will play a significant part in prolonging the autumnal glory we have been blessed with this year.
Complicating the situation is the extreme degree of parched soil we have been dealt, so we are also longing for an extended soaking rain. I guess one way to look at it is that either way, we win.
If it gets rainy, we will rejoice over the moisture. If it stays sunny, we continue to enjoy the wonderful fall colors.
(For the purposes of this positive-thinking exercise, I will be ignoring the possibility of the skies clouding over without ever providing a measurable amount of rain.)
As of yesterday afternoon, we were peaking out and loving it!
.
.
View Within
Living in farm country has exposed me to the life cycle of cultivated crops and I was just commenting to Cyndie the other day how entire fields of soybeans suddenly all turn from green to yellow-brown in about a day. I wondered what it is they trigger on. The hours of sunlight? The reduced angle of the sun? Some particular overnight low temperature?
Boom. All at once, the field is no longer green.
Walking through our woods yesterday, I realized some of the ground cover that grows beneath the canopy has abruptly traded its green color for yellow.
That is a blurry photo but I am using it anyway because it still shows exactly what I’m describing.
Driving through the countryside to see the fall colors won’t show you this version of autumn. The view from within the forests of the fading greenery provides a different perspective of transformation after summer is over.
I did succeed in capturing a couple of other views from yesterday that weren’t as blurry.
It won’t be long before our boardwalk will become entirely obscured by a thick blanket of leaves. You won’t see any of the wood blocks after the maple trees drop their leaves.
The views from within the forest of the changes from summer to fall are a wonderful compliment to the brightly colored tree tops available from a distance.
.
.
Aerial View
We were finishing breakfast yesterday morning when our friend, Mike Wilkus, texted that he and his niece would be flying over our place in twenty minutes. Cyndie responded that we would be out in our field with the horses and asked for a photo of the labyrinth. Right on time, we heard the sound of a small plane approaching.
They flew right over us and made a turn to come around again. It was easiest for us to see them when they were right over us but from my experience as a passenger in small planes, I knew it is most difficult to see what is directly below. It felt a little dorky to be waving my arms broadly toward a small visible speck of a plane so far away in the sky, but I was guessing that was when they would have the best-angled view of us.
Soon, Mike was sending us pictures he took and Cyndie was sending hers right back. It went a little like this:
The four horses stand out pretty well in that last image. Cyndie, Delilah and I were a little above and to the right of the horses. To the right of us, the bottom portion of our brand spanking new driveway stands out rather nicely, too. Looks pretty good even from that altitude.
.
.
Dew Drenched
You know, I could get a lot more mowing done in a day if I didn’t need to wait so many precious hours for the grass to dry out from the overnight soaking of dew.
On the other hand, the wet hours during the first half of the days lately have given me a chance to knock off a few other miscellaneous chores that otherwise get passed over for the larger jobs.
I finally took a wheelbarrow into the woods to pick up a big pile of half-buried landscape fabric that had been dumped years before by previous owners. I discovered a piece of it several years ago in a most unsuspecting place off a trail, pulled up what seemed like an endless amount and then walked past it over and over through the seasons ever since, always thinking, “I should haul that out of here one of these days.”
Well, now it’s been hauled. Dew is not a bug, it’s a feature!
.
.
Morning Scenery
I got absolutely skunked by Cyndie in our rematch competition of CrossCrib yesterday. Four or five hands and I didn’t score a single point. In one case, she had 40 points before I counted my hand and the points in the crib. No contest from the get-go. I used to pride myself in defensive play but that ploy was entirely insufficient against her cards yesterday.
Cyndie also outdid me in capturing fabulous images of the early sunlight on a walk with Delilah while I exercised my world-class lethargy, staying in bed longer than I care to admit.
Wait. Did I just admit that?
Gorgeous.
It is my great honor to be given the privilege of featuring them on my blog.
Thank you, Cyndie! I’m happy to give up CrossCrib success against you forever if you will keep giving me access to your photo library. 🙂
As if I had any control in that.
.
.
Relative Something 