Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Distinct Difference
What a difference a few hours and a little over a hundred miles made in our day yesterday. Asher and I started our day yesterday under a dramatic blanket of fog.
We could barely see Mia out in the field all by herself. When we came around the bend in the back pasture fence line, it looked like the other three horses were expecting us.
They quickly repositioned themselves as if to appear more nonchalant than they actually were. Having their sightlines reduced so significantly makes the horses a little more apprehensive about their situation. Showing up at the usual time to serve them nourishment went a long way toward easing their tension.
With the horses tended to, the only other assignment for the day was to drive up to the lake. Asher was all in for a long car ride. We were rewarded handsomely with lots of blue sky providing an ideal backdrop for the colorful trees glowing in the bright sunlight.
We arrived just a few minutes before John and Pam. Cyndie had prepared a lunch for us to enjoy before taking a walk to show them all of the Wildwood properties.
Asher seems pretty pleased to have all four of his favorite caretakers available for attention at the same time. That’s a big difference from the routine he is used to, where he only gets Pam and John when we have gone off and left him behind.
If today and tomorrow turn out gray and wet like the weather service has forecast, we will be even more grateful to have been blessed with the gorgeous day we were able to enjoy yesterday.
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Cyndie’s Eye
I let the Minnesota Vikings take up the middle of my day yesterday and didn’t really accomplish much before or after the game worth writing about. However, Cyndie has been taking some interesting pictures that she has graciously allowed me to feature this Monday.
The sky at sunrise yesterday included a rather precise edge of cloudiness.
Was it clearing up or about to become overcast? The clouds were moving in. We saw a few peaks of sun, but much of the day was overcast.
These next two are glimpses she captured of me that feel a little self-aggrandizing to include, but since they each feature animals as well, I’m using them.
When you’ve been married for 45 years, and your wife is still taking stealthy photos of you, I think that is a good sign. She’s got a good eye for capturing scenes depicting daily activity at Wintervale.
We walk the dog, feed the horses, I mow some grass, we gather wild plums, and Cyndie makes jam out of them. She takes our things to a yard sale, and I stay home and watch football. (Sadly, she probably spent more money on the trips to Minneapolis than she made selling things due to the excruciatingly high cost of gas these days.)
And both of us try to capture photos that depict the beautiful surroundings of our everyday. We are richly blessed to live where we do.
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Interesting Sightings
Cyndie’s dahlias continue to bloom with a photogenic appeal. I can’t resist capturing them in different light and at different stages of development.
I went with a little backlighting on this shot.
Yesterday afternoon, the clouds finally broke up enough to give us a sunny end of the day. It had rained over three-quarters of an inch overnight, and the day started out pretty wet.
I waited until after lunch to consider mowing. It was still a little damp in spots, but not wet enough to keep me from getting a handle on trimming the blades of grass that seem to be taking every advantage of what little moisture has been falling from the sky.
Most of the areas where the grass looked absolutely destroyed have made a decent recovery. I’m amazed at the resilience of plants.
When I returned to the house after mowing, I found Asher lounging on the garage apron and every door to Cyndie’s car wide open. In a heroic feat of decluttering, she was packing her car to its limit with items dredged from the basement for contribution to our friends’ yard sale in Minneapolis this weekend.
I hope all that stuff finds new use and is seen as a bargain by the hunters seeking deals.
Overall, it was a pretty normal day yesterday. Right up until I came upon this large hole in the ground.
Looking through it, I could see the sky.
How does that work?
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Happily Home
Gee, but it’s good to be back home. First of all, our dew point temperature is significantly lower than it was in Missouri. It actually feels like September here, with the cool evening, warm afternoon, brisk wind, and lowering angle of sunlight yesterday creating a distinct feeling of autumn. The rain that fell here while I was riding the Katy Trail has greened things up considerably.
Cyndie captured this gorgeous shot of the horses backlit by the twilight sky.
Now that’s a field that looks worth grazing.
I spotted one of her sunflowers with an echo of the actual sun in the background.
The wind picked up significantly in the afternoon while I was mowing. The north loop trail was clear when I gave it a clean cut, but after lunch, I found it blocked by a fallen tree.
It was a dead pine tree that we had let a grapevine climb, so no big loss as far as we are concerned.
Sometimes, the beauty of Wintervale causes me to question why I ever leave.
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Words on Images
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*This is the second time I have used “Last” for a title on this blog. Click HERE to see the first time.
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Precious Dew
Any moisture in a drought becomes all the more precious, so a little dew in the morning takes some of the edge off how harsh it feels outside. The dew also causes all the overnight spider webs in the pasture to become highly visible in the low light of the rising sun.
The horses seem to be tolerating the dry and dusty conditions with their typical demonstration of coping skills.
In their favor, the lack of wetness has inhibited the fly populations to a significant degree. However, it has also drawn a large number of bees to hang out around the horses’ automatic waterer. Cyndie put out some apple cider vinegar-baited traps and tried a couple of bee spray applications to discourage the establishment of a hive in the body of the Ritchie waterer.
Paddock Lake has become nothing more than a dug-out depression good for dust baths.
It’s getting hard to imagine how much rainfall it will take to ever fill that crater again. With the month of September just days away, the outdoors present a distinct feeling of an early onset of fall, minus the cooler temperatures.
Maybe we’ll get a wet October, which doesn’t seem unusual at all, but I don’t recall rain in the tenth month of the year historically amounting to the level of moisture we will need to put a dent in the dryness that has occurred this summer. I’d like to hope for a lot of snow over winter to give us a kick of moisture during the spring melt next year, but the strong El Niño is expected to result in a warmer winter with less snow in the Twin Cities.
I’m getting what pleasure I can from the early morning blankets of dew until the next rain event. There’s a tease in the forecast of a 70% chance on Saturday, but I’m not holding my breath. We are hosting guests for lunch that day, so maybe that will increase the chances. One can hope.
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