Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Wild Sunrise
I thought the photo I included in yesterday’s post was an interesting sky but then I captured this view of the sunrise while feeding horses:
Just another day at the office for me.
And I gotta say, these four wonderful horses we take care of have been especially charming to be around lately.
Being a couple of old retired people, Cyndie and I took in a Tuesday matinee at the Hudson Theater to see “A Complete Unknown.” We both thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel sorry for the folks who got upset at the folk festival where Bob Dylan “went electric” in 1965.
It’s really wild to be reclining on the bed in the den with Asher sleeping on me one minute, and then after a mention of the movie idea from Cyndie, find myself sitting in front of the big screen an hour later. If I thought the horses were being charming, Asher is making a case that he is rather irresistible himself.
Timothée Chalamet had me thinking I was hanging out with a young Bob Dylan for a couple of hours there. I found Edward Norton as Pete Seeger to be wonderfully convincing. The movie had me wishing I could relive the unique experience of hearing these Dylan songs for the very first time like so many people in the film were depicted doing.
There are plenty of artists whose music doesn’t grab me until I’ve had time to discover and develop an appreciation for it. I tend to think that would have probably been my experience with Dylan’s early songs if I was old enough at the time to even know they existed. When he was all the rage in the New York folk scene, I was playing with toy trucks in the dirt outside or on the perfectly patterned floor rugs near the bay windows in our old farmhouse.
I do have a memory of hearing “Hurricane” for the first time in 1975 and being mesmerized by the way he told such a dramatic story within the captivating melody.
It’s kind of like looking up to unexpectedly find a fascinating sky at sunrise, unlike anything you’ve seen before.
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Waterway Scenery
Compared to the days and weeks before Christmas and New Year’s, the second day of the year was pretty serene around here. There isn’t enough news to fill barely a minute of a Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon-style monologue. If you’ve never heard one of those rambles from the great storyteller, GK, look it up.
I wonder how long it will be until no one recognizes what I am talking about when I reference the old Prairie Home Companion radio show.
The highlight of my day yesterday was capturing a couple of photographs on a walk with Asher in the waterway along the southern border of our property.
When it rained last week, there was enough runoff to create some flow in the waterway, as evidenced by pools that froze over in low spots. The water beneath has since dried up, leaving a beautifully decorated layer of ice about the thickness of a skinny pane of glass.
I also paused to take a picture of a wonderfully constructed nest in a young oak tree we’ve been nurturing since discovering it.
The birds didn’t winterize this structure, but maybe they’ll return in a few months to put their summer home to good use.
That’s the extent of excitement around here yesterday. Oh, I suppose I could add the jovial visit from our “This Old Horse” rep, Johanne, who dropped off bags of grain for the herd and picked up a few bales of the hay that our mares don’t like. She has horses and mules that’ll eat it.
I spent time reading a Pierce County book about historical log houses and a bunch more newspaper editions from the 1870s. I haven’t come across any new details about my ancestors who lived here at the time in my recent reading, but every day, my impression of what life was like in this area back then becomes better informed.
As in, the sights I found in the waterway are likely very similar to what my great (and great-great) grandparents were seeing on walks in their days. Although, back then, they probably would have seen these things in November instead of January.
That’s yesterday’s news from the ranch, where the horses are strong, the meals are good, and Asher’s intelligence is about average.
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Precarious Footing
Yesterday afternoon, we received a wonderful surprise in the form of sunlight and a visible blue sky after days of being socked in by a persistent fog.
The view when we headed down to feed the horses was spectacular!
Too bad it didn’t last. Not long after darkness fell, my phone pinged with a weather service warning of dense fog again. With the large dose of moisture lingering after yesterday’s rain and the airborne water vapor coating surfaces as the temperature hovered around the freezing point, Cyndie found the driveway dangerously slippery when she snuck out to retrieve the feed buckets.
This morning, it is even worse.
The asphalt of the driveway was too slippery to navigate on foot, so we backtracked and cut through the side doors of the garage to get to the backyard for a route to the barn.
The horses were coping but didn’t look too pleased with the conditions either. The poor pigeons were having quite a time of it when they tried landing on the metal roof and couldn’t keep from sliding.
It will be a good day to stay indoors, where I can finish my next jigsaw puzzle and watch the Vikings/Packers matchup with a glowing fire in the fireplace.
That blue sky yesterday afternoon now feels like it was just a mirage.
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Fairy Flakes
Contrary to what is headed our way today, (…WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 3 AM THURSDAY TO 3 AM CST FRIDAY… * WHAT…Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations between 5 and 7 inches.) there was no evidence of precipitation visible on the radar yesterday. Yet, all day long there were perfectly formed snowflakes floating down out of the sky.
The beautiful flakes weren’t melting on the horses, which teased me to try getting some pictures. Unfortunately, none of the mares were interested in accommodating my attempts to zoom in close.
They didn’t want to stand still with me holding out my phone camera toward their backs. I don’t blame them. It did seem kind of creepy.
There were times when the clouds overhead were so thin I could see blue sky, yet those flakes kept falling. I decided to call them fairy flakes after the “fairy knots” that show up mysteriously in the manes of horses. These flakes didn’t appear to be coming from snow clouds, so fairies seemed like the next logical explanation.
I eventually noticed I could capture some of the crystalline flakes that landed on the surface of our frozen landscape pond.
If we are going to get a plowable amount of snow today, that will be too much to get a clear picture of one individual snowflake.
I mounted the plow blade onto the Grizzly ATV in preparation and pulled out snow shovels in advance of today’s activities. Wouldn’t you know it, Cyndie spent the night in the Cities after a holiday gathering with some friends. It’s probably for the best. I’d have let her help do some shoveling, and that wouldn’t look good on my record, putting her to work out in the cold so soon after her recovering from pneumonia.
Sure would be nice if there were such a thing as “fairy snow shovelers.”
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Injustice Exists
At times, the expedition I’m on to avoid news media leaves me oblivious to current events happening in other parts of the world until someone brings them to my attention. In reassessing my goal and the progress thus far, Cyndie and I chatted about how news avoidance was going for each of us.
She mentioned that injustices of the past have been survived by many people for ages and that injustices will continue to exist in the future. Coexisting with the atrocities perpetrated is an unpleasant reality. My immediate survival mode involves “turtling” to preserve my sanity and hopefully build some reserves of fortitude to face inequities that close in on my range of influence.
As a beacon of hope, love, and beauty, I present some views of our surrounding natural glory at the lake up near Hayward. Pictures we took on a walk yesterday in the cold on the last day of November.
This morning, there are four white swans swimming around between our shore and the island nearby, frequently plunging their heads deep to feed, with their tail feathers pointing straight to the sky. They have no concerns about what the citizens of the world will face in the coming months and years as they consume some food and give their wings a break from their migration to winter quarters.
I can relate to them entirely. Maybe I am “swanning,” not turtling.
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Eagle Visit
It was a cold morning yesterday and if we had any pumpkins there would have been frost on them. We do have a lot of leaves, though.
The temperature dropped far enough below freezing that the surface of “Paddock Lake” developed a layer of ice.
Since I’ve been pondering our role in the ongoing rescue of our four thoroughbreds, I took a few pictures of them in the early sunlight as they were gobbling their mix of cracked oats and corn.
Swings with her fresh application of mud.
Mix’s nose.
Mia
Light
Eight hours later, we showed up for the afternoon feeding. I was out scooping manure, and Cyndie was inside, measuring portions into their buckets. Mia was halfway down the slope toward the waterer, munching hay from one of the nets hung on the fence. Suddenly, I noticed Mia had flipped around 180 degrees and was standing on alert, looking to the south.
I scanned the distance to see if I could find what was grabbing her attention. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, my eyes moved back toward Mia, and that’s when I spotted what she was reacting to. A very large bald eagle was standing about five feet in front of her on the shore of the now iceless Paddock Lake.
It’s odd that I hadn’t noticed it when I looked around the first time. The eagle’s bald head stood out with its bright whiteness, and it was so incredibly tall compared to all the little pigeons that are about to get their own zipcode due to a population explosion.
I couldn’t be certain how long it had been there, but because Mia had just noticed, I’m guessing it hadn’t been very long. I don’t even know if it had enough time to drink because, as Mia approached the eagle took off.
Luckily, I had gotten Cyndie’s attention quickly enough that she came out just in time to see the big bird’s departure.
A huge eagle landing in our paddock while we were milling around felt like a nice ‘hat tip’ of appreciation from the universe to let us know things are good here.
It also tells me I’m not the only one noticing that little puddle seems to be forming into more than just a puddle. I’m feeling all the more justified in granting that watering hole a real name.
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Random Distribution
Our wet driveway near the big willow tree served up an interesting display of randomly distributed fallen leaves yesterday morning. Nature providing opportunities for digital desktop wallpaper patterns or something along those lines.
By this morning, everything had dried up and most of those leaves had been scattered by the wind. What a difference a day can make.
Thursday, stepping outside was an exercise of stoicism in the face of 40 mph wind gusts blowing sleety rain and snow into our faces. Hunching against the onslaught, we wrestled our trash and recycling bins from the house to the end of the driveway.
The brain interprets the harsh conditions, triggering the autonomic response to put the body into survival mode despite the lack of that extreme level of threat. The difference this morning is striking.
Asher and I were on our own for morning chores and enjoyed calm and comfortable early November conditions. The horses were angelic and mostly calm. Mia was a little jumpy about approaching her feed bucket because it was hung under the overhang where we had moved her due to the rain and snow. The electric fence near there can be annoyingly snappy from moisture and she doesn’t like it when that happens.
I unplugged the power to appease her and allow feeding time to commence without further fussing.
On the way back to the house, as the sun’s rays were just beginning to appear through the thick pine grove that forms our eastern horizon, an almost perfect orange circle with a shadow in the middle lit up on the green shingles of our roof. It honestly looked like someone was shining the “bat-signal” distress alert on our house.
I wondered if someone had mistaken me for the caped crusader.
As I got closer and more sunlight was beginning to speckle other places along the peak of the roof, I could actually discern the outlines of the pine branch that was creating the bat-symbol-looking shadow across the curiously circular spray of sunlight.
Very unexpected from so far a distance to the trees.
A random distribution of a fascinating moment bestowed upon us to complement the wild weather conditions experienced just two days prior.
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Relative Something 