Big changes in my life since my last post.

The elderly couple whose properties I had been maintaining both died, and one of the properties was sold, leaving me with not much to feel productive about. I had promised myself that after they were gone so was I, and it seems to be working out that way. Forty years of Maine winters is an awful lot.

A cold day in heck.

So here I am on my birthday, in a putatively warmer clime, hunting for a house. It’s kind of cool today, I don’t think the temperature broke 70; but it was in the 90s all last week and it’s supposed to warm back up to the upper 80s again later this week. Beats the 30s and snow they’re having today back in Maine.

I stumbled across a small state park this afternoon. Not much there, but it supplied a respite from people and buildings for a little while. Worth the three dollar entrance fee: finally learning how to identify the three different kinds of mangrove that grow around here. I also ran across these little guys:

A bunch of tiny crabs at the water’s edge at Don Pedro Island State Park.

This one was crossing the path in front of me as I headed back to the car:

“You’ll never get the secret recipe outta me!”

I paid for that shot. After crawling around on all fours, sticking my macro lens in the claw of this arthropod, I found I couldn’t straighten up. I had to make my way back to the car crabwise. My back is still in spasm. Still, it was worth it.

The next day we went out to the Marshlands Conservancy, in Rye. The terrain was a little flatter than I like, but it was another very nice hike. I must have left my photographer’s brain at home, though, because I came back with a camera full of ruined shots from that day.

We saw a bunch of deer crossing the trail. The ones I managed to shoot either turned out headless, as they were passing behind trees when I tripped the shutter; or blurry, because I didn’t have sense enough to change the ISO setting on the camera to compensate for the dark overcast exacerbated by thick canopy. It sure was green in there, though.

I did manage to get an almost-passable shot of a pair of Great Egrets hunting along the marsh.

Great Egret [Casmerodius albus] at the Marshlands Conservancy in Rye, N.Y.

Just before the first crack of thunder heralding the coming storm, we came upon a tiny cascade:

Tiny cascade in Marshlands Conservancy, Rye, N.Y.

The last shot shows just how incredibly green it was in there. It doesn’t show how incredibly overrun with poison ivy it was. At least I haven’t started itching yet.

Right after that we hotfooted it out of the woods and made it back to the car just as the first drops started falling.

Next up: Day Three.

The area around New York City is beautiful in early May: everything seems to be blooming at once. That will not be reflected in this post.

I just got back from my nominally annual trip to NYC to visit my sister for her birthday. We took a hike in a different part of Westchester County each of the three days I was there. On the first day, we went to the Cranberry Lake Preserve. While the gardens and grounds of the homes in that area are beautifully landscaped, not much seemed to be blooming in the woods.

This was one exception:

Wild Geranium [Geranium maculatum]

A Jack-in-the-pulpit is a Jack-in-the-pulpit, right?

Ha! Apparently, there are three types of Jack-in-the-pulpit, and I didn’t have my book with me to make a positive identification. But this looks like the variety sometimes known as Indian-turnip:

Northern Jack-in-the-pulpit [Arisaema stewardsonii]

We never did make it to the second lake, because the trail markers for one whole end of the preserve were nonexistent. They ran out at the same place on two different trails: the old quarry left over from the building of the Kensico Dam. The one quarry pond we found was a nice place to have lunch, though.

Quarry pond at Cranberry Lake Preserve

There was lots of wildlife. At the quarry pond, we spotted a water snake I was too slow to capture with my camera. We also saw what might have been a redheaded woodpecker, although it was too distant for positive ID. Later in the hike, my nephew with the young eyes spotted this guy sunning himself beside the trail:

Northern Black Racer [Coluber constrictor constrictor]

Despite not getting to see the whole preserve, we had a pretty good outing. Next up: Day Two.

Update: I’ve added a link to the Cranberry Lake Preserve’s website (just click the name of the preserve either here or at the top in the original body of this post). Not including it earlier was an oversight on my part, now corrected.

The other day, I was driving through Windham, trying to find a boat ramp (I never did find it), when I drove past this beauty on route 302:

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

I drove on for about a half mile and then made a U-turn. It was just what I thought it was.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

If the captions haven’t tipped you off, it’s a 1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

Aside from a few cosmetic differences, this is the car my father bought new in 1956. Same colors. Same chrome trim. Aaaaagh! The chrome!

The chrome! It burns!

Even as an eleven-year-old, I had large amounts of patience and OCD. But the chrome polish was handed to me, and this grille was a killer. There was a lot of it, and the back edges were sharp. And it sucked even more in cold weather, when my hands hurt anyway.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

Still, if I hadn’t just blown my life savings on a new truck, I would’ve been sorely tempted to buy this one-owner sweetie. Chrome killer-grille and all.

Hey, I never said I was rational. OK, maybe I did, but I lied.

I was trying to do too many things at once this past Sunday. As a result, I did none of them well.

Sunday was my every-fourth-week drive to Denmark, Maine, with a friend and his daughter. I’ve been promising her for six months that I’d take her on a little hike one of these times, and the weather was too good to pass up this time. As is usual for me, I grabbed my camera and tripod; because, if I’m gonna be out in the woods, I’m gonna be taking pictures.

Except I hadn’t hiked Douglas Mountain in about twenty-five years and my memory was a little fuzzy on the length of the hike. And when I take pictures I like to take my time.

So we ended up not being able to reach the summit, and I hurried the shots and came away with not much usable, and we were late getting to Denmark.

I need to learn to focus.

A small waterfall on Douglas Mountain

A small stream on Douglas Mountain

Another day, another excuse from the guy who has over 1100 of my dollars for a new cap for my new truck. He still hasn’t driven down to Massachusetts to pick it up. The upside is that I now have the time to post some stuff I shot a few days ago.

I think I’ve figured out why I get so depressed in March. That’s when, at the end of a long, hard winter, I figure out that I still can’t afford to retire to Florida and I’ll have to spend next winter here, too. Even with that in mind, this past one was particularly bad. Several injuries have left me limping and depressed. In the midst of it all, the 95-year-old whose property I maintain fell and broke his hip. Between hobbling to the hospital every day with his mail, trying to shovel snow using only one arm, and watching my retirement fund fly out the window for a new truck after the old one died of cancer, I’ve been functioning at a very low level.

The good news is that most of the snow has melted and the temps have gotten high enough that I can put out the garden hoses and start spring cleanup. A few days ago, as I was surveying the damage to the trees out back, I came across a little patch of color in the woods. As I couldn’t decide which shot to post, you get two.

Crocus, unknown species or cultivar.

These crocuses were poking their heads out of the mess of leaves on the far side of my canoe. The colors remind me of a children’s book I had when I was a kid, “The Color Kittens.”

Same crocuses, different shot.

I didn’t even notice that I was crawling on my belly in the mud until I brought it into the house with me.

And a couple of nights ago, as I was walking home, I thought the fog rolling in to Memorial Field was pretty neat. But by the time I got my camera and got outside, the fog had completely rolled in and there was no contrast between clear air and fog. Some interesting shots, anyway.

Deering High Memorial Field at night in fog.

The lacrosse players were taking a break on the left side of the picture. They’re pretty hard to see.

Deering High Memorial Field at night in fog. This view is from ground level.

Back to working on my attitude…

Update: Well, crap. I just noticed that for the last few posts, Worpdress hasn’t been automatically making each image a link to its full-size self. Now I gotta go in and hand-edit all the images. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update 2, now with more bookly goodness: Here’s the cover from the book. I found it at Wikipedia.

The Color Kittens

That takes me back about sixty years. That’s scary. And sad.

Well, part, anyway.

The unicorn seems to have been held up in shipping; but the Skittles are being delivered. For some reason, though, the only ones coming through are the brown ones. And they smell kind of funny, but it’s probably ungrateful of me to criticize. I’m sure the rest will start shipping any day, now.

I’m so excited!

O Hope! O Change! In the New Age of Obama, we’ll all get Skittles-pooping unicorns. Some have already received theirs*:

Taste the Rainbow.

* Thanx for the picture to Unclefacts, who comments over at Ace o’ Spades HQ.

This image has showed up on the internet from time to time over the years. It’s usually sent as a forwarded email with the subject line “Sunset at the North Pole,” and a body which reads

Sunset at the north pole…

TOO BEAUTIFUL NOT TO SHARE

A scene you will probably never get to see.
This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point.
You also see the sun below the moon.
An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated.
You may want to pass it on to others.
The Chinese have a saying:
‘When someone shares with you something of value,
you have an obligation to share it with others.’

The last time it was sent to me was in March of 2007; apparently it’s making the rounds again, because it was forwarded to me by two different people today.

It’s a cool image, but it’s not a photograph. I say that not as a photographer, but as someone who paid attention in High School science classes. From Wikipedia:

The angular diameter of the Sun is about the same as that of the Moon…

What that means is that when you look at the sun and the moon, they appear to be approximately the same size when viewed from Earth. The disparity in sizes in this image is a scientific impossibility.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not a pretty nice piece of art. It’s just not a photograph. That also doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate getting it from people who want to send me something nice. It’s just that I’m a geek, and I can’t let a misrepresentation like this slide. Thanx for sending it to me, guys. I really do like it. And I appreciate the thought behind it.

And if the creator of this art work is reading this: please let me know who you are, so I can give you proper credit. I don’t like publishing without attribution.

Much later: Oh, and there’s no open water at the North Pole, either. Except in the fevered imaginations of the Glowball Warmening cultists.

Update, 18 February 2009:

Commenter Haggas says:

Her name is Inga Nielsen

http://nielsen.sp01.ab-webspace.de/index.php?link=news&lang=1

So. Mystery solved. And now I can say that the image is copyrighted by Inga Nielsen. Head on over to her site to view her amazing artwork.

Thanx, Haggas.

Stoaty likes to post “a picture of the last light of the year on New Year’s Eve,” but I’m generally a morning person, so I like to shoot the first light of the new year.

I didn’t get out for a proper shoot this year, because I was geared up for snow removal (from a storm that didn’t materialize). So I cheated. I just stepped outside my door and took some quick snapshots of the high school across the street in silhouette, and then of the snow-bound football field. The brief exposure to the 5-degree temperature numbed my fingers and made ‘em hurt like heck when they started to thaw.

Deering High School at dawn on the first day of 2009

Deering High School football field, imprisoned behind a chain-link fence on the first day of 2009

Deering High, a closer look

The other day, I found a link to one of those sites that “rate” your blog for you. This one came out as a “G,” I think, with a note that one post had used the word “shoot” once. I dunno how to talk about photography without using the word “shoot,” nor do I want to. Strange that a normal activity, like shooting (whether with a camera or weapon), could be the cause of concern to some. More PC intrusion in our lives.

Shoot.