Dragon Flies
These shots were taken at a nearby pond some years ago with my old Fuji-Finepix S5800. The dragonflies are so fast and on the go so much it’s hard to get a decent shot – and from a distance!
I did rather love this shot. I think the dragon fly may be laying her eggs on a reed under the water!
Caught in flight!
And these are the larvae cases that the newborn dragonflies have shrugged off and left
Damsels
I’m assuming these are both damsel flies. If anyone knows exactly what type they are I’d love to know!
Soaring
For someone special today
I am the albatross that awaits you
at the end of the world.
I am the forgotten soul of the dead mariners
who passed Cape Horn
from the seas of the world.
But they did not die
in the furious waves.
Today they soar on my wings
towards eternity
in the last crack of the Antarctic winds.
Sarah Vial – Chilean poet
Through the Kitchen Window
You can really say you’re blessed when this is the sort of view you have from your kitchen window early in the morning.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Order
Strawberry farms here in the Dordogne in Southern France. Perfect orderly rows! All that plastic heated by the sun sometimes causes a bit of turbulence when we fly over it in the microlight.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Friend
This photo was taken in 1973 – the year after we met in Calgary. My most wonderful friend, fellow farmhand, lifelong buddy, Joyce, what would I do without her. And that’s her friend too, the little black dog she loved so dearly – the infamous ‘Chubby Chicken’ who stole the butter, and the cake. Chubby is long gone I’m afraid. But Joyce is still going strong. For many years we’ve lived thousands of miles apart, but our friendship is just as strong as the day we met. (The header today is Kaslo B.C where we shared so many memories).
Pastel Sketched Photographs
I love the transformations you can create these days with photo editing. Recently I discovered pastel sketch in GIMP. These are a few pics of flowers.
Daisy-Daisy!
Sunflower
Dandelion Clock
Poppies
Weekly Photo Challenge: Evanescent
With every passing breeze we fade, to grow again in another glade … tick-tock
Weekly Photo Challenge: Evanescent
Prayer Flags
I hung these up when my sister became ill back in 2012. They didn’t save her life, but I think of her every time I look at them. This is the second set, the first ones faded and all became white, so I replaced them last year – she would like that.
Don’t Wait!
Live Life Now!
On a Dash to the Ardéche
We had to go to Aubenas this week to collect a part for the microlight. Aubenas is in the southern part of the Ardéche department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France. It’s quite beautiful and a great place if you want to go rock climbing or canoeing. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time for photography because it was a flying visit; a six hour journey down there and back again in a day. I did grab a chance for a couple of pics on the way home, some taken from the car window as we drove along.
Not everyone’s cup of tea but I love wind turbines
Snapped on the move!
Beautiful stonework
Potted Mouse
Possibly my favourite animal is the wood mouse (also known as the long-tailed field mouse), and for many years now they have been coming to our window ledge to share the sunflower seeds we put out for the birds. But a problem arose about a year ago. I noticed a grey house-mouse chasing off a wood mouse on more than one occasion and fairly soon the grey population was increasing. Not only that but there was a distinct aroma of mouse pee on the windowsill and the greys were increasing and bringing their offspring. (Wood mice are extremely clean and don’t leave smells).
It couldn’t go on. I started feeding the birds on the bird table. Then I dug out a humane mouse trap and filled it with seeds. Over a period of about a week we caught 25 mice and relocated them to a barn some distance away. I left the trap out for a while but there wasn’t a mouse in sight. The window ledge was scrubbed clean and I put no seed out for a couple of weeks.
I missed my wood mice, and kept thinking back to the one chased off by the grey. Now that the greys were gone would the wood mice come back? I put seeds out and within two or three days there he was late one evening taking seeds from a small dish. I decided to give him a little shelter in the form of an old flower pot. He seems to love it and is there every night. Apologies for the quality of the video, I need more practise at editing.
My little friend is often still ferrying seeds back to his burrow in the morning, which is when I managed to snap a few pictures through the window. But he’s so fast in and out of the pot and sometimes takes a while between trips. So there were two problems – one in that ninety percent of the photos ended up being mouse-blur. Then when I tried the video I was getting long gaps while he tore off to his burrow. This then caused small hiccups in the video (below) when I chopped out bits where nothing was happening. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it anyway.
