About a month ago I put up a finch feeder with some nyjer seed in it because we had seen some finches trying to feed on the hummingbird feeder.
The other day we saw a bird on it for the first time, but I was not able to get a photo. I had my camera out today when I saw a couple taking turns on the feeder. The finch feeder has openings for seed beloweach perch. So, when the birds want to eat they hang from the perch upside down and pick seeds out of the openings. This photo isn’t great. You may not be able to make out much. But it’s the one I’ll use because it made my day.
I looked it up in our bird book and online and I believe this is a black-capped chickadee.
It’s truly amazing how easily entertained we can be. We spent half the day anchored in the cove, floating out back, cracking eachother up. I was trying to get a shot of the squishy-splash-ball as I caught it, but I mostly ended up getting Marty laughing as he hit his mark. Good one, Marty! 🙂
We had a lazy Saturday morning, but ended up heading to the lake for a raft-up in Arky North cove with Joe and Marty & Sue. This is a shot of one of the awesome sunset views we have from the back of the boat. The sky was a beautiful golden color right after the sun set.
Technically, the moon will be full tomorrow night, but we were treated to an as-good-as-full moonrise across the cove, just as the sun was setting.
Friday night. Must be dart night. While Monte was warming up at home I took some photos of the board. This sequence of three throws ended up being double-bull, bull, bull. Those of you that have played darts with Monte will believe me that this was not staged. 🙂
I decided to feature this as my moment-of-the-day.
I used Picasa to create the collage. Pretty nifty.
Before buying my first house 12 years ago and having a yard and flower beds of my own, I didn’t really pay much attention to flowers, plants, grasses. I didn’t know their names, and didn’t take the time to appreciate a really pretty and well tended garden.
Since then, I’ve really come to enjoy gardening, over the years planting many beds of my own, trying different plantings. I’ve tried my hand at vegetable gardens as well, but they always seem to fall victim to the unbearable heat of our summers. Native flowers and plants are much more fun to grow — they seem to thrive in this crazy weather.
A few years ago I discovered that geraniums do really well outside here and have planted several. Unless there’s a really hard freeze, they make it through the winter just fine.
This is a shot of a geranium I planted in the bed this year — a pretty deep red.
When we bought this house 4 years ago (how time flies!) one of the “must haves” that it didn’t have was gas. We love to cook, and we simply LOVE cooking on a gas range. The house was all electric, and our bizarre built-in-the-70s-and-80s neighborhood doesn’t have natural gas plumbed to all the homes. So, our only choice was to have a propane tank put in.
So, we cooked for 3 years on that old crummy electric range. As a part of the big remodel last year, we had a small propane tank installed out back. The nice gas company people said it should only need filling a couple times a year. Since then we have been blissfully enjoying cooking to our hearts’ content on our big, bad gas range.
The only problem is that we’re not sure exactly when we’ll run out of gas. The gauge that the nice gas company people put on our tank reads 70% full. Problem is, it hasn’t moved for 6 months. So, we think that it’s broken and that we really don’t know how much gas is in the tank. So, we called the nice gas company people to ask them to come check the gauge and to please fill the tank. Then, based on how much they put in, we’ll have a rough idea how much gas we burn through in a year and when we need to call for a refill.
The catch-22 is that the nice gas company people say that they use the gauge when they’re filling it to tell them how much is in the tank. So they say they won’t fill it if it says it’s 70% full. >:|
So, at the moment we are basically just waiting to see when we run out of gas. I’ll keep you posted.
In the mean time, I went out to the tank tonight to take a picture of said gauge. See, it’s showing 70%. Then I noticed the small print that says “do not use for filling.” That’s odd. I guess we need to call the nice gas company people again….
Well. Today is Tuesday. I’m buried at work. But time has come to hang it up for the night.
Monte and I aren’t what you call TV addicts. Our favorite channel is the live weather radar channel. We have taken a recent fancy to those quirky British comedies on PBS and more often than not we prefer to watch old timey movies on the classic movie channels. There is one primetime show that we enjoy watching together, though — Mad Men. Season 4 kicks off this weekend. We didn’t really start watching the show until last season. For his birthday I bought Monte Season 1 & 2 DVDs, so we could catch up.
We had about 3 episodes left to watch, and so we had our own mini-marathon tonight to finish the DVDs before the season premier this weekend.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I left my camera in a low resolution setting from the other day. So any other shots I’d taken of pretty things looks very grainy. I did happen to capture this screen shot documenting our Mad Men marathon. So, that’s what you get for tonight.
I have been working on my stealth technique for stalking hummingbirds. I bought a mini-tripod. I’ve even read the manual. I learned about fixing the auto focus. I learned how to reduce degradation of the image when I go past the 3x optical zoom max. This is the best shot I’ve gotten so far. I’d like to learn how to modify the contrast when taking the picture. The oak tree behind the feeder and the light at this time of day makes it difficult to have the image in the foreground pop. But I’m pleased with the result so far. I guess I can give the little birdies a rest, for now.
I weeded the flower bed yesterday, and it’s much easier to see the new buds and foliage. This is bud #2 from the purple coneflower. I don’t know what it is about closeups that captures my interest. This one was too hard to pass by.
We’re spending a weekend on land for a change 🙂 I have some things from work that need to get done before Monday. It’s also been a while since we worked in the yard. I thought today was the day it might finally hit 100 here, but it didn’t.
Monte made dinner tonight. This is a shot of the lovely caprese salad appy, with homegrown basil. We’ve really been enjoying the bumper crop of basil — putting it in as many dishes as we can. Main course was Rainbow Trout ala Monte…. delicious!
I wish I could have a summer full of days like today, not a few at a time squeezed in between 5 day work weeks. But, I’ll take ’em!
I do enjoy taking photos of the flowers in the garden. But at the risk of posting yet-another-zinnia photo, I decided to play with the color on this shot that I took during my walk out back today.
Underneath the Pecan trees, out back, I came across this plant. I am not sure what this phenomena is called, but it’s turned white on one half of the leaves, divided down its axis.
You might want to go into a dark room to see this image. I follow an online sky-watching site called Sky & Telescope. Each week it points out notable things in the night sky to watch out for. This week there is a pretty cool lining up of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn, alongside the crescent moon.
So, I went out tonight on a mission to try to capture a picture of this glorious event. I had limited success. Mercury was not visible. I was able to see the others. Here is the best image I have. Not great, but kind of cool if you think about what you’re seeing. If you look diagonally from top left down to bottom right you can see: Saturn, then Mars, then Venus (brightest star to the right of the crescent moon) then below Venus to the right is Regulus.
Pretty cool, eh?!
If you look on the right side between Saturn and Mars, you’ll see the star Denebola, which is part of the constellation Leo.
This is the diagram from Sky & Telescope, if it helps.
I’m starting to look at fancy-dancy cameras now. Not sure if that was the point of this picture-a-day project, but we’ll see what develops. get it? develops? heh heh 😉
Last week I went in to Lenscrafters to order replacements for my Raybans that I lost on our last San Marcos tubing trip. They called today to say they were ready.
While I was at the Arboretum to pick them up, I took a walk around the nearby park. If you’ve been there you may recognize the stone cows. A favorite for kids of all sizes to climb up on.
They used to have Blues on the Green at this park every Wednesday night. It’s held down at Zilker Park now. I checked out the schedule for the rest of the summer (here’s a link)… there’s 3 more scheduled. I’m going to try to make one of them.
Sheila365 
