Temps outside were around 28 degrees again last night. I figured the water in the bird bath would have frozen, so right after the sun came up this morning I went outside to check it out. It was frozen all the way through.
I like the effect from the frozen bubble paths in the ice.
Brrrr. Time for hot chocolate!
It was very cold last night and into today. Well, cold for Austin. It got down to 28 degrees here last night. It’s going to continue to be at or below freezing for the next few nights.
I took a walk out back tonight. Most of the perennials I planted in the Spring are dried and dead above ground and need to be cut back soon.
An exception is the lamb’s ear that I planted. They are doing great! I love touching these plants. They are so soft and fuzzy on the outside, but must be tough on the inside to ride out this cold.
My Aunt in San Antonio gave me these from her garden last year and I’ve really enjoyed them.
We had a most awesome sendoff for our friends Tony & Michelle last night — in true B-dock fashion. We will miss them dearly but know we’ll sail with them again.
It *finally* rained — bringing some welcome relief from the dreaded cedar pollen, so I took a walk out back this afternoon. The red berries on the nandina caught my eye, especially with their dangling rain droplets.
I’ve found it difficult to manually focus this little camera. Though I love this Powershot D10 very much, it may be time to upgrade to a DSLR. I’ll wait until after I finish this 365 project.
Elvis is 76 years young today.
What? Doesn’t everyone have an Elvis shrine?
Monte built this for himself long before we met. We’ve been adorning it over the years.
Happy Birthday Elvis!!!
I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been feeling creatively challenged. A fellow blogger recently made me aware of a site she sometimes turns to for ideas of subjects to photograph — it’s called The Daily Shoot. I turned to it this morning and the assignment was to find strong converging lines in a photograph.
So, I took a number of shots and picked one I liked. Technically, I don’t think this one qualifies as containing converging lines, but it does contain strong lines, so I’m going with it. Here ’tis.
p.s.
TGIF!
When I set out on this photo-a-day-for-a-year project in March, it wasn’t to hone my photographic skills, as many 365-projects are intended to do. I just wanted to pause long enough to capture a moment from my day to reflect on.
As it turns out, along the way I have picked up a few things related to photography. One thing I recently learned about (I may be the last person with a camera to do so) is a bokeh effect in a photo (wikipedia definition here) — essentially when what is outside of the depth of focus has a blurred effect. I kept seeing “christmas bokeh” shots in various blogs for the last month or so and didn’t know what it was til I looked it up.
So, this is my first, not very well executed, attempt at a Christmas tree bokeh shot. In the foreground is my new favorite angel figurine – the Irish Charm angel – a gift from Sue and Marty. In this case, what *is* in the field of focus is a bit blurry as well…but this was the best of the several shots I took tonight. 🙂
Hectic first day back. But a canceled noon meeting meant that Monte and I could go to lunch together, so we did. As we were leaving I spotted a squirrel hiding on the fence. He didn’t run away until after I had taken this shot. If you look closely you can see a huge pecan in his mouth.
I raked and bagged many, many leaves this week. There are many more yet to fall.
I used a sepia tint and some fuzzy/glowy treatment with Picassa. I like how it turned out.
We went for a bikeride this afternoon. It was a sunny, crisp day.
We took a ride through nearby Yett Creek park and decided to go geocaching, since we had the GPS with us. We found three caches (here’s a pic if you want to check them out) for which we had preloaded coordinates ahead of time. I use the website geocaching.com to look up coordinates, and log the ones we find.
What a fun afternoon!
This is the 5th winter we’ve lived in this house. The first year the pistache out back turned a phenomenal shade of yellow before all the leaves fell. We haven’t been treated to that again until this year. I guess the drought/rain, heat/cold balance has to be just so.
Many of the leaves fell before turning yellow this year. But this shot gives an idea of how pretty it is.
It started out foggy and overcast, but has turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. I took one more drive down to the waterfront today. No sandy beach here — lots of rocks worn smooth from the endless wave action.
Saw lots of shore birds. Someone was diving about 20 feet offshore. A ferry went by. No orcas in sight, though. The seals can rest easy for another day.
In the local newspaper the other day there were reports of orca whales right off of Manette in East Bremerton, a few miles from my mom’s house. We went for a drive in late afternoon to look for some. Well, we didn’t see any, but it was a gorgeous clear day today and the mountain was out in all its glory. Mount Rainier is my favorite mountain (I may have said that before). What, doesn’t everyone have a favorite mountain? If so, how could it be any mountain other than this one?
Last night I watched Francine play soccer and visited with her afterward for a bit. Then spent the night at Noreen’s and got in a nice visit with her, David & Jared. Tonight mom and I went to see Zoolights at the Point Defiance Zoo with Fran & Art, Rebecca and Aaron, and met up with Colleen and her friend Pat afterward for dinner, so I got a visit in with her as well. 1 mom and 3 sisters down – 1 brother to go 😉
When my family first moved up to this area it was 1974. In the preparations for yet another family move, in this case from South Carolina, I can recall being very excited about moving to a place with mountains and snow. And I REALLY wanted a house with a fireplace.
Well, I wasn’t disappointed. 36 years later I still love the mountains. And, I do still enjoy a fire in the hearth. But the joy of the cutting/stacking/hauling of firewood that goes along with it — not so much.
This area is on the west side of the Puget Sound surrounded by the Olympic mountains to the west and the Cascade mountains to the east. Long before I knew how to tell direction by looking at where the sun was in the sky, I knew to look for the mountains to get my bearings.
This is a shot of the beautiful Olympic mountains from outside of Seabeck.
The weather has been chilly here, kind of rainy, but it was a nice day, for the most part. I went to an appointment with my mom, ran a few errands. Went to lunch with her, my sister Noreen, her daughter Julie and her friend Sierra. Then my mom and I visited a scenic nearby Nordic-heritage town called Poulsbo for some shopping.
It is truly beautiful up here.
Sheila365 
