Around the yard, pretending that I like snow

Had the camera out yesterday in Dad's yard. As much as most of my, like pretty much everyone else's, picture-taking is by phone these days, there's nothing that compares to the feel, sound, and effect of an actual SLR. Or dSLR now, because very few of us putterers can afford the expense and bother of film. Even if I do have a really nice film camera.

Anyway.

We've had a lot of fog lately, and that led to a bunch of frosty branches. Hey, as much as I hate winter and cold, I can make myself like frost flowers. Here's a bit of what was out there.

Frozen tarragon

I like the clumpy way that snow makes patterns on branches sometimes.

More clumps, this time on cotoneaster.

Frosted Blue Spruce

Icicles on honeysuckle

This isn't frozen or in the yard. It's Tom in a duffel bag.

In the interests of equal time, Bob in a cat house.

Knowing me, that's probably it for at least another month. Ah well, at least the blog is semi-used occasionally.

Pointless Fall Photos

Look! A blog post! And photos from the actual camera as opposed to the phone. All the photos are unedited today, because I wasn't in the mood. Here we go...

Tis the season for a bucket full of potatoes.

Random rose hip.

High Bush-cranberry. Not a true cranberry, but a similar flavour.

Cotoneaster hedge. Just because.

Yep. That's it. Mostly because I was too lazy to change from my short prime lens, so most of the others were fuzzy. I didn't think that I needed to post any pseudoartistic shots today.

Here's hoping that I get off my butt and take the camera out a little more before everything's completely covered in snow. Which it already has been once, but it melted.

Gotta love Alberta sometimes.

Look! More pointless photos!

Purple Clematis seed heads

Shrubby Cinquefoil

Do you think that there might be a bird feeder nearby?

I know. It looks like a bad photo of my car. Look closer, though, and you'll see that the car is just reflected in the window that two cats are watching me through. Nosy Turkey Brothers...

Chapter 2214: Wherein... pointless photos, as usual

And as usual, lazy. Lazy to the point, in fact, where I haven't even edited these. So, straight off the camera...

I usually take at least one drainspout photo per season. Sometimes I even take video.

Stuff in melting snow.

Winter story of my Dad's yard: leftover Fall gardening equipment, and deer scat.

I'll schedule the next few for tomorrow. Why waste all the excitement in one shot?

More pointless photos

Yeah, still no blather to go with.

Some very persistent apple leaves

A shot up through a European Mountain Ash tree.

Must be time for some pointless photography, right?

You've noticed that I'm not much for blather lately.

Actually, that's not true. My blather has just become a lot shorter and usually involves my phone.

Between doing social media for work and playing with my own accounts, I'm feeling a little blathered out. That means that once again this post (and the scheduled one I'll add after this) is all photos all the time.



Don't worry. I'll no doubt blather again at some point. Until then, pictures:

Bracket fungi with an old rhubarb flower stem decoration.

A trio of clematis seed heads.

Fallen leaves, including High Bush-cranberry.

Pointless photo of the day:

A bit fuzzy, but posting it because I liked it anyway. If you look closely at the bottom flower, you'll see that the bee wasn't the only member of the insect world that belongs to the Sunflower Appreciation Society.

These particular sunflowers were all planted by the birds who visit Dad's feeders -- this is the flower that produces Black Oil seeds, if you're wondering -- so obviously they belong to the Sunflower Appreciation Society too.

So do I.

Pointless photo of the day:

High Bush-cranberries are edible but aren't the cranberries you have with Thanksgiving turkey (those are Bog Cranberries). Straight off of the bush they are very sour, but if you cook them with sugar and strain them to remove the pits, they make a cranberry-like syrup that gives the plant its name.

A relative, Low Bush-cranberry (Both are Viburnums. High Bush-cranberry, aka Pembina, is V. trilobum. Low Bush-cranberry is V. edule), also has edible berries, but since its strategy to spread its seeds is for the fruit to smell somewhat like a carcass when it's ripe (most animals -- even herbivores -- will take advantage of the energy to be found in a rotting dead animal), your house will smell uncomfortably like old sweatsocks while you're cooking the syrup down.

Not my choice, as you can imagine.

The plant in the picture is nursery stock, but the wild ones look very similar.

Actual new pointless photos

The problem with Dad having a cat named Bob (the tabby that you sometimes see on the blog) is that I sometimes think that Tom here should have been named Jesus. Then the other cat could be Jesus' Brother Bob...

Everybody needs a bit more Arrogant Worms in their lives, I figure.

One thing to note about the picture, by the way. It's hard to see here, but this cat is on a leash and wearing a harness. We used to let our cats roam free during the day when I was a kid, but I'm very much against it now. Free range cats kill millions (no, I'm not exaggerating) of birds, and often have much shorter lives themselves because of fights, illness, and injuries. Check out Cats and Birds for some good reasons to either keep your cat indoors or only let it out tethered and supervised.

On another note, Tom's a handsome dude, isn't he?

I'm going to do a couple of quick scheduled posts after this of a couple of things in the yard (once again, I didn't keep too many of the photos that I took yesterday. Thank Whomever for digital when it comes to bad photography), but here's one to start off with.

I'm honestly not entirely sure what this is and I'm too lazy to find out, but I thought that the speckled pattern was kind of cool. On the photography side, I love the bokeh I get from this lens. Cameraphones just can't do that.

Yet.

I'm sure that they will at some point.

Anyway, scheduled posts and then lunch. Type at you later.

Around the yard

And now it's time for this week's leftover pictures. Not too many this time, since I did way more deleting than keeping. Here we go:

Apparently happy begoinas

Sunflower in evening light

Willow herb seed pods

That'll do me. Catch you next time.

Around the yard

Things were a bit dry at Dad's place so I don't have scads of pictures this time. I'll wait until autumn to take shots of dying or dying-looking things. Here's a bit of what's up, though:

I've taken so many photos of these over the years. My favourite Daylily.

A Harvestman or Daddy Long-legs on Pasture Sage.

It's Saskatoon season. The wild ones aren't great this year, but garden ones are.

Pointless photos of the day:

Dad's Mock Orange bushes were absolutely full of blooms this year. Here's some phone shots:

Hey, it's another post!

Probably another short post because I'm literally just waiting for the (watercolour) paint to dry on something I'm doodling for Illustration Friday. See the other blog in a while for the end result, if I feel like it's worth posting.

The prompt this week is vintage, by the way. Kind of a weird one.

Anyway, today's flower. I wish I could have gotten a better shot of this poppy, but it was a bit windy yesterday (today? Rain, so not much better). It's pretty spectacular, though. Pink double with purple bits on the underside. The funny thing? Dad has no idea where it came from. The oriental poppies we had before came from my grandma's former house, and they were straight-up orange.

I hope this one seeds, because I'd like to see it around for a while.

Speaking of Dad, did you know that yesterday was Father's Day? It was for us, since I had to work last Sunday. That edible plant walk for the local U of Alberta alumni (Quaecumque vera! And yes, I'm an alumna as well. 91 BSc spec (Zoology). Sheesh, 1991. And now I feel even older...) went well, at least. Anyway, when I found out that I couldn't come in for actual Father's Day I asked Dad if I could take him out for dinner the next Saturday -- yesterday, in other words -- instead. He chose a local Chinese buffet, which let me off cheaper than I intended. I'm always up for decent buffet, though, and this one turned out to be just that.

Decent, that is. Definitely Chop Suey (Chinese heavily modified for Canadian tastes, that is), a few too many battered and deep fried things, lacking in something spicy except for the sriracha they had out, but generally tasty and definitely fresh. That waitress put on an awful lot of miles continually restocking things.

It was definitely the pseudo-Chinese food of my childhood, and probably what I would have kept eating except for a friend I had at U of A (Quaecumque vera...). She was the daughter of from-China parents who had a restaurant in Fort Macleod. At the restaurant they served  the Canada-friendly stuff, but at home it was straight-on real Cantonese. When she and I would go to the Chinese restaurant close to our places she'd order completely off the menu and get things that I wouldn't have even imagined existed. Not everything went over well immediately with this small town Alberta girl, but it certainly gave me a taste for something that wasn't sweet and sour pork.

And good on her. Life's boring if you only ever eat pineapple chicken balls.

Anyway (again), my paint's dry now so it's on to the pen & ink.





Don't expect much, by the way. I never do.

Pointless photo of the whenever

Actually, I have a bunch of flower photos (taken with the phone since I didn't bring my real camera this week), so there may actually be a few posts in the future.

Don't fall down in shock.

After all, there may be new photos, but they may all be of mating insects like you see here. Oh, you didn't notice the mating insects? You will now.

Anyway, this post is mostly just to say that I'm still around, and it's short of necessity since I have a few things to do before I take Dad out for a belated Father's Day supper (I had to work last Sunday).

Aaand the dryer just went off, so this will be even shorter. Later, folks.

Random garden things

Here's the last scheduled photo post for the week. We'll see if I have time to do something off-the-cuff later on.

Grape leaves

Anyone know? My grandma called it Sea Lavender, but it isn't.

Johnny Jump-ups. European originally, but they grow wild here now.

More irises

I did warn you...

There's something about the swirls...

And finally, it wouldn't be me if I didn't mess with one a little bit.

Iris season

I'm a big fan of irises. I'd love it if we had irises for the whole growing season. That's not how it works, though, so while the irises are out I tend to take a lot of iris photos.

Guess what? Here they are. Well, some of them. They're pretty much snapshots with the 50 mm wide angle lens, but for me at least that gives some interesting depth of field effects. Blah blah blah whatever let's look at flowers already, Dee...

How can you not love those contours?

Hey, bud.

Way too bright a day for these shots. Don't care.

This is either "Hi, dude" or "Heil HItler". Let's go with the first.

Irises are cool. I think that we need more of them, don't you? That's a hint about tomorrow, by the way.