Tag: photography

PhOtO PhRiDaY: sometimes it simply defies description

8 Comments

Recently on one of our Sabbath treks we stopped at a flea market and parked out back…

Like hidden object tasks?  You will have to click the photo to find:  a potted plant, tire, old spray can, three leering skeleton faces, a roll of barbed wire, a cactus, a child’s face laying in the grass (hard), two BBQ grates, and what would appear to be the skeleton of a baby… ew?

~~~

In retrospect, I think we were taking our lives into our hands by even entering this place.  That aside, we poked around a bit and decided that if we stayed we might actually pick up a flea or two!  So we left, but not before asking what it was originally.

The answer?

In the very early 1900s it was a bar.  OH… yes I thought, there was that one little 10 by 14 room deep in the center of the building.  And sure enough, it did have a counter with what I had thought was a display case behind it…  Certainly the configuration would make it a bar in its former existence!

Yup, that made sense, but the rest of the place made Sarah Winchester look positively brilliant by comparison.

NOTE:  If you have never heard of, or been to, the Winchester Mansion in San Jose, California, then please take a look by clicking on her name above.  The official website tells a bit of the intriguing tale about the Heiress’ of the Winchester Rifle fortune, and the video below will help to clarify my last comment!  😉

Here for your viewing pleasure is a silly, but interesting video tour of the Winchester Mansion.

Photo Friday: my love/hate relationship with morning glory

16 Comments

I have always loved morning glories.

Monet used them to great advantage when he grew them amongst his sunflowers, it produced both contrast and a cooling effect to their warm hues. 

(Please do click the photo to visit casy/artandcolor’s site where you will find this original photograph and many more do delight your eye!)

 

Georgia O’Keefe loved them enough to memorialize them in her painting called simply

Blue Morning Glories

There is even a thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park called…

(Please click the picture to visit the source:  Wordless Tech)

Morning Glory Pool

So named for its beautiful blue depth and resemblance to it its namesake.

But for all her beauty and grace, the Morning Glory is a common hussy!  She grows everywhere here, rambling in field and lawn, scrambling up cornstalks and fences, and all but swallowing my roses!

Sigh…

and for all my searching, pulling, and destroying, she persists.

Yet, she beguiles me.

When on a humid, sunless, dare I say cheerless day in August I go out in the early morning only to find…

that she has sent out her snake-like tendrils to take over the fence surrounding the silkies hutch.

And reaching out to clutch her, intending to rip her from the fence, I grab a handful of leaves and realize…

I am holding her heart in my hand.

I grab again to pull…

and there amongst the perfect heart-shaped leaves I find her dew kissed face.  I’m drawn to her  intense blue, her clear white throat, and I think,

(Click on her face and have a closer look at her beauty)

 

“She is perfection.” 

Thus, I find myself for a third season, unable to remove Morning Glory from the Farmlet.   So she stays, having once again stolen my heart.

And in that moment

I consider the idea

of actually planting her in her own spot next year…

Perhaps amidst the sunflowers!

Lady Spider: the flip side

11 Comments

This morning I ventured out while the air was cool.  The heat and humidity have been so oppressive that it was a shock to open the door and feel a delicious breeze to greet me.

I set to work pulling grass and other weeds to throw over to Polly and the gang.  They come running, honking thanks, to chow down.  Though they carefully remove the spurge.  (I think they don’t like its milky sap.)

I worked my way down the row of tomatoes and there she was!  My Lady Spider from last week’s post… Posing in perfect lighting!  I ran for my camera, and quickly washing the grime from my hands, I dried, then ran back out again.

I caught her.

Is a leftover leg from your previous meal as embarrassing as having spinach in your teeth on a date?

Then as I watched a rather large insect flew by and was caught in her web.  Faster than I could respond, she was there, but I was able to get a few shots of what transpired next!

Quickly she began to twirl the insect with her legs, all the while coating it with a jet of silk shot from her spinnerets.

Now as I watched she stopped for a moment and…

inflicted her victim with a venomous bite.

I continued watching as she cut her prey loose and in a flash ran back to the center of her web…

where she will dine at her leisure.

End note:

Spiders, lacking teeth, must dine on a liquid diet.  Using specialized mouth parts called chelicerae they inject poison into their victims.  The poison paralyzes their meal, but does not kill.

The world of spiders may chill you gentle reader, but without them we would be awash in insect pests of all sorts and descriptions!  I find their world fascinating, yet repulsive.   However, the thought of the alternative finds me giving the ladies my blessings to hunt the gardens here.

BECAUSE YOU ASKED:

The center zigzag pattern of the orb weaver‘s web is called the stabilimentum, and although it has been named, it is up in the air as to the function it serves.  Some say camouflage for the spider, others say to keep birds from flying through it (or unwary gardeners walking into it!) Still others claim it attracts insects into the web.  Whatever its use to the spider it is surely of varied and interesting construction!  Please do follow the link, via a click on the word above, to see some of these variations.  For those of a more scientific mind, please look on the web page Psyche A Journal of Entomology which can be found here:  http://psyche.entclub.org/87/87-013.html