Mellow yellow

I love the light in the late afternoon and early evening. (early evening is getting earlier every day!) This is the driveway for the original homestead on our land...much too narrow for anything but an ATV to get up now. I am trying to keep it clear of the small trees that pop up...I would like to keep the laneway as a living memory to the first homesteaders.We don't have any orange or red leaves left. They have all blown away in the recent rains. There are still lots of yellows around, and they look lovely when the sun shines through them.I didn't plant pumpkins this year, but we grew 5 pumpkins...a result of spreading our compost in the garden. I see some homemade pumpkin soup in our future. Mmmm.

A note about yesterday's post. It seems from the comments I received (and one phone conversation) that my post lead people to believe I was devastated by my photo club competition. That was not my intention. Yes, I was puzzled. Yes, I was miffed. But the point I was trying to make (unsuccessfully it seems) was that we have to move on after disappointment. No point in dwelling on the past. Go make your future. Which is why I was out the very next morning working with my camera. Enough said about that.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Dealing with disappointment

I never thought of myself as a competitive person, but my husband assures me that I am. And, I have to admit, I think he is correct. Proof in point is my involvement with competitions at our local photography club.Last night we held our "Nature" and "Floral" competitions. We submit up to 3 photographs in each category, and 3 judges give us a score out of 5, for a total potential score of 15. Honour awards are given for scores of 12 or more.I love photographing flowers, and consider my flower photographs to be some of my best. My ego took a beating last night, and my floral photographs were losers with a big "L". So what do you do when you feel downtrodden? Well, I get out there right away and work on improving my skills. Practice, practice, practice. No sense in whining about past difficulties. I got out there this morning (in the fog and rain) and took more flower photos....getting an early start on next year's competition!

(note: these photos are not last night's losers....they are today's feel good photos for me.)

photos and signs

On Saturday, I attended a full day seminar by Freeman Patterson at St.Mary's University in Halifax. (it was advertised as a workshop, but was actually a seminar. I was happy about this, but there were some people there with cameras so they may have been disappointed)

It was a fantastic day of viewing images, and hearing Freeman's thoughts and philosophies. I was truly inspired by his presentation. Consequently, I spent Sunday afternoon outside at our home taking photos and experimenting with my camera...and was up at dawn on Monday taking some more photos.

One of the photos I took on Sunday was a macro shot of a maple leaf. This leaf was laying on the ground on one of the paths through our field that John keeps cut for me. Today...two days later...I was walking the dogs in the morning and looked down to see a leaf stuck to the toe of my boot.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed it was exactly the same leaf! Weird. Things like that always seem to be some kind of "sign", but I can't think of what it would be. Maybe a sign that I am on the right path in life. (ha, there's my sense of humour for you)

Early Morning Sunrise

When a day starts like this......nothing can go wrong.

Window Art - WIP

I'm currently working on a window commissioned by a friend of our neighbour. She had two requests:
1. she wanted a Westie on the window
2. she wanted lots of colour
She's going to give the window to her daughter as a Christmas gift. The cutting and gluing is complete, and now I have to let it cure for a week or so before I add the grout. I feel quite nervous when I'm creating something specific for someone, but I'm quite happy with it so far.And...speaking of windows...the other night about 8:30 our dog Cassie started barking. She tends to bark at lots of things only she can see or hear. So I've grown to ignore her. I told her to be quiet, and never even got up to check around (lesson here....always listen to your dog). The next morning, this is what I found.Someone dropped off 12 windows for me! A phone call tracked down the anonymous friends...a couple from "the hill across the way" told us a year or so ago that they had some windows for me...and now here they are! The windows will keep me busy this winter.

Visit From A Friend

Meet Clover. No, this cutie isn't ours. But we did have a great visit with Clover and her "mom" on Wednesday.I wasn't sure how our dogs would behave with their guest, but they all got along beautifully. I was reminded how much energy puppies have. I think I was probably the one who was most tired after our 3 hour walk and visit!Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day (unlike today) so I took a few more fall colour photos. It's a good thing I did! Most of the leaves have since blown away. No, your eyes have not gone out of focus...I was playing with the camera to try to come up with a modern art effect.

Frosty Morning

This morning I woke up to a world full of mist and frost, so I took my camera along on my early morning walk with the dogs. The flowers looked sugar coated. I spent so long outside with my macro lens that the dogs got bored. It was beautiful!

The grace of herons

Funny how we can go for a drive towards the interior of Nova Scotia, yet still end up down in Lunenburg. That's what happened to us recently when we went on a drive to view the fall colours. We headed north and east, but somehow ended up driving south because a road we chose didn't go any further north or east...and we didn't want to back track.

So we ended up lunching late (as usual) in Lunenburg, and then made a few stops on the drive towards home so I could photograph some herons. I just love these birds! They are so elegant and graceful. This guy was fishing and I got to watch him catch one and swallow it whole.

I could watch them for hours.

Photo Outing

Yesterday I headed out with my camera and a fellow photography enthusiast. We seem to share a similar love of old, rusty and decrepit things. One of our stops was the abandoned mill in New Germany. The building was plastered with no trespassing signs so we stayed on the outside. Lots of broken and decaying things here to photograph!

Another old and decaying thing....me in action...
And neither old nor decaying....my partner in photography yesterday:

In our own backyard

When Tomorrow Comes

Not too long ago I posted a sunset photo on this post. I have added some words...not my own words this time, but these words seemed appropriate for a sunset photo.

Autumn Leaves

On Friday we went for a little drive to take in the autumn leaves. They're not as colourful this year, but it was a great drive and a great afternoon.
And when we got home, we were welcomed with a beautiful rainbow over our field.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian friends!

Feeding the birds

Every day for the past week, I have headed over to our neighbour's place to feed their birds. This has been quite the education for me, since we only have guineas at home. First, the ducks get fed. They have learned quickly and they pretty much know it's feeding time as soon as I pull into the driveway. They make a lot of noise! (notice anything different about one of the ducks? He's got a pom pom on his head.)After the ducks get fed, it's off to the pond area to feed the geese. I have to admit that I find the geese a little scary. They hiss and honk at me and I try to dump the food into their area and get my hands out of the way as quick as I can. I have visions of my hand getting chomped on while I'm trying to put their food in...I don't think they know the expression "don't bite the hand that feeds you".

Next, the shed for the guineas and pheasants gets checked. They have been pretty self sufficient and I haven't needed to top up their food and water bins. Lastly, it's time to talk turkey.

I was a little apprehensive the first time I had to go into the turkey pen. They are large birds. Large. There is one male, and 3 females. They stayed away from me on the first visit (which suited me fine) but now they are happy to see me and come right up to me when I'm filling their water container. (and I'm not frightened of them anymore...I actually think they are cool dudes and really like the sounds they make)

Those guys drink a lot! I guess if I was a turkey and it was 3 days away from Canadian Thanksgiving, I'd be drinking a lot too. I'm not sure if there are plans for turkey dinner at our neighbour's place, but I'll be thinking of my new turkey pals on Thanksgiving Day.

Tangled Garden

A few weeks ago, we headed over to Wolfville with G, DIL and Miss M. John goes to the St. Mary's football games every week with his son G, and granddaughter Miss M...a nice little tradition. SMU was playing an away game at Acadia. DIL and I decided to go along for the ride and went exploring in antique shops, garden centres, and The Tangled Garden just outside of Wolfville.Love all their jellies and oils...what I love most is the way they look in the sunlight!A rainbow of loveliness from the garden.Wouldn't mind a garden gate like this one... Somehow gardening wouldn't seem like such hard work if you could walk through a gate like that!

Today was a full day of gardening even though it's the end of the season....gathering seeds for next year's garden, planting garlic for next year, planting "green manure" in the veggie boxes, and clearing grass out from around the wild roses (something I've wanted to do for the past 2 summers but never got around to). It's a big job...I'm only a quarter done. I've thrown in some lupin seeds in some of the areas I've cleared out, so we'll see what next year brings!

Puffin Calendar

I have been having a lot of fun since we were hooked up to high speed. All the projects that have been dancing around in my mind are now possibilities! I have been wanting to put together a couple of projects involving some of my puffin photos. Photographing puffins in Newfoundland is one of the highlights of my life...I just loved it. Here is a calendar I put together with some of my favourite puffin photos.

You can click on the arrows below the image to see all 13 images, or click on this link to view and/or order: http://www.lulu.com/product/calendar/puffins/12929110?showPreview

The downside of living with nature

One of the things I love about where we live is that we're out in the country, basically "in the middle of nowhere". It's so very quiet, and I love it. I love seeing nature in all it's beauty, and hearing the wind blowing through the trees.

But.

It has been a rough couple of weeks around here. We have lived here for 2 1/2 years now, and we have never before killed an animal. As you know, we disposed of 3 porcupines within 12 hours this week. (I cried over every one of them). Last week, it was squirrels. They had invaded our house and we had to get rid of 3 of them. (I cried over them too)

Today I hit my limit. I am looking after our neighbour's birds for a couple of weeks. That involves going over to their place everyday and feeding ducks, geese, guineas, pheasants and turkeys. It's noisy, but a fun activity for me. Today, though, when I was near the coop I heard a rustling sound. I looked over, and there was a raccoon with it's paw caught in a claw/vise like trap. (what I would call a bear trap, but much smaller). I rushed home thinking that we were going to have to deal with this somehow, but got inspired and phoned our other neighbour (the brother of the neighbour who is away) and asked him if he would look after it for me.

I really don't enjoy this part of country living. I broke into heaving, sobbing tears and poor John considered not going to his football game outing with his son and granddaughter because I was in such a state.

All is well now. But I am hoping, really hoping, that this is the last death that will be on my shoulders for quite some time.