Ritva has given us the challenge of abstract photography.
I start with some swirls of color that are reflecting off a gold Christmas ornament.
The image below is a scene next to a pond in my senior community, created with the help of an app I have on my phone, Snapseed. It’s fun to play around with!
Chicago Botanic Gardens has a holiday light show every year. There were strings of colored lights to walk through, which were also blowing in the wind so they have this cool blurry look.
My car’s right front light from this angle looks like an eye, complete with eyeball!
Amazonian fan, taken on board a cruise ship
I got this effect by taking a photo of a glass of water distorted through a carafe of water!
Last Monday, April 8, was the second total solar eclipse that passed over the continental U.S. since 2017. After watching the eclipse from the Chicago Botanic Gardens on a cloudy August day in 2017, I found out that the next total eclipse would be in 2024 and it would pass over the same part of southern Illinois as it did that year. I vowed to reserve well in advance a place for us to stay in 2024 so we could witness the eclipse in its totality.
Well, time passed and I forgot about it until it was too late to reserve. So I had to resign myself to seeing it at 93% totality in the Chicago area, thinking, I’m bound to never be able to see a total eclipse. Anyway, 93% is pretty good!
On the afternoon of April 8, my husband and I went in & out from watching it on TV to witnessing it ourselves using safety glasses from our backyard. I was wearing only a light jacket, as it was in the 60s that day, so I lay down on the ground, or rather, on my patio garden, where I could sit on the edge and lie down on my back to look up at the eclipse. When I did that, I remembered that I was surrounded by fresh mulch that the grounds crew had just that morning spread on the garden and under nearby trees! I didn’t worry about it because of my jacket, which had a hood that I put under my head.
Each time I went back outside and lay down on the garden mulch, I saw the crescent of the sun getting thinner and thinner. I was dumbfounded that the moon, in spite of being 400 times smaller than the sun, could line up between Earth and the sun perfectly and appear to be the same size as the sun. Here I was, earthbound, watching a celestial dance of two round “nearby” bodies, a phenomenon which would not occur in our country again for 20 more years! It was a profound experience! I took a few photos, of crescent-shaped sunlight, filtering through a tree, falling onto the cement of our patio, an image from TV and another image my husband managed to take using a special app which didn’t work too well.
1. We all make mistakes, but what was the worst one you ever made?
There are two, but one of them is my first marriage, which others have also written about. Therefore, I choose the other one: declawing one of my former pet cats. I cannot think about her or see her picture without thinking about it. She was such a sweetheart, but I didn’t know at the time the torture and trauma that declawing is for a cat. This was back in 1992, when such knowledge wasn’t generally discussed with cat owners by vets and when vets agreed to do this procedure. Nowadays, many vets won’t do it. I feel guilty to this day for doing that to her. Afterward, I used shredded newspaper in her litterbox, as instructed, for the amount of time I was told to. When I started using regular litter again, she apparently wasn’t totally healed, because she bled a lot! I was shocked even at the time, not knowing that declawing was basically cutting the ends of her toes off! And all because I had bought new furniture for my townhouse! I had not done research on alternatives to declawing.
As it happened, I did not have this precious girl for long – I soon found out my 7-year-old son was allergic to cats and we had to give her away. I gave her to a “friend” who kept her for awhile, then gave her away to a woman who had a farm full of cats. I don’t know what happened to her after that.
Here is a photo of that sweet-tempered tabby:
2. Do you enjoy walking in the rain?
It depends on how hard it’s raining!
3. Have you ever been to a Fancy Dress Party? What did you go as?
I’m not sure what you mean by a “fancy dress party” – a costume (Halloween) party? The only time I went to a Halloween party was at my oldest sister’s; I went as a witch, the only costume I had. I also went to a wedding where we were told to dress in costumes. I wore a fancy folk dress that I bought in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was very beautiful, but no one else wore anything like it – everyone else just wore formal wedding clothes and a few had Mardi Gras eye masks, so I was embarrassed because I looked so different.
4. What was the first thing you saw when you woke up this morning?
The window, with pale light shining in – I knew then that it was early morning, about 6 a.m. I went to the bathroom, then went back to bed wearing an eye mask so the light wouldn’t keep me awake and slept another two hours.
We haven’t had much snow this winter, until now. Today about 6 inches fell, and they’re predicting a couple more inches tonight, with falling temps and blowing snow tomorrow.
I chose this photo, actually taken on the last day of December (a Sunday!), because it came out so clear – I was able to capture the snowflakes against the background of the intricate tangle of tree branches, still holding onto some dead leaves.
PCGuyIV https://pcguyiv.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/truthful-tuesday-january-9th-2024/‘s Truthful Tuesday question for this week is: 2024 is just nine days old, but that’s been long enough to get a good first impression of how the year will be. Is 2024 shaping up to be a good year, or is there room for improvement? Are you holding on to the belief that this year will be better than last, or have you already thrown out the “New Year’s Spirit” with the other after-holiday trash?
I have not written in this blog since last summer, and I hope to get back to posting more often but probably not as regularly as before, due to the number of activities and events that I am involved in. But I decided answering this Truthful Tuesday question is a good way to start the new year.
Recently, I attended a discussion in which the facilitator suggested that, instead of making New Year Resolutions, choose a word, a single word, to be one’s personal guide for the year. I thought that was a good idea, so I chose the word
HEALTH.
This word encompasses a lot of things, and can be interpreted very broadly. The most obvious one is my physical health. To start this year, I am having knee replacement surgery on Jan.15. My left knee has been a nagging problem for several years, the pain getting worse until finally I decided to take action. When neither a cortisone shot (in both knees) nor a gel injection had any effect whatsoever, and an X-ray showed that my knee was “bone on bone,” my doctor told me to schedule surgery. I did this over a month ago, choosing this date because I was planning a vacation in December that ended up not happening. I figured when I got back near the end of the month, I would have enough time to prepare.
Finally, my surgery date is less than a week away! After that, I am going to a rehab center for a week rather than going straight home, because I will get more therapy in a rehab center and Medicare pays for it.
HEALTH in the physical sense also means eating healthy and exercising regularly. So far, I’ve been doing this and hope to continue after my surgery because I’m tired of having all my clothes feel and look tight on me! I think I will feel better too, have more energy. I also have to be mindful to end my “screen time” early. I have NOT been successful with that so far! Maybe it’s why I am having trouble sleeping.
HEALTH is also my mental health, my satisfaction with my life. Travel is very important to me and we (my husband and I) try to take at least two trips a year. In 2022 (post-COVID), we took two trips, both partial cruises, both in Europe. In 2023, we took one trip, to southern Africa. I had planned this trip in December that we decided to cancel, because it was to the Middle East. Need I say more? So, I would like to take multiple trips in 2024, even if they are just weekend trips to another city or state. In May, we are taking a train trip across Canada, and I am deciding on a trip to Southeast Asia for later in the year. Travel is a vital part of my mental health so I’m hoping for a better year this year!
In 2023, I started making greeting cards using my artwork. This has generated more positive feedback than I expected, and people have been buying my cards and excited to get them as gifts from me. So continuing my artwork is another health-related goal, because it is relaxing yet challenging and I really enjoy it!
This is a painting of a zebra that I did based on a photo I took when we were in Africa. It is one of the images I have reproduced for my greeting cards.
Aggravation and fear also affect my health. Then we get into the political realm. I don’t want to make this post a political essay; suffice it to say that we must do whatever possible to keep Trump from getting back into the presidency. I still believe he is an existential threat to the United States, and that in a second term, he will surround himself with absolute loyalists and destroy what is left of our democracy. The health of this country depends on the Democrats regaining the White House, at least! Enough said about that.
To myself, I say welcome back to blogging, and may 2024 allow me to post more often! I especially love answering questions and doing photo challenges.
Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #24 is “plant edibles.” Here are some early photos of what I’ve brought home from my garden. (I don’t take any more because my tomato plants are going so wild with tomatoes that I don’t bother!)
July 21: a few tomatoes and vidalia onions3 days later, July 24: two kinds of peppers, another vidalia onion, tomatoes, & chard
I am now eating a lot of salads, and I put tomatoes into everything I can! The chard is growing nicely, but I don’t pick it often because it’s a bit bitter, so I don’t want to use it as my dominant salad green. Note to self: Plant regular lettuce next year! My onions are done, unfortunately, but I’m still getting a lot of peppers, of which I planted three different varieties in the sweet category.. The bell pepper plant produces these large green ones (people say if you wait to pick them, they turn red, but that takes too long!), another pepper produces smaller peppers that are striped. These turn red and yellow rather quickly. The third variety is shown in the photo above – long and skinny, once they turn red, they look like a hot pepper! But they aren’t, and now I wait for them to turn red also.
I had hoped my son would come over today to pick tomatoes, and take home whatever he picked, but he didn’t come and now I have way too many! I will have to pick them again tomorrow and share them with the community. The residents here who have gardens leave whatever they can’t use across from the dining room, and whatever they leave is snatched up very quickly! I left some tomatoes today and will have to leave more tomorrow, along with chard!
Sometimes gardens produce surprises – especially when you haven’t looked closely at the little plastic tag stuck in the soil when you buy the small plant! In spring planting season, my brother-in-law thought he was planting cucumbers. Well, he was – sort of! He didn’t look at the little tag that he’d already stuck in the ground next to the plant until he saw the most unusual cucumbers – if that is what they really were!
In fact, these very long, fat “fruits” are called “Armenian yard-longs.” Yard-long is descriptive, because that is about how long each one of these cucumbers are. The photo here is one of the last ones, and not nearly the biggest! (My foot is in the photo for scale – I wear a size 8 shoe.)
When my brother-in-law pulled out the little tag to find out what kind of cucumber these were, he had to look up “Armenian yard-longs” on the internet. Wikipedia has this description: The Armenian cucumber,[1]Cucumis melo var. flexuosus, is a type of long, slender fruit which tastes like a cucumber and looks somewhat like a cucumber inside. It is actually a variety of muskmelon (C. melo), a species closely related to the cucumber (C. sativus). It is also known as the yard-long cucumber, snake cucumber, snake melon. It should not be confused with the snake gourds (Trichosanthes spp.).
The information my brother-in-law found said that the yard-long is a hybrid between a cucumber and a muskmelon. It really does taste like a cucumber and inside looks like a cucumber – and nothing like a melon!!
Wanderlust & Wonderment 