Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Speak of the devil...
Not one hour after posting the tree picture below, we looked out to find a Pileated Woodpecker making a new hole in the very same tree! We looked it up and it was almost exactly a year ago that he (or one of his brothers) first visited us.This picture was taken with a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second - his head is moving!
Tree
I love this old maple tree behind our house. It's gracefully reaching the end of it's long life. A pileated woodpecker has gone to town on it in a couple spots making small (actually some are quite large) homes for other smaller creatures. If we are very very lucky we'll get a family of flickers to nest in it.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Cardinal Zin...
Another spotting of a cardinal in the area... Hope to see more of them through the summer.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Happy Birthday Patrick...
My nephew Patrick would be 28 tomorrow were it not for the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. I wonder what he would be up to on his birthday; I bet it would be fun and probably a bit of trouble! I miss you Pat.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Take Off...
Another shot that didn't get to the photo contest - I love this picture of the cargo plane lifting off the flower...
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Spring? Baseball?
A shot from last Spring in South Royalton showing a small part of the beauty of Spring baseball in New England...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Summer Sunflowers...
In the last week, we've been busy trying to find pictures from the last year to submit to the local paper's photo contest. A number of our favorite pictures unfortunately didn't work well in the required 8x10 aspect ratio so I thought I'd get some of them up on the blog. These pictures were taken late in the summer and late in the day on in a beautiful field of sunflowers.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Winter Cardinal
We have caught quick glimpses of a cardinal or two lately. Today in the snowstorm I was able to get close enough for this shot. This appears to be a female but we think we've seen a male as well. Hope that they stick around this summer!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Busted!
I managed to get this shot through the window though she seemed to have a bead on me as well...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Morning Finches
There are hundreds of finches who visit us through the day, enjoying the black oil sunflower seed we put out every morning. They generally fly away in droves when we open the door to go out. These brave souls tolerated our presence enough for quick snap in the dull morning light.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Vermont Church...
I took this shot this past weekend of one of my favorite spots around here: the church in West Fairlee Center.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Snow in Hanover...
We got a good snowfall the other day - close to 14" I think. Hanover cleaned up nicely though there were some big piles downtown...
Monday, January 19, 2009
Another Snowy View...
Yesterday's snow was hanging on today's trees. When the sun finally came out, it was a beautiful sight.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
More Snow...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Snow and Sun...
Another shot from my walk in the snow. The sun was slowly coming through the clouds...
Barbed Wire in Snow...
I took a brief walk on snowshoes this past weekend as the snowfall was winding down. This mean old barbed wire fence looked just a bit more approachable in the soft new snow.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunrise Redux!
Alain Briot, of whom I learned through his inspirational book Mastering Landscape Photography, was kind enough to comment on yesterday's Sunrise photo and to offer this alternative interpretation. Alain offers fine art and instruction at his site Beautiful-Landscape.com. Thanks Alain!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunset Colors
I wish that I had been able to shoot this properly with a tripod as my hands were not steady enough. Nevertheless these colors remind me that over saturation does not always mean something has been Photoshopped!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Snow!!
It's been an exciting couple of days as Mother Nature is insuring that we have White Christmas!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Strange Motion...
I tried to slow this shot of the rugosa rose bush being whipped by the fall winds. It wasn't what I had envisioned but turned out interesting nonetheless...
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Weekend in Maine
My wife and I spent the weekend in Maine helping my parents prepare for the sale of their home on a pond in Central Maine.
It is the house that I grew up in from age seven and I have felt very torn as we've negotiated a deal and worked to process many of the childhood items that still inhabit the house.
As I sat on the second story porch at the Towne Motel in Skowhegan yesterday morning, I thought back to my high school days when coming to Skowhegan was coming to the city. Well it was not quite going to Waterville and DeOrsey's Records, but it was close. I thought about the summer day when my girlfriend was actually working at the Towne Motel and in an effort to kill time until she got off work, I went to the Skowhegan Cinema and saw Blade Runner at a matinee.
I remember what it was like in those days to return to the Pond. It was a quiet refuge of home but it was very active. The entire house was active; my bedroom was upstairs where when the gods smiled I would be able to listen to my newly acquired records on Dad's stereo when the generator was on and Mom was doing laundry. I was of course forever eating in the kitchen, trying to find a tool in the workshop to fix something, sweeping the deck, or heading out on the little raft that I outfitted with a lawn chair and a motor - Gilman Pond's first "party boat" as far as I can tell.
I remember tearing out of the back door and running as fast as I could to the parking lot at the top of the hill just to see how that felt. I remember crawling around under the house with Dad every Spring dragging hydraulic jacks, cedar posts and shims and trying to level the house after a long winter of frost heaves. The fall which would bring a ladder and a trip up to the top of the peak of the roof to clean out the chimney in preparation for a long winter of wood fueled warmth from the Vermont Castings stove in the living room.
As I sat on the porch at the Towne Motel I compared that house to the one that I saw now. It is smaller today and a bit darker. Lots of moss has grown in areas around the house that were previously covered with new gravel and lined with cedar poles. The garden now looks integrated into the landscape; in the past it was a shiny new thing that my parents had created. The trees around the house are fewer and the woods look very different.
The place has matured. It's quieter and less impulsive and energetic. It's less adolescent. It's not really the place that I inhabited from age seven to seventeen when I went to college and twenty one when I got married there and moved away to take my first job.
Though I've returned there many times since leaving at twenty one, I realize now that even those visits were indeed visits. Once I left, it was Mom and Dad's home and it showed it. I could pretend that it was the same and reenact some of that old rituals but it was not the same.
This occurred last fall for the last time when the entire family joined Mom and Dad at the Pond for a family reunion. We did it all: ping pong battles in the barn, canoeing, swimming, a fire in the fire pit with lobsters, and of course sitting, chatting, and snoozing on the big deck in front of the kitchen. The weather was glorious and the beer cold. It was the last performance of a long running show and it drew a standing ovation with several curtain calls.
So when my wife came out of our motel room the other day, I felt just a little better that the place we were helping my parents sell was no longer the house I grew up in. It was a different more mature place than my childhood home. Passing it on to someone who can enjoy it anew in their own way felt better to me. My memories of the place will keep my childhood home with me.
Onward...
It is the house that I grew up in from age seven and I have felt very torn as we've negotiated a deal and worked to process many of the childhood items that still inhabit the house.
As I sat on the second story porch at the Towne Motel in Skowhegan yesterday morning, I thought back to my high school days when coming to Skowhegan was coming to the city. Well it was not quite going to Waterville and DeOrsey's Records, but it was close. I thought about the summer day when my girlfriend was actually working at the Towne Motel and in an effort to kill time until she got off work, I went to the Skowhegan Cinema and saw Blade Runner at a matinee.
I remember what it was like in those days to return to the Pond. It was a quiet refuge of home but it was very active. The entire house was active; my bedroom was upstairs where when the gods smiled I would be able to listen to my newly acquired records on Dad's stereo when the generator was on and Mom was doing laundry. I was of course forever eating in the kitchen, trying to find a tool in the workshop to fix something, sweeping the deck, or heading out on the little raft that I outfitted with a lawn chair and a motor - Gilman Pond's first "party boat" as far as I can tell.
I remember tearing out of the back door and running as fast as I could to the parking lot at the top of the hill just to see how that felt. I remember crawling around under the house with Dad every Spring dragging hydraulic jacks, cedar posts and shims and trying to level the house after a long winter of frost heaves. The fall which would bring a ladder and a trip up to the top of the peak of the roof to clean out the chimney in preparation for a long winter of wood fueled warmth from the Vermont Castings stove in the living room.
As I sat on the porch at the Towne Motel I compared that house to the one that I saw now. It is smaller today and a bit darker. Lots of moss has grown in areas around the house that were previously covered with new gravel and lined with cedar poles. The garden now looks integrated into the landscape; in the past it was a shiny new thing that my parents had created. The trees around the house are fewer and the woods look very different.
The place has matured. It's quieter and less impulsive and energetic. It's less adolescent. It's not really the place that I inhabited from age seven to seventeen when I went to college and twenty one when I got married there and moved away to take my first job.
Though I've returned there many times since leaving at twenty one, I realize now that even those visits were indeed visits. Once I left, it was Mom and Dad's home and it showed it. I could pretend that it was the same and reenact some of that old rituals but it was not the same.
This occurred last fall for the last time when the entire family joined Mom and Dad at the Pond for a family reunion. We did it all: ping pong battles in the barn, canoeing, swimming, a fire in the fire pit with lobsters, and of course sitting, chatting, and snoozing on the big deck in front of the kitchen. The weather was glorious and the beer cold. It was the last performance of a long running show and it drew a standing ovation with several curtain calls.
So when my wife came out of our motel room the other day, I felt just a little better that the place we were helping my parents sell was no longer the house I grew up in. It was a different more mature place than my childhood home. Passing it on to someone who can enjoy it anew in their own way felt better to me. My memories of the place will keep my childhood home with me.
Onward...
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