Hanging on to the old

This is my MAIN photo of the day - I'm wondering if one of my other two shots is being seen by some people as the main one, again. Also, it's almost 12:00 noon and there are only eight new photos showing from my Contacts! Is everyone out enjoying the weather, or is Flickr acting up yet again??

For maybe a week, I have been having a problem getting my photos to be bright enough. So weird - I never had this happen before. They seem to look OK when I edit them the night before, then, when I post them on Flickr the following morning, they almost always look too dark.

On 16 September 2015, I called in at the Reader Rock Garden after my volunteer shift. There seemed to be more flowers in bloom than on my previous visit.

I love photographing these gorgeous Globe Thistles at any stage. In Calgary, we have seen them growing wild at one of the natural areas (can't think of the name of the place, as it's not a place we normally go to). Not sure, but I believe this is Echinops ritro.

"Echinops ( /ˈɛkɨnɒps/) is a genus of about 120 species of thistles in the daisy family Asteraceae, commonly known as globe thistles. They are native to Europe east to central Asia and south to the mountains of tropical Africa." From Wikipedia.

There were also quite a few distant small birds flitting from tree to tree at one point They were impossible to see well enough to get photos or IDs - - a little Hermit Thrush was the only bird I managed to photograph.

I also noticed a Jack Rabbit in the Garden and then, when I drove through the adjoining cemetery, it or another one was running in among the gravestones. When it saw my car coming, it froze and waited till I had moved on.