Justfolk's photos

This was in September 1977. My friend David, on the left, had decided to build a geodesic dome to live in with his wife and soon-to-come children. All his friends, even unhandy I!, helped from time to time. But probably the friend who put the most into helping was Ken, on the right. A few days before I took this and some other pictures, David and I had climbed to the top of the dome's structure and held hands across the top-most space, jumping on the cross pieces to get them into the alignment needed to get the last bolt in place. Until the moment we did so, the whole dome was squishy and mobile. When we got the bolt in place it went rigid. Work could then begin on filling in the hexagonal spaces with the shorter pieces you see for example on the right. Had we fallen the ten metres or so to the basement level, I would not be posting this picture. :) In this picture David and Ken are lifting pieces for a scaffolding to make that fill-in work easier. Forty-six years later, in 2023, that dome is still a home for someone, though David and his family moved out when the children were small. They moved into a more conventional house. This was Pan-X film, shot in a peculiar, cheap, and low-tech 1940s camera from Germany, the brand name of which escapes me. It suffered from several problems most notably a twisted viewfinder (which I never got used to) and a user (me) who poorly understood how cameras worked. I am lucky that this picture is as good as it is!

Our neighbourhood crows have paid less attention to us (though no less to our food offerings) through the summer. Perhaps now that their attention to crowlets has diminished, and as their more natural food supplies may be getting lower, they are putting up with our closer presence again.

I have been told that this mushroom is actually an oyster mushroom, a common enough companion (or parasite, or vampire) of the maple species, one of which it has been poking out of for the past two weeks across the street from our house. It has aged well. I expected some passer-by to kick it into oblivion, but that has not happened. And it grew somewhat after another big rainstorm. Thus, this Hallowe'en afternoon, it is still there, a little larger and a little more elegant than it was two weeks ago.

"Two for joy," quoted a friend when I put this picture on my Fbk page this morning. The crows were a little less shy than usual, and I guess that's almost a species of joy. We had our first coating of snow last night -- six cm at the airport but only about two cm here, ten km south of and 100m lower elevation than the weather office. But, for the crows, even two cm is enough to cover all their usual sources of food. So the first crow, seeing the bluejays at the peanuts, called to his friend. And, at least together, they had enough courage to come down right to the door and gobble up all the remains. Even the last day of October seems too early for snow. But I expect it will be melted by later today.

Looking NE from our back door about an hour ago, this moony sky presented itself.

I took this picture shooting nearly into the sun. The crow was very badly underexposed. So I took the opportunity to stylise the picture a bit. I didn't do much. Using the raw file, I adjusted the overall contrast (curves) and the local contrast. I sharpened a few areas, burnt in a bit on the tree trunk, and made a border. I like the result.

Jupiter from our back door a few minutes ago. There's blue in the sky because it was a fairly long exposure, with my elbow and the back of my head jammed up against the doorframe. The long exposure is why most things that should be round or pinpoints are actually smears, and why Jupiter appears as a starburst. It looks like there are only three Jovian moons, all on the left side of Jupiter. But the "one" closest to the starburst effect of Jupiter is actually two moons. If it weren't as bright, you could see that one is partially behind the other. In order from the left, they are Callisto and Europa, and then together, Io and Ganymede, with Io just above Ganymede. Don't ask me what the three stars are to the right of Jove. I don't know. But I know that right now there is a dim galaxy between Jupiter and these three stars. Its name is IC1821. If I had a much better lens (or maybe just an ordinary telescope . . . I dunno) I might see it. But it isn't in my picture.

I wasn't paying close attention to where Jupiter's been lately. But a friend alerted me to how bright he is tonight in the sky, so I went outside and looked. My newish camera has a setting the manufacturer calls "Starry AF." Well you can imagine what I read that as. I set my camera at Starry AF and aimed it. And jammed my head against a wall for steadiness. I got this. Brilliant clear air in the sky here tonight. From left to right the Jovian moons are Callisto, Ganymede, Io, and Europa.

I shot a perfectly respectable picture of the moon through the trees in the backyard a few minutes ago. This picture shows the Moon from that picture. But I then tried to lighten the shot to bring up the outlines of the trees' branches and leaves. That did not happen. Instead I got a large number of little dots of light. They were just digital noise but they looked a little like a sky full of stars. Liking that fakery, I cloned the moon back into the picture and this is the result. [Don't try to find any constellations. No, that is not Orion's belt.]

This was on our deck rail this morning when I got up. I suspect a crow left it. The nearest oak is four or five houses down the street. So I would guess that a crow brought it up to our place to eat the fruit.

We've had some warmish wet weather the past couple of days. And right across the street from our house, emerging from an old tree next to the sidewalk, is this lovely thing.

Luke's Brook is a rush of water that tumbles down off the hill and disappears into a large culvert about twenty metres beneath the road here. It's a spot we pay attention to because it is exactly one kilometre from the spot we park our car. Today was a warm day and worth the five or six km walk we made in it.

On a sunny walk in in fifteen-degree warmth this afternoon, we saw lots of this blue stiped Linaria (L. repens, I think) still blooming along the dirt road we were on.

I'm not sure why this leaf deteriorated like this. I suspect it is because of the tar-spot fungus that appeared a couple of years ago and has infected most maples in the area.

The crows leave our house with peanuts and go towards a nearby graveyard. Today, walking through that graveyard we saw two crows eating peanuts atop a headstone. So, thought we, that's where they take them.

A neighbour has put a notice outside their front door, next to the sidewalk.

The blackberries in our backyard are a week or two behind their usual appearance schedule. But they've started ripening. This was the first one, this morning.

Until today I had never seen a dickcissel. And I wasn't expecting one today. It was a warm morning, getting warmer through the day and I was outside watching the bumblebees on the Linaria flowers. I heard behind me a bird voice I didn't recognise. Turning, I saw this lovely thing on my burning bush. I got only face-on pictures before she flew away. But the face-on shots were enough for me to figure out it was a female dickcissel. Or so I think. i also think she is five thousand km from where she would like to be right now.