Justfolk's photos

This time of year, mid-May, all the local plants seem to be doing it: sticking their sexy bits out. This is a juniper. (I know, yeah yeah: Larix larix, larch, hackmatack, tamarack. Yeah yeah.)

It was getting duckish when I was going out for a few minutes this evening and I noticed that, among the Snowdrops and Crocuses, there was some Squill up on our lawn. Spring's kicking in.

My great-grandmother's Christmas cactus has flowers that hang coyly, inobtrusively, without making a fuss. This one, not my great-grandmother's Christmas cactus, is a new addition to our house. It blooms horizontally, and points its sexy bits at the dining-room window.

Today for the second day in a row, there was a period of bright sun with a temperature of about twelve (ohhh, fifty-five in USA temperatures). And as I came home from an appointment in the mid-morning, this fellow hitched a ride on my wind-shield. When I got home, he stayed put long enough for me to take his picture. The first housefly of spring: a sure omen. Mind you, by five p.m., there was driving hail and cold rain coming down. Spring, such as we get it, is a season of stuttering weather.

I like the use of burlap on plants, wrapping them for the winter. My neighbour has a couple and also a threesome of wrapt boxes. It's the 5th of May but it's too early to unwrap them.

It was early this morning when this guy showed up right outside the kitchen door. He looked around and saw no little birds. Of course he had scattered all of them. When he saw me, he calmly turned around and headed to our apple tree. He stayed there for another few minutes, still looking for his second breakfast. I say "second" because his face still had part of his first breakfast stuck to his bill. Eventually he was gone. He did not look like our regular sharp-shinned hawks, but I think that was just because he's young, wet from rain, and dirty-faced.

We didn't have many Evening grosbeaks visiting this winter. But early this morning, May first, there was an in-rush of a dozen of them, all the males resplending springishly.

Close to fifty years ago a friend of mine opened a small café in downtown St. John's. Physically it has not changed much in that time, but it's been through many hands and operated under a half-dozen different names. The space is still a café, now operated by a family from Chennai. The menu reflects their origin.

One good thing about our slow springs is that the flowers remain in slow motion for weeks. Not quite suspended animation, but suspended vegetation. This is outside our front door today. There is still a metre-wide pile of snow in our driveway, waiting too for some warm temperatures to disappear.

I don't own as many radios as I do cameras, but I have more radios than I should. They are such lovely things that I can't turn them down. So today when, among the goodies my sister could not take to her new and smaller home, the smaller of these two radios needed a home, I offered it mine. And, besides, I had its big sister already. Here they are alongside each other: both working well despite being 25 or thirty years old.

My sister and her son visited so we had a scowlery. The camera sat on a small cardboard box and it leaned a little more than I expected, thus the turnery. [I posted this picture last night and afterwards was told about a major flaw in my processing: my sister's face was blasted by light from another lamp, and this was exaggerated by my processing. I had not noticed. Duhh. So I've removed that picture and replaced it with this one -- exactly the same picture, but with different processing. I think my sister would approve.]

It's dark out today but the birds still come to feast on what we offer. The starlings like the suet. I took this picture this morning at about five stops below sunny. Later, it was more like seven or even eight stops down. Dull days this time of year.

This is not an uncommonly dismal forecast. It's pretty typical of "Spring" in these parts.

The past few years I have been paying attention to man-made flying things overhead. This Ukraine-based (but USA-owned) Antonov 12 has been making frequent stops here for some time, moving what I think must be fruit and vegetables from the Caribbean to Western Europe. Cavok, the company who owns it, apparently established itself in the post-Soviet times by buying cheaply old military planes like this one (very similar to the Lockheed Hercules) and making them into workaday commercial vehicles. This old boat is apparently 57 years old now. I took the picture today as It left here for Nassau.

I can see how birds like this became domesticated. They are easily spooked but likewise easily become accustomed to human beings getting in close. And, despite their seeming stupid, they are pretty.

Spring comes with difficulty here and we might get snowfalls for another eight weeks. Now, in mid-April, there is still a good covering of old dense snow on most surfaces that aren't used for driving. Thus my lawn where about a third of it no longer has a snow covering; the sunnier corners are showing signs of spring. And thus too this crocus and a half dozen of its kind, open this afternoon in the sun and leaning a little towards it.

Just for a few minutes this morning, I was back inside the university building I worked in forty years ago. Just before I left, I saw someone had made a memo on a wall near the door . Sticky tape, perhaps so they could change their mind later. Whatzit? A statement of having given up, a retraction from the world, a kind of deliberate alienation? Neo-liberal advice to the young? Pfah, I say. That mind needs changing.

It was very unsunny, somewhat foggy, this morning when I spooked the pigeon and he flew up into the apple tree. This is the colour version of the previous shot in the weird kind of b&w.