Justfolk's photos

I know. I know. You call them larches. But hereabouts everyone calls them junipers. And they are losing their needles a little early this fall, probably because of the slap-about Hurricane Larry gave them a month ago.

The pigeons live wild in the city but they are more dependent than most birds on what they scrounge from us human beings. Through the summer months they are happy enough to stay away from our deck, but the colder months are different. Today, 5 October, was the first day this season one of them came by to strut back and forth and to eat from our platter.

I was sitting outside the door and noticed the hill reflected in its windows. If you look carefully, you can see the dining-room light inside.

A heavy rain last night drove leaves off the tree above the car and left outlines of leaves all over the car and its windows.

The volunteer sunflower that appeared in a flower box this summer cracked off three weeks ago and I brought it in. Since then it has gradually uhh matured, though its maturity has been an unfulfilled maturity since it never really reached the point where its seed-producing parts might be fertilised. Seedless, it is still a lovely flower.

Saturday night past, the view from our back door in Ganny Cove. The amber glow is from the city lights about a hundred km away.

A fly this afternoon tucking into a hawkweed flower.

Inspired by a friend's success, I've been trying the past two or three nights to take a picture of Jupiter's moons. Tonight, I think, I succeeded. I don't have much patience with tripods so I simply held the camera fairly tightly against a post on our back door step and aimed up through the trees. I manually focussed -- not an easy thing when you're trying to hold the camera steady with the left hand and then bring the right hand back to the body to push the shutter button. Everything else was manual too -- ISO 2000, a twentieth of a second at f/2.8. I meant it to be at the longest part of the zoom, at 150mm, but I accidentally pushed it back to 130mm. No big deal. I cropt it and, in colour, there were a lot of bad pixels. So I cloned out some and converted the whole works to b&w to reduce others. . I suppose I'll have to buy myself a telescope some time. :)

The sky last night was opening and closing over with clouds and I was in the backyard trying to get a picture of Jupiter's moons, Luna's distant cousins. Then, through the trees, there was an opening for Luna herself. So I took her picture too.

In late May month, we received in the mail canes for five raspberry plants. We had not ordered them so they were not planned for. I put them in the ground with hardly any expectation of their growing. They came as an apology from a supplier who'd promised us something else which they did not have enough of to cover our order. Oh well. Even growing, I did not expect the raspberries to bloom and fruit this year. Three canes took, sprouting leaves. Then flowers. And this morning, a few days before the fall equinox, there it was -- a ripe raspberry. And a few more in waiting. Next year, pie!

I'm not good at lotsa things that tech-savvy photographers do. Like layering photos shot with different exposures. Or dealing well with raw files. So I make do. This picture of Jupiter (L) and Saturn (R) flanking the moon started as a raw file in my camera. Then, having my in-camera jpeg, my raw file, and my jpg generated from the raw file on the computer, I looked at the Picasa-generated view of the raw and liked it best. So I did a screen shot of it. This is it.

I was hoping to see the moon, very fat tonight though not full, rising over the hill about a half kilometre away. A fog got in the way so I didn't. But one of the radio towers up there was throwing its glance around and around, lighting up the foggy bits. So I tried for it instead.

The sun had gone down a few nights ago when I saw the light in the west was pretty nice. And it seemed to match the window light in the neighbour's house.

We've lived in this house for twenty years and still, nearly every time I go in the basement -- and that's at least a couple of times a day -- I hit my head on one of the pipes or lights or floor joists. This morning, I thought I had my head bent low enough, but I was moving quickly and, bang!, my head got banged. And it got scratched, it turned out. I didn't notice I'd left part of my scalp and hair behind until tonight when I went down again and saw this. I'm okay. Just a bit of a sore spot on my crown. And I can see I probably need another haircut.

All over the city, there are little bonfires in backyards like this one just below our yard. People are burning debris from the big windstorm that came through two nights ago, Hurricane Larry.

Hats off to Larry. His calling card. It’s sprayed all over every glass, board, and car. Bugs pulverized – wings, guts, 'n' eyes eyes eyes. That’s how Larry says good-bye to you.

We had a few gusty hours last night (not connected to much heavier winds expected two days from now when a hurricane will blow through). Our volunteer sunflower cracked in the wind. So we brought it in and introduced it to Minnie. I think they'd already met on their own outside the door.

The Other Minnie, the next-door cat, lounging today, watching the chickadee show beneath her.