Category: photography

Photos Along The Trail

I generally don’t take the good camera along when I’m out on the bike because it’s awkward and heavy and I already am carrying a bag with a tire repair kit, tire pump, tools and other things to deal with a breakdown, so I make due with the cell phone. But yesterday I lugged it along for some reason and I’m glad I did because without the telephoto lens I never would have caught this guy sunning himself.

Screen Shot 2017-07-28 at 5.52.50 AM.png

There are a lot of turtles around here, but you just don’t see them very often unless one makes the mistake of trying to cross the road. I found this fellow sunning himself yesterday morning down by the old stone bridge. Beautiful little guy, maybe about 8 inches across. If I hadn’t had the telephoto I never would have been able to get this picture. Took it from about 25 feet away. You can see he’s already looking back to see what the heck is going on, and he slipped off into the water just a few moments after I got this picture.

This guy, though, wasn’t going anywhere.

Screen Shot 2017-07-28 at 5.53.19 AM.png

He was happy, sunning himself, and was entirely content to just sit there even with me perched on the bridge above trying to take his picture. I can’t believe the number of frogs we have this year. It’s amazing. They’re everywhere this year. Great to see them because without them and other creatures like them we’d have so many mosquitos, biting flies and other nasties it would be impossible to even go outside around here this summer.

I finally got a photo of the kingfisher! Well, sort of. This one below is the best I’ve been able to get.

Screen Shot 2017-07-28 at 5.54.12 AM.png

There are about a dozen of these guys down by the stone bridge area this year, and they’re beautiful birds, enormous fun to watch, but it seems every time I have a camera, they suddenly have the urgent need to be somewhere else. Been trying for over a month to get a photo and this is the best I could do. Sigh…

And, of course, we have to have some flowers, right?

Screen Shot 2017-07-28 at 5.54.40 AM.png

Screen Shot 2017-07-28 at 5.54.55 AM.png

Not technically from along the side of the trail. Found these when I was going through the Ledgeview Nature Center just south of Chilton yesterday. We are very fortunate to have Ledgeview and the Brillion nature center. They help to restore the area’s native plants and animals, work with educational programs with the local schools, and provide everyone with an opportunity to just get outside and enjoy life. Some of them are open year round, with cross country skiiing and hiking during the winter. Ledgeview even has a snowshoe program, teaching people how to use snowshoes to get out onto the trails when the snow’s too deep for normal hiking.

Photos and Stuff

It’s been busy here and it’s kept me off the computer. Between biking, gardening, trying to set up a new photo printer (more about that in another post), sitting down with ES to spec out a new gaming computer and other stuff, I haven’t had a heck of a lot of time, so let’s see if I can get caught up here.

Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 6.43.06 AMWe weren’t really sure what kind of production we were going to get from the old pear tree. At first it looked like there wasn’t going to be much fruit. With the cold, wet weather we had when it was in blossom we were afraid it didn’t get pollinated, and we didn’t see many fruits on it. but immature pears are almost the same color as the leaves so it’s hard to tell. Now that the fruit is getting bigger it looks like there are going to be fewer than last year, but more than enough for our use. This variety doesn’t ripen until usually about mid-September, and when they ripen, they all ripen at the same time and we have to deal with a sudden rush of fruit to can or freeze. This variety is best eaten fresh. When ripe they are incredibly juicy, ridiculously sweet and absolutely luscious, with a buttery, creamy texture. That also means they aren’t really suitable for canning because the fruit is too soft to hold up well. We tried freezing some last year and that worked out pretty well so we’ll probably freeze them rather than can this year.

I don’t know exactly why, but the flowers have been absolutely spectacular this year. Maybe it was the wet weather, maybe all the compost we hauled in last year. In any case, they’ve been absolutely amazing. Right now the lilies are still putting on one heck of a show. The colors on some are so brilliant they almost glow in the dark.

DSCF3811Ah, the lowly thistle… It’s a weed, true, but it can be such a pretty one when it’s in flower. We have a lot of different varieties of thistle around here, and almost all of them are classified as weeds, and they can be pretty invasive and difficult to deal with. But my, they can be pretty…

DSCF3805DSCF3804DSCF3803

And then there are the grasses. I love taking pictures of grasses for some reason. There’s something about the complexity of the image, the different textures, the browns and greens, the developing seeds.

DSCF3814And fruit — lots of wild plants are fruiting right now and it drops a bit of color into the scene.

DSCF3821

How about some ducks? I’ve been keeping an eye on this family of ducks down by the stone bridge all summer now and they look like they’re thriving.

And last but not least, this guy…

DSCF3817

My main camera right now is a Fujifilm camera I picked up about 4 years ago, and I love it, not so much because of the camera itself but because of the lens. It has this wonderful zoom/macro lens that lets me use it a variable telephoto lens up to 30X, or get close ups of tiny, tiny things like this bug, all with the same lens.

That’s all for now. I want to get out on the bike while it’s still relatively cool out. I’ll tell you about the new photo printer another time

 

Queen Ann Lace and More Stuff

IMG_0489.jpg
Queen Ann’s Lace (Wild Carrot)

Queen Ann’s Lace grows along the roadsides, along lanes and trails, and while a lot of people treat it like a weed I’ve always thought the flowers are absolutely beautiful. We had it growing on the farm when I was a kid. It would pop up along the lanes, on sunny, sandy hillsides in the woods. It was very common. Still is.

It’s actually a wild carrot. Supposedly the roots are edible, at least when young, and taste like, well, carrot. Apparently some people claim they eat the leaves and flowers, and other people claim it’s poisonous and will kill you. I certainly am not going to volunteer to try it and find out which is true.

My mother loved them too. She’d collect them during the summer, tie up bunches of them and hang them in the garage to dry the flowers. She also told me that some people apparently made tea out of the stuff. According to the stories she’d heard as a kid the local Native Americans made an herbal medicine out of it by steeping parts of the plant in water. Years later I learned that apparently the stories were more or less right, although not in the way she thought. A local historian told me that it was used as an abortifacient and contraceptive.

Then along one of the bike trails this stuff is popping up:

It’s a striking plant, can get very tall, and the flower head is spectacular when it’s in full bloom. This stuff used to grow along the trails and fence lines on the farm too. My father called it “Indian tobacco” or wild tobacco.

It’s actually the common mullein, and isn’t native to North America. It’s fairly common. It isn’t a nasty plant, but it can harbor some nasties, like cucumber mosaic virus and powdery mildew, so you probably don’t want it growing in your garden.

And it seems my father wasn’t really wrong because while it is not tobacco, the Native Americans apparently did smoke it as a treatment for breathing problems. it’s also been used in a wide variety of other allegedly medicinal preparations.

It’s interesting how I seem to have come full circle. As a kid, seven, eight years old, I’d spend hours wandering around the more wild areas of the farm, watching the animals and insects that congregated around the stream, walking through the woods examining the plants and wildlife with intense curiosity, and now that I’m retired I find myself doing the same thing and enjoying it just as much as I did when I was a kid.

Stuff, Nonsense, and More Garden Photos

Mr. Spiny, the cactus we rescued from the town compost pile, has gone totally goofy this year. He now looks like this:

IMG_0485.jpg

I counted around 13 flowers, with about a dozen more buds ready to flower in the next day or two. I kinda, sorta knew that cactus flowered, but I had no idea they did this! We thought it was a really neat plant before, but now– Wow.

Mrs. GF picked up a packet of old seeds on sale for a few cents earlier in the season, threw them in one of the gardens, and then these things came up —

DSCF3787.JPG

I had no idea she did it so I was astonished and delighted when these brilliant orange poppies started to appear last week. The color on these guys is so intense they almost glow in the dark.

With some plants you don’t appreciate their beauty until you get up close to them and really look at them. Like the oregano we’ve been trying to kill off for years now. The stuff turned out to be horrifically aggressive, taking over the entire plot of ground, and even taking over the lawn in that area. And while it does smell amazing when I mow the lawn over there, we would like to grow something besides oregano there, so we’ve been rather ruthless in keeping what’s left in check.

But that very annoying plant, well, even it looks neat when it starts to come into flower as it is now.

DSCF3784.JPGDSCF3791.JPG

The Fuji camera I use has a pretty darn nice macro-zoom lens on it and while depth of field and focus is a pain to get right when I get this close to something, the results are worth it.

Heck, even the lowly cucumber looks pretty when you get close to it:

DSCF3794.JPG

Other stuff–

We’ve been going to state parks this summer. Wisconsin has one of the finest state park systems in the country. The places are absolutely beautiful.

Or perhaps I should use the phrase “had one of the finest state park systems”. The state government has decided, in its infinite stupidity, to cut off all funding for the entire state park system. It does not get any funding from the state any more and is going to have to survive entirely on entrance and camping fees, donations, and any other money it can scrounge up. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them out on the beaches with metal detectors looking for change people dropped to try to keep the parks running. The new paradigm down in Madison seems to be that if it doesn’t make a profit for someone who can funnel bribe money [ahem, excuse me] campaign contributions into their bank accounts or fund their PACs, it isn’t going to get any of our tax money. Sigh…

 

Mr. Spiny Blooms: Cactus in Wisconsin

Mr. Spiny, the dopy cactus we rescued off the town compost pile is now doing this:

Screen Shot 2017-07-05 at 8.39.43 AM.png

He’s been absolutely thriving since we brought him home about three years ago, he’s more than tripled in size and this year he’s absolutely loaded with blossoms.

Screen Shot 2017-07-05 at 8.39.59 AM.png

I know absolutely nothing about cactus but apparently we’re doing something right if he’s growing like this.