Tag: Spring

Uncategorized

Spring

Shelly

I made a big pot of vegetable soup last night, along with a loaf of whole wheat bread. When I got up and went out to the living room this morning, it still smelled wonderful. Mmmm. And it’s supposed to storm this afternoon and again tonight, which I’m almost half-way looking forward to. It’s Friday for me, and I could use an evening with homemade bread and vegetable soup and a good book and the knowledge that I don’t have to get up in the morning[1].

Also, the forsythia and redbuds are blooming, as well as daffodils, and the grounds folks have planted pansies everywhere. I also saw tons of little violets out in the back field, while Harriet and I were tracking bunnies. Well, Harriet was tracking; I was just along for the ride.

The best part, though? I haven’t had to turn on the heat in several days. It’s supposed to cool off again this weekend, but I think it’s safe to assume that winter is well and truly over. It’ll be nice to have a month or so where I don’t have to use heat or AC.

__________________________________________-
1. I think Mr. Upstairs must be out of town, because I haven’t heard a peep from him in a couple of days. There was a fury of cleaning activity on, I think, Monday, then the next day, silence. I haven’t even heard water running. Hopefully, this means I’ll be able to get caught up on sleep this weekend!

Cemeteries, Photography

Spring

Shelly

IMG_0693

I don’t think I posted this one before. It was taken in Dunn Cemetery a couple of weeks ago.

Spring is definitely here. A coworker brought me some iris bulbs that have about four inches of green growth. I have to figure out what the hell to do with them. Obviously, they need to go in the ground, but I have to decide where I want to put them, because they will spread. The same coworker has some other perennials she’s going to bring me, too.

It won’t be long before I have a real, live patio garden. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep our resident groundhog, raccoon, and Mr. Rabbit’s millions of friends and relations out of it. At least, out of the tomatoes and peppers I’m planning on planting.

It’s all very exciting and, well, springy!

On the other hand, it’s also aggravating. All that new growth means that my allergies have been a lot worse, especially this past week. My eyes have been itching, and burning and I’m sneezing like crazy.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Spring

Shelly

IMG_0746
Raspberry leaves unfurling

I’ve got two cat sitting jobs this weekend. At one of the houses, the pussy willows are budding. I’m going to try to remember to take my camera tomorrow. Then, when I took the dog out for her afternoon walk, I noticed that the leaves on the black raspberries are starting to unfurl.

An unfortunate byproduct of Spring is that one of my neighbors has been leaving their little Chihuahua outdoors for long periods of time. The dog shrieks non-stop, and it’s about to make my ears bleed. I feel sorry for the dog, and I’d like to kick the owners in the shins.

IMG_0744

Photography

Skwrrl

Shelly

IMG_0726
Behind Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Harriet says that skwrrlz are evil. She may be right. This little guy sure was charming, though. I’d take a step closer, he’d stop eating and stare at me, then he’d go back to eating and I’d take his picture. Then I’d take another step closer, etc., etc., etc. He let me get just a couple of feet away from him.

I love the way his tail is curled over his back.

IMG_0723

He looks like he’s wearing a fur hat.

IMG_0737

Photography

Carriage House Again

Shelly

100_1854
Carriage House with Pear Tree in Spring (take three)

I wasn’t quite happy with the way the earlier one turned out. I was working from an image that was in my Flickr stream, which means it was already cropped and minimally processed. I went back and dug out my back-ups from that time period, and had another try using the raw image.

I was trying to get the pinky look of faded old low-fi photos. I also wanted to try using radial blurring to make it look toy-like. It’s not quite there, but it was a good learning experience.

Photography

Spring Storm

Shelly

100_3577

100_3581

100_3579

100_3589

A storm blew through about an hour ago, with hail, lots of wind, and really dark skies. When the worst had passed, there were some faint mammatus clouds visible. The bottom picture was taken after the sun had come out, but while the northern sky was still deep blue with clouds.

The mammatus pictures didn’t come out very well, so I tweaked the hell out of them in Photoshop.

Photography

Spring Cleaning

Shelly

100_1900
Vines Engulfing Fence Post 22 April 2006

I think I’m just about finished with spring cleaning. I stumbled across this template (apologies for the periodic ugliness a few days ago), and I really like it. The last one wasn’t exactly what I was looking for aesthetically, and it was missing some important functionality (like a calendar). I had to do some very minor rearranging of the current template, but it was actually pretty close to perfect straight out of the box. All I did was add my StatCounter button, drop in the header links, and swap around the sidebar content into more logical groupings.

And, miracle of miracles, it appears to work properly in IE, and it looks fine at both 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 screen resolutions. The real test will be whether or not it will properly handle wrapping short amounts of text around tall, vertical images. The last, ill-fated template did not like the float tag.

Alas, neither does this one. Damn! Using it runs the current post into the previous post, with all sorts of wacky-wrapping and whatnot. So, I’ll replace it with a photo from last spring. It’s amazing how early everything bloomed this spring, and comparing last spring’s photos, I see it’s not just my imagination. We’re a full month ahead of where we were at this time last year. Scary!