Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Two for Tuesday......


The roses that are in bloom are staying fresh with the cool weather. I noticed the mums are taking a big hit from the freeze but these roses are a little closer to the house.


Monday, October 30, 2017

Staying Wet and Warm.....



Two fish and a reflection shows them very content in the tank. The wrecked ship keeps them company and the fake greenery is probably the closest thing to plants that they have ever known in their lifetime.


Sunday, October 29, 2017

Saying Goodbye.....


An archived photo of my birdhouse at the old place. I made this one winter quite a few years ago. I had the pole from a leftover basketball backboard. I am leaving this one behind.  My new place has a single, weather-worn birdhouse on a plastic pole.  I discovered that it has a pole that allows me to take down the birdhouse and bring it in the house.  I think I can make a new and different one for the new place. The bracket that I made to hold the multiple housing unit onto the pole won't be needed on the new smaller pole.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Cold....


The day was cold and windy yesterday but the morning glory did try to open. It needed some sunshine to heat it up and it never did open.  It did not freeze last night so maybe today it will try to open a new bloom again.  If it had frozen the vines would be weepy today. I see seed pods are needing to be harvested on this vine.

Friday, October 27, 2017

End of a Zinnia Era.......


The zinnias will be cleared from the garden today. They have given me many photos throughout the summer.  I will probably have one last bouquet from them but they are really spent.  It will be very cold but the job will need to be done. I will probably plant another batch again next year in the very same area.  I will look over the seed and see if I can collect some before I clear it . It feels cold enough for it to snow today.  It is going to be close to a hard freeze tonight.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Evening Shots.....


Wednesday, late afternoon, and the sky is showing lots of color from the setting sun. I questioned the balance of the photo but decided all the subtle colors on the left do help to balance it all.



It was a beautiful view but unusual in color with the mixtures of pink and yellow hues. This was all in view while the moon shown to the right of it.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Churning Sky......



It is the time of the year when normal weather patterns  means not seeing the moon or never seeing the sun. This morning is a cold clear morning as winter weather seems to be coming closer to us. The sun that we do see will only warm us up to 50 degrees by late afternoon.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

More Time.....


I saw the petunia plant from the inside of the house. It is getting cold and windy so I decided to go out and get the pot and put the whole thing in the garbage can. To my surprise, I had to go get my camera instead.  I do know that once that bloom is gone, the whole thing disappears.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Suburbia scapes.......



I appreciate the choices of trees that people choose to plant in their yards. The fall color of the tree really is a good reason to select a tree. The sun in the west helps to bring out the color in the evening.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Always a Story.....


A typical view of Iowa this time of the year is this random shot from the truck. "There is always a story," one student told me of their observation of me. The students like to hear stories.  The story this time is about the broken down barn in the distance. I couldn't get a decent shot of the barn but it has a lot of history. The barn started to collapse last year.  It is the last building of the many barns and buildings that were used by a circus company.

 In the late forties, the circus would winter over in Granger, Iowa.  It was a farm south of the city and all the animals and some performers settled in there to hold our for spring weather. Some animals really didn't need to be inside so there were pens of zebras or whatever.  One of the elephants died on the site and it has been a mystery as to where they buried it on that farm.  No evidence of an elephant grave has ever been found but it has driven the locals crazy because they want to find it. The land is still a farm, but the suburbia building of houses is right next door now.  The barn had a twin  for a lot of years and then it was the first collapsed.  This barn housed a couple of Texas longhorns for quite a few years.

A borrowed photo of the Yankee-Robinson Circus from a newspaper article. The photo originated in a Granger Centennial Book from a resident of Granger.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Trucking Shots......



Three views with one shots as I blindly push the button on the camera.  I drive and don't look through the viewfinder.  I did take some bad blind shots, but that is allowed when one is just clicking away with one hand. The interior of the truck counts as one. The mirror and window each have a view.

I am crossing the bridge over Saylorville and you can see the erosion on the Iowa landscape of a 45 year old man-made lake.  When they hold back too much water in the early spring, thinking they have to have boating water for the summer,  we can get heavy rainfalls that floods the lake up to the tree line. When that happens the state park, Ledges, north a few miles, is completely under water, shutting down most of the state park.  It is a lot of water that takes half the summer to release at the dam.  The worse flood ever happened one year where the overflow poured huge amounts of water, washing out a road that is built below the area. Scientist had fun as it eroded many layers of soil and clay revealing dinosaur bones and layers exposed to study the earth's crust.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

On the Road......



Driving to the old place to work and to move things home, gives me a time to see the area in which I now live. I see pelicans, seagulls and deer.  Bald eagles and hawks can be soaring above me. Once in a while there is a lone heron wading along the shore of the lake.  I have been able to see crops being planted and now they are being harvested.  Along the way is a family that raises cattle and special kinds of bulls. The two bulls and two horses are in adjoining pens.  The animals are switched from pen to pen.  The growth that I observed of the two bulls has been remarkable.  In the spring the two guys were thin and young animals.  Now that it is fall, they have filled out being very bulky and are now slow moving. I do believe that they are the offspring of the herd of cattle that is up the way from here.  That means that these bulls will be sold to other farmers for their herds. Buy breeding animals is profitable if you have a pure breed line.

In the photo you can see the whiter bull laying down and the other is standing.  The grey one has darkened in color and has a deep brown color on his chest now.  I at first thought he was getting himself muddy and then I realized he was changing color. The photo from the truck shows afternoon traffic as people are all lined up trying to get home. I am in line of a lot of slow traffic and I am not the one who they are following, wishing I would speed up. The 55 mph speed magically is 64 mph in the afternoon as those wanting to get home go faster than they are suppose to be doing. My commute goes through two towns before I arrive at our old place.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Inside Colors.....


The lower level of the bouquet with the most color sits in the kitchen. As I worked on the sunflowers stalks on Tuesday I was thinking it is just about time to take the zinnia patch down too. I will pick at least a couple of more bouquets before I do that.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Harvest Time.....


The birds and squirrels were helping themselves too aggressively so I had to cut off the heads of these three. I will feed them to the birds this winter but I almost didn't get them cut down soon enough. The sunflower is one of many living things on earth that a display the "the golden ratio".

The divine creation has used this in many ways with plants, animals, and humans. Our ear is based on this golden ratio. I am going out on a limb and state that I think zinnia flowers are also arranged in this perfect ratio. There are many more things that I really don't know about but I really have not spent much time researching the topic.  My wife was reading about it early this summer.  I remember being asked about it as a young art teacher by a math teacher and I only had seen the illustration of it in an art history text. I can see how mathematicians would have fun with it.

The flowering parts that help to make the seeds of the sunflower are also in that same patterned ratio.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Clear Blue......


Can you find the sliver of a moon? It is an open cup right now as it continues to become larger. The sky is a cold-looking sky. The sun did show itself a little later and it has been clear all day.

This is the same sky but at a different angle.  I like seeing again that small suggestion of the moon. The planet was also show up clear and bright earlier in the morning.

This is the kind of sky that some artist strive to capture as it has such a great, subtle gradual change of colors.

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Help Yourself.....


He wings from the leaves and stems.to get to the sunflower seeds. If I want see for winter, I will have to harvest what is left.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Basket Bunny....


With camera in hand to go outside,  I looked down and saw this composition. Usually the leash is sitting there ready to be used with Barney. Barney doesn't need the leash to the most part but he does want to cross the street once in a while. It has an extensible line so he does have free roaming if he wants it. I have to keep my hand on the stop button just in case he wants to become independent or check out a dog walking down the other side of the street. I keep remarking to myself that the basket almost made it to the landfill abut I gave it a second chance. I removed it from the garbage bin and tossed it into the back of the truck.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

The Leaves are Changing......


My tree with a dead limb is changing color.  The sun setting also caused it to look more yellow orange that it actually is. A lot of the trees are starting to make a gradual change but more will follow soon.


The houses line the horizon in this photo with the background of trees that are changing colors. As a young person I would probably flee from all the houses, but now at my age it is a tradeoff for the quality of life we now have here in the growing city.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Clouds.....


A gentle glow with the fluffed up clouds reflecting the sun. The clouds were wonderful to see on Monday as then all day Tuesday it was full cloud cover.


Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Free Flight.....


I found the pelicans congregating below the bridge again. I had my point and shoot and did get a few good photos from the thirty or more that I took. When I drove down to the boat launch the birds were on the ground and they were in large numbers soaring in that cold northerly breeze They float on the air using very little energy as they float around without a care. I didn't dream that I would get this shot but as soon as I had seen the moon I knew I wanted it in one of my shots.



Above is my very best shot of them in flight. I really don't have any control with the point and shoot as long as I am standing in bright sunlight. My dirty lens shows up in my every photo.  I couldn't crop it out without loosing a perfectly good sea gull. My camera is a very good Olympus camera.  It just doesn't work in the conditions I previously described.




Monday, October 9, 2017

Fading Flowers.....



The visuals speak for themselves.  Fall is not my favorite season when things start to look like this.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Sunshine Today......


The seeds that germinated were from my last years crop.  This vine is a different color of flower than the red vine that grows from the same pot. The rain didn't seem to deter it from putting out some blooms.  I discover this morning while looking out the kitchen window, that I will be growing them in the very same spot. The view is perfect for vines full of blooms. Maybe I can get them to start growing a few months earlier next spring.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Late Travelers.....


The monarch migrations were going on a few weeks ago.  Two of these guys showed up at my zinnia patch yesterday.  I guess they still could make it south, but the group of butterflies did not go through here. I use to have migrations at the old house but that stopped a few years ago.  It was said they were now following the Missouri River, over by Council Bluffs/Omaha area.

Evidence of a difficult time that I had taking the shots is shown here. The two were hyper and would flit around to find food. I tossed a dozen shots that were just blurred because they kept flapping their wings in and out. Once in a while they would open their wings wide for a second. Even so they opened they immediately shut them up again causing me to have a blurred shot. I really did not expect to see these butterflies now in October. I do suppose they are new butterflies that had came from eggs that were laid a few weeks ago.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Insect Visitor......


While I was taking photos of the zinnias yesterday,  I was surprised to see this praying mantis.  It is very large compared to the one small white one that I posted shots of a few months ago.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Sea Gulls In Iowa....


Lake Saylorville use to have a lot of sea gulls but in the most part there are very few all summer. When the dam was first built 40 some years ago we had sea gulls come in and stay.  One could see a gull hovering over shopping mall dumpsters and that was so unusual for Iowa. But now when the fall migration of birds pick up, there are a lot of gulls. My camera is a great point and shoot but it can't take things from a mile away.  Regardless, when I view my shot of the lone sailboat, enlarged it  a large percentage, I discovered all the gulls hanging around on that end of the lake.

Because of the lake, we do now have gulls that are hanging out at our landfills. They live there all summer as the site is a great source of food. The one landfill that is next to the Des Moines river has hundreds of them living in flat open areas on top of the landfill. I have archive photos of them looking like they were sitting along a beach but in reality a garbage dump.


We were at the lake shore trying to capture these pelicans yesterday afternoon.  I had seen them along the shore north of the bridge earlier in the day.  When we returned, they were flying around over the lake. The birds  then landed north of us around the bend, out of sight.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

No Mail Today......


Our mail is delivered six days a week to our box.  Packages can come any day of the week to our front door.  They come late in the afternoon and they drive fast from one box to another.  They are unpredictable. I was out late, checking for mail and I could see him roaring down the hill. He made it to the bottom of the street then came back up. I just sat on the step to see what he was up to.  Apparently he had missed putting mail in some of the boxes and was giving the neighbors something. He sat after that for a while, out there and the tore out of here back up the hill and he was gone.   We didn't get mail either time.


Monday, October 2, 2017

Two Views Same Place.......


Sunday morning view of rain clouds which later sprinkled on us. The color glow from the sun was so wonderful for such a very short time.  I really felt fortunate that my wife saw and that I immediately went out and shot it.


It is amazing that 15 minutes later things just changed. Clouds kept moving around and stretching out in different directions.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Spider........Warning.


A Writing Spider
This is a bigger than life photo of the yellow and black spider.  When I was a kid helping walking corn rows to cut out large weeds, I would see these.  They would spin a web from corn row to corn row,. This  required one to use the corn knife to take down it down so you could walk through. I don't know the name of it but someone out there does know. They are common in Iowa but never expected it to be in my zinnias.


Here are two flowers to look at if you don't like spiders. I watered the zinnias last evening and picked a new bouquet. So maybe the spider will have someplace to live for a little longer.

Big and Small...

 The miniature daffodils are so petite compared to the normal sized daffodil. I don't think I have ever brought the small ones inside be...