AC Learns to Never Boast

I had 3 good nights of sleep, which I define as getting more than 6 hours. I have my goal set at 6.5 hours, and I attained it twice with a glorious 7 hours on one of those nights.

On a walk, I bragged to Sue. Of course, 2 rather fitful nights ensued.

Then, I got 4 good nights, reaching 7.5 hours on two occasions. That is actually sublime territory for me.

Being a slow learner, I bragged again. Never brag, folks.

What followed were two rather wretched nights in which I awoke at 3:30 after 4 hours.

I drives me crazy, I tell ya. Not that it's a long drive, eh?

But then I met my goal of 6.5 hours 2X with one night over 7. That was last night as I write this.

On one of the early mornings, I saw a glimmer of a decent sunrise from my chair, so I went to the window before 6, and snapped this photo.

While it would have been great to get out to a better location for the sunrise, the good light is brief, and it would have been long gone had I attempted to go out and chase the light.

That night, while watching tennis with Beloved, I could see a bright half-moon through the patio door. I stepped onto the deck and took a phone photo around 8:45. The clouds really helped to make a rather good photo.

I am so impressed with this quick, handheld phone shot. The exposure is very good, and the moon is quite in-focus. I had to remove some distractions, 4 wires for example, and do a little editing, but the point is that the phone gave me a great starting point.I cannot explain the light streaks that we see, but I don’t mind them at all. 

I did go up to the bedroom to try for another photo, but the moon was already obscured by the clouds. Sadly.

The next night, I did get the moon in about the same spot from the bedroom, but it was about 45 minutes later in reaching the same point in the sky as it was on the previous night, so the blue was gone. There weren’t clouds either, but here it is for the record.

The bright building to the bottom left in both photos is a car wash.

The lighted building in the second photo of the post is a daycare centre.

The lesson to me is how great a lunar exposure the phone rendered. I wasn't expecting much but was pleasantly surprised. The other lesson, that I really knew already, is  that night photography is best while there is still some light before it gets very dark in what we call blue hour. 

Of course, if you are shooting the Milky Way, you may have to take what you can get when you can get it. Of course, this is true for much photography. 

The Other Trail

There are three trails in town, two of which go through the town on their ways to points beyond. When I write about the neighbourhood trail or the Mississippi Riverwalk Trail, it just a local trail. It begins (or ends) in the park near us and parallels the Mississippi for about 2 km, which is only a little longer than a mile. When I have shown wooden boardwalks, it has been of this trail. It is close and convenient and is only for pedestrians and cyclists.

The other trail that we even more frequently use is the OVRT: Ottawa Valley Recreational Trail. It is along the former CPR line, which was still in use when we arrived here in 2005. The economic crisis of 2008 put an end to the trains, so it was converted into an almost 300km trail. It can be used by snowmobiles and what I will call trail buggies in summer, which I guess are kind of golf carts. Maybe they are exactly golf carts; I don't really know.

Whenever I mention the bridge trail, we are on the OVRT. We saw the new sign on part of our coffee walk. 

We had another of those coffee walks recently, but I refrained from posting the same old thing. I think we've done two coffee walks without posting although when I recently posted the photo of Sue by the puddle with Tim Hortons in the background, that was part of that walk.

Carleton Place is the red dot in the middle of the 300k trail

I really write all of the above to post this recent photo of the third trail: the Trans Canada Trail.

The initial gif at the top and this photo were taken on our little section of the Trans Canada Trail.
We rode sans kidlets that day.

The Trans Canada Trail passes though Carleton place. Yes, it then goes across the country. You can see that it really is a trail here, but you would then have to pick your way through Carleton Place before finding an actual trail again. It does connect with the OVRT though.

Obviously, you can ride this trail a heckuva long way. When we were younger and even more foolish, still in our late 50s, we did ride it the 24k/14mi into Stittsville, but that was far enough for us. There are long railway grades along the loose trail, and we never had the desire to repeat such foolishness.

As a matter of fact, we had only ridden maybe 100 metres on this day when we stopped to take that photo. Ferocious insects, late season blackflies, we think, came out to feast on Sue without mercy. We quickly turned about and headed for home.

Of course, you will forget all of this about the trails, which is entirely appropriate, but at least I have given some context for the picture (and gif) in this post and about our walks or rides in general.

Evening in Mono

Sue's daily prompt required an evening photo in black & white. The lady doesn't like prompts that require late-in-the-day fiddling and faddling, but off we went to the neighbourhood park.

I decided to follow suit. When I do present a mono photo on this blog, it is a conversion of a colour photo. This time, however, I set the phone to b&w mode. That enabled me to see the composition in b&w before pressing the shutter button. I did not have to convert when editing; it was already b&w.

What I could see in mono on the screen was the sky looking pretty dramatic. The sky didn't look overly dramatic in colour with my naked eye but it did on the screen, so that is what I emphasized with my shot.

However, apart from the sky, other photo ops were lacking, so we drove to Riverside Park, where, upon entry, I immediately spotted this possibility.

As we entered the park along this path, I could see that people and dogs were coming, so I held the phone and waited for them to walk into the scene. The photo has a leading line with subjects well positioned in the frame.

I took one more photo at Riverside of the boys fishing at the dock, but of course it would have been preferrable for them to be actually casting their lines. I could have waited, but I might have waited in vain, and the mosquitoes were getting somewhat active.

I did fulfill the mission of actually shooting in b&w rather than converting from colour later. One does see the world a little differently in mono,  and it was the sky that really popped in some of the photos, more so than it would have on colour.

Flower Report

Last week, I decided to take a picture of the single, remaining daisy flower. I am pleased that I inserted the plant last year and that it returned this year because an earlier effort some years ago failed.

Then, with daylilies quickly diminishing, I decided to get a last last bloom photos of them too. They come and go so quickly that I missed the final flower of the one variety, so these may not be the absolute final blooms of our other two varieties, but they are darn close to that.

While we still have many echinacea flowers, I must tell you that they are dull and not vibrant at this point in their life cycle. They may be even less bright than how this photo renders them, but I am happy that they linger still.

The present highlight out front, however, is the yellow coneflowers whether you called them brown- eyed or black-eyed Susans of even rudbeckia. Like the daisies they were a good addition last year. Although they are coneflowers, they look as a fresh as daisies, so to speak. :)

Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) and brown-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia triloba) are both popular North American native wildflowers in the aster family. Black-eyed Susans feature larger, solitary 2–3 inch blooms with a dark, prominent cone, while brown-eyed Susans produce a bushier plant with smaller 1–2 inch flowers and lower 3-lobed leaves.

Of course, Sue's potted annuals continue to flourish and will continue to do so for quite some time, but I forgot to take a picture, and it's just 5 o'clock here, and it is still dark, so no pic.

Out back, our mighty Joe Pye reached fence height and beyond and bloomed a few weeks ago. It is remarkable to me how it grows from nothing to more than 6' every year. Suddenly around mid-August the bees get interested and have just this week returned to do their work, oblivious of nearby humans.

This is not a recent iPhone photo but one taken with my Canon several years ago. iPhones don't do well at photographing quick-flitting bees at any sort of distance.

In the house we are having a baby. The flamingo lily that I showed you recently is beginning to sprout another flower. The first flower has been all alone in the months since we were given the plant.

This is a variation of the photo that I showed you last week.

If I look closely now in this next photo, I see a tiny bit of red to the middle right of the stake.

Here's a closer look.

How exciting to be a father again.

The Banner Flags of Bridge Street

Our town hangs banner flags* downtown along our main street. Around the end of June and beginning of July, the banner flags are, appropriately enough, resemble our actual Canadian flag (as previously and fairly recently posted). 

Come November, the banner flags will honour veterans of past wars for Remembrance Day. I haven't posted about those for some time, but maybe I will again this November.

Currently, the town exhibit various artists and their works. These four hang just outside of townhall along with two glorious flower baskets, of which there are plenty along the main drag and elsewhere in town too. I made sure to get the flowers in the photo too.

In addition to those that are hanging, the town has also planted some in flowerbeds. I liked this one, with the foreground blue flowers that almost seem to blend into the scene.

Sue liked it too.

There are many, many more banner flags flowerbeds and baskets, but you'll have to take my word for it after seeing my samples.

* I asked Google what I should call items that are like banners but hang vertically. Google said banner flags.

Hose and Squeegee

A young fellow captured our attention outside of townhall. I have never seen anything quite like this, but I don't suppose it is unique, and most people probably have seen this sort of work being done. 

You can see the whole procedure in the next photo, or at least you can if you look closely.

The lad has a squeegee attached to a very long handle. At the moment of the photo, he was cleaning the second-storey window. Fastened to the pole is a hose, so he is able to both wash and wipe the window.

I don't know how he would manage to clean the side windows because he would have to start from an even lower position. He might have room to erect a platform of some sort down there where there is more room down by the river than here on the narrow sidewalk.

The Puddle Incident

While walking in the park, I wondered if I could find a reflection photo with this puddle, for I have said that one should always investigate the photographic potential of a puddle. Of course I seldom do, but I was beginning to look when sue placed her coffee cup on the edge.

I took the shot, I don't think the cup added much if anything.

So, I moved the cup closer to the centre.

Eventually, I got one photo that is okay. Just okay, but very us. The green is all reflection of tree leaves.

So, remember to have a look next time you pass a puddle. It could be worth it. If not, you could have fun trying.

↑↑ THAT ↑↑ was the post, BUT since we encountered another puddle on the next day, I might as well expand the post.

Once again, there was nothing significant to be seen in the puddle, but I did put Sue there, and since Tim's is in the background, I can talk about that a little in the process. Here is that photo, for no particular reason.

Once we got inside to order our coffee to take on the rest of the walk, there was a longer lineup than usual. 

When the gentleman on the right heard Sue and I talking about the drive thru
being the faster than coming inside, he reminded us the time when
a rider rode his horse through the drive thru.

At Tim's the cars in the DriveThru get served more quickly than the customers inside. Although, they have just added two of those new-fangled order kiosks inside, I wasn't in the mood to experiment. I know that the kids prefer them to an actual human cashier no matter how short the line, but I am not there yet. \

When I travelled recently with Shauna, however, she saved us quite a bit of waiting time by using the kiosk. Sue says that at busy roadside restaurants, Sha will order from the car via her app. I do have that app for payments, which saved me on coffee in each of the last two visits for a total of $4:50 because I had accumulated points, but I haven't used it to order ahead of time. I have resolved to try it next time I have coffee with the boys — that is if hell frees over, and I happen to remember.

Anyway, the length of the line was deceiving because four of the old people were together, so it didn't take very long to be called to the counter, and we were then served by a pleasant young lady who asked if we were having a nice day. We continued on our walk through The Junction and found a bench to sit on by the play structure. We didn't take any more pictures, which is really quite remarkable. Not even a selfie. What is the world coming too‽