Monday, April 18, 2022

Monday Stew

I reverted to ordering groceries online again last week. For one thing, the walking hasn't been great lately. For another thing, shopping before Easter can be terribly crowded and busy, and I know from experience that it can even be worse than at Christmastime. 

But doggone it, while I was waiting for them to bring my order to the car, the biggest SUV on the planet came and parked beside me. I couldn't see around it. To exit my parking spot, I did a quick check for traffic before I got back in the car after loading the groceries. I inched out very slowly. My goodness, that thing was a monster. There were other spots available, so I was a little miffed that it decided that it had to park right beside me.


This wasn't this make, but let me tell you that I drive a compact SUV, and whatever make it was, it dwarfed me.

============================

We didn't lose power in the mighty wind of Friday, but some places in outlying areas did. Our neighbours' bbq was turned over, and when we went for a stroll in the park, a tree had been uprooted: not the whole tree but a pretty darn big limb.


Sue took a photo, supposedly of me taking a photo. It was a setup. She never knows what her 365 themes will be and what she will be able to use when.

Meanwhile, I can use it now.


============================

Speaking of Sue's themes, her photo challenge yesterday was Point of View/Staggering. Having this photo in the vault came in handy for her. If and when I get back to this church, I would like to take a similar photo with my camera, for I rather love the church nestled under the marker. 

What do you call such an imposing gravestone? A monument? I just don't know. 

Anyway, I'd like to take a similar photo, see if I can get more separation between the monument and church, and just maybe eliminate some of the distortion in the building. It won't be easy to avoid distortion because the camera needs to be pointed upward to make the marker look this large. 


============================

Back to the walk where we saw the broken tree, we were delighted to see little baggies with gifts and messages. One of these gems dealt with the disaster in Ukraine. All were wonderful.



============================

In this Monday Stew of disparate themes, I present yet one more photo of a recent coffee in the car. For those who are newer here, when COVID first hit us, we took a lot of selfies, many very funny, to share with extended family. Of course, I posted some here. We no longer do that, but we still make sure to take coffee-in-the-car photos.


Our view was rather dull, but I include this photo ↓ because I recently mentioned flooding. There is always a bit of spring ponding in this patch, but this is hardly flooding like we sometimes get and not enough to launch a canoe this year, as they did here, five years ago . The river is running high and rapidly out there beyond the tree.







22 comments:

Patio Postcards said...

A lovely photo walk through your days. That stone cross is really quite amazing & yes I'd be tempted to click away at different angles & views.

Our 150 Canada tulips have continued to do really well. It might be because that I feed them regularly & when we planted I made sure of a good lot of well rotten manure at the base & loads of bone meal. I just wish this recipe worked as well on my daffodils! The regular feeding of bone meal in the Autumn is mostly to keep the squirrels from digging up.

DJan said...

That is a huge SUV! And I do like that marker picture of Sue's. Glad you didn't lose power during that storm.

Marie Smith said...

What a nice find along the way. Ukraine is never far from our minds these days.

Barbara Rogers said...

Too bad the church building gets canted so much when getting the cross in foreground. Great sky though! I like the broken tree shot. So glad it fell by the path rather than across it! Yay for coffee selfies. Those silly shots came about the time I started watching your blog. Now that you mention it, I must say they were really a lot of cheerful fun in times pretty morose.

Marcia said...

What a delicious stew. You including so many things in it that I can't decide what tasted the best.

MARY G said...

Yeah, we lost some branches too, but luckily nothing big. And just flickers in the power. Kudos to the Hydro crews.

Debby said...

This stew was a very nice one. That monument, whatever it was, was amazing. Can you 'stack' the images of the church and the monument? Get a close up of the monument and superimpose it over the church or cradle it within the image? Double exposure is the wrong word, but I'm not a photographer.

Ed said...

If it was fairly new, my guess is the Cadillac Escalade or Chevy Suburban, both of which are huge.

My youngest goes to a small private school and there is a very tiny parking lot. Up until a couple years ago, the nearest spots to the door where the kids were let go at the end of the day were blocked off with orange traffic cones just to prevent the kids from getting out into traffic as they were checked off the list by teachers. This year though the cones haven't been used and while all of us old hats, know to avoid those parking spots, there is a new guy who always parks in the closest spot and drives a tall full size pickup truck. He ends up blocking the view for about half the parking lot so we can't tell if the kids have been let out or not. He also has that patient of Job, because due to his close proximity, as kids are exiting and being picked up in quick order, we are blocking his exit out of that parking spot so even though he is often wanting to leave before my kid even exits the building, I often am able to pick up my child and leave the parking lot first and I park halfway across it!

Boud said...

That thing is like a Hummer. Way too big for ordinary life.

Nice variety of stuff going on in here today. It seems so long since the pandemic started, or we became aware of it, which was a bit later.

gigi-hawaii said...

Nice photo of that fallen tree branch. I like that one the best. You make me like coffee, too.

Margaret said...

I have the same issue with those behemoth vehicles and I too drive a smallish SUV. (Subaru Forester) I'm thankful for my back up alert although I don't trust it 100%. Love the gravestone picture! I think the distortion adds to the picture in some strange symbolic way.

Jenn Jilks said...

I think it a good idea to order online. Things are just crazy. We stocked up prior to the long weekend.
That poor tree!
I hope you get your surgery soon!
What a great little gift, too!

Goldendaze-Ginnie said...

Do you and Sue compete on the same settings for your photos? It's fun to see things from both of your prospections and, of course, your explanations of them.

Anvilcloud said...

Hi Ginnie. We don't compete although we often overlap. It seems more to be me copying her because she has more of an artistic vision. She only uses her phone, and I mostly use my camera. You don't have too many settings on a phone, but there are some.

Karen said...

We had a HUGE spruce tree come down beside my bush trail. It was a very tall lanky tree, very healthy, so I'm a bit shocked.

NGS said...

We drive a compact car and I think all SUVs are huge. And I don't know if you have as many pickup trucks in Canada as we do in the midwestern US, but the pickup trucks are so big. There are many times when I'm parked in between these behemoths and I have to back out inch by inch because I can't see around or over them!

William Kendall said...

I would call that a monument.

PipeTobacco said...

If it was not the Ford behemoth in the picture, I suspect it was likely a Chevrolet Suburban….. equally gargantuan in stature.

My wife has learned to like ordering groceries, although we are not doing so currently…. Amostly because the produce is not always as “nice” as we ourselves would choose.

PipeTobacco

Vicki Lane said...

That's quite a grave marker!

Joanne Noragon said...

That wind blew through Ohio, too.

Jeanie said...

So much to love here! Especially the little surprises on your walk and that massive stone "monument." Impressive. Yup. I get the frustration with the oversized SUVs. I hate being near them, whether they are parked or driving!

Kay said...

I love the photo of the both of you. The cross really makes a dramatic statement too.