Ponds

The pond in the neighbourhood park does not usually teem with life. Why would it with a river just on the other side?

But the heron was there for our first sighting of the year. It was at a distance, but I zoomed the phone and managed to capture something.

I swear that we were being polite and considerate, but it flew off anyway.

A little later we saw a pair of mallards swimming by the reeds. Cute, eh?

Speaking of ponds, we came across another one near the lilacs last week, with a cute, little cottage on the edge. It's a very marshy area, so it would be mosquito and blackfly heaven hell in there. In fact, the blackflies just came out to harass us on the weekend. We live in town, so they are not too bad here, but they will be brutal in the countryside right about now.

Just to see what would happen, I asked Gemini to render it as an impressionistic painting.

Gemini gave me a small, low res image. I expect that the paid version would be of higher res. I think it is more interesting than the actual photo in this instance, but neither version is zackly a stunnah. The light was a little too stark on that bright day, but it will have to do because I don't plan on returning for a good light picture.