Orphan Photos 5: Old Men

These photos are not quite true orphans because I haven't forgotten them at all. I have been just posting other things. I like these candid photos of old fellas, particularly the third one.

One day, I spotted this old gent sitting outside a cafe. He was across the street, but I zoomed as best I could and even then, cropped somewhat afterward. What is he musing over? Is it a past loss, or is it perhaps that he's just waiting for someone to fetch his coffee?

Eventually, I saw another way to edit the photo. I can't make up my mind.

On a walk in the neighbourhood park, I couldn't resist shooting this old guy with the grand beard mowing his back lawn. While I like the previous two photos, I like this one even more.

In the coffee shop, I spotted two old goats having a stare-down.

Four Yards from Our Back Window on a Rainy Saturday Morning

I was wandering about the house on a rainy Saturday morning. When I looked out the back window, I thought, "Why not?" 

Consequently I photographed four yards although the first is a soccer field, or I guess football pitch would be more proper. Kids play soccer over there four nights a week in summer in any and every kind of weather. The neighbouring school kids also make some use of it during recess.

Every now and then , however, and only they can explain why but won't, the seagulls gather for a morning breakfast. I removed the screening (it is easy to do) and grabbed the photo.

That is a fun sight, but the neighbour's yard to the north is quite another sight to behold. We had high hopes for a for a more kempt view this summer when she trimmed and mowed in May, but now the yard is reverting to nature. This contravenes town bylaws, and we could report her, but we won't. It is fenced off, and we can only see it from that one window.

The other adjacent neighbour — to the south — has her own issues.  She diligently weeded her little flower garden but didn't plant flowers, and then she left the pail of weeds as an accent point. Maybe it is meant to be an art installation? At least the grass is mowed. Her front yard is mowed too, but it is because her good neighbour takes care of that — the old fella next door, whom you all know and love.

Our backyard is a little better. We and JJ replenished the mulch this year. Sue keeps it pretty well weeded, and she tops up the birdbath regularly. Meanwhile, the treebush on the left and the lilac bush in the centre are nice enough to look at. Every year, the Joe Pye plant, on the right between the yellow and blue lawn chairs, grows from nothing to almost fence height. It will bloom soon enough, and eventually, the bees will descend in droves to feast on its sweet nectar. 

The visible flower pots are all fake flowers because the backyard gets the hot sun for much i the day, and it isn't fun to spend much time labouring out there. It looks nice enough, and the real flowers are out front for the world to gaze upon. Meanwhile, we can just manage see common orange daylilies in the background by the fence and mostly hidden by the bushes. Blondi from Saskatchewan, if you're reading, that is one spot of three spots where I planted your cosmos seeds. Sadly, nothing has come up in any spot.

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

UPDATE

Amazingly, north neighbour had a man over to tend to the back weeds, just yesterday. This is a good thing, but look.

In their great wisdom, they left patches of growth in the back corners. But what ar those patches? They are . . . 

WEEDS

JUST WEEDS

They chose to leave patches of weeds as a landscaping choice. It beggars the imagination, I tells ya. Just . . . 

!!WEEDS!!

🫨😬🙀🫪

Fish and Milkweed

I know that Sue and I seem to indulge in many outings and treats, but they are mostly just coffee. Only on occasion does the treat involve a scone or perhaps a turkey-bacon-club sandwich in the car in winter. I had a hankering for a bit more than that, so we took a little drive to Generations on the Lake in Lake Park for their Friday, fish n chip special.

For some reason neither of us got a picture of the meal, but I did take my necessary photo of Sue at the table.

She thought we should take a selfie with at least some of the outdoor background. You know that I hate taking selfies, but I screwed my courage to the sticking point and fired anyway, hero that I am.

After lunch we waddled down to the lake, but there is not much of a gap through the trees and bushes by the water, so I took a photo looking back at the inn instead. The dining room is the low part of the structure at the front, which of course is really the back of the house. 

The meal necessitated a walk, but that came later after we hade been home for awhile to let the meal settle. By the pond, the milkweed was opening.

The next milkweed plant was still just in bud. I got really close for this macro. 

I noticed a few bullrushes for the first time this summer, but I think you may call them cattails.

It was one of those halcyon summer days with close to perfect weather.

Another Coffee in the Park

With the weather returning to a more moderate summer normal, we have been able to get back out on decent walks at decent times.

Thursday took us down to Main for our walk where Sue spotted bright, yellow daylilies which may be of use for an upcoming vibrant photo challenge. A good photographer will twist herself into whatever contortions are necessary.

Why not drive thru for coffee and why not take it to the park on a very nice day? And why not pose for approximately our thousandth selfie?

There was a gap opposite our bench, revealing all sorts of kids at the canoe club summer camp 1n their crafts.

I surreptitiously took various people candids, but I didn't  love most of them. I wasn't surreptitious about capturing a cyclist as he pedalled past. I don't think he exactly approved, but he was by in a flash, so there was nothing to be said.

Grabbing a drivethru coffee is a good thing, and sitting in a pretty park on a nice day is a good thing. Doing these two things simultaneously is a very fine thing, indeed.

The $343.17 Mishap

Late last week, I received an envelope from a bank we no longer deal with. I opened it on the weekend and at first thought that someone had made a $343.17 purchase on our supposedly defunct credit card. Then I saw the minus sign and understood that it was a credit.

That could only mean one thing:  that I had paid off the wrong credit card — the defunct Visa B instead of the current Visa A card. Silly me! I do these sorts of things on occasion.

We don’t even have that physical card since I shredded the last one because we don’t use it at all. Other than that card lingering on somehow, we don’t even have an account with that bank. 

It gets confusing.

I had mistakenly paid on the number of my old Visa card from Bank B that lingered in my bill paying list, but the verification snail mail came to Sue on her number. I learned that my card number is totally defunct, but the bank somehow still knew enough to credit Sue’s card number because the two cards had been joined, and Sue had been the primary cardholder.

Confused yet? Wait there is more.

We had no way to access the funds because we had no account with that bank. We just had a credit card on the books but no physical card in actual fact.

We would require a physical card, so that we could make purchases with it until we used up the $343.17. At lest that seemed like the best workaround.  

A phone call to the credit card division of the bank could not sort it out because we were calling from a new phone number than the one they last had a record of, and at time we couldn’t even for sure recall the old number enough to verify it.

We would have to go to a physical bank, get authenticated somehow, and only then call the credit card number back to get issued a new card. 

Thanks goodness, there is a physical bank in town. There wasn’t when we moved her, which is why we changed banks in the first place.

But first to find out old phone numbers. Was it our ancient number from Sarnia or our somewhat less ancient number from here?  I took a stab at our ancient Sarnia number and called Shauna to verify. She did. I was correct. (By the way, I still remember my boyhood number from 63 years ago and my friend’s number too. I wasn't quite so sure of our number from 20 years ago, but my memory did not fail completely.)

Meanwhile, what was our old number from here before we abandoned our landline, probably 8 to 10 years ago? Sue found old paperwork, and we were pretty sure that one of the two numbers (Sarnia or old number here) would be what the bank had on file. 

Phew! When he got to the bank we found that we were correct. The former landline was on file, and that got us started.

Much ID verification later, the teller worked us through authentication and set us up with the banking app on the spot and a top secret password to actually use once we logged in using Sue’s phone. We had to take the phone home to log in because Sue would require her email password to log into the app (why? we don’t understand), and she didn’t know it on the spot.

At home, she was able to complete the installation of the banking app, and anfter using the temporary password that the bank had given her, she set up a new, permanent password and so on and so forth.

Finally, she was fully authenticated and was only then able to call in to the credit card division and request a new credit card.

The new card will arrive in approximately ten days and will be a new number. We will then be able to use it to draw down the $343.17 by using it in place of the cards that we normally use.

The money was never permanently lost, but it was quite a foofaraw to get access to it.

In case you are wondering, yes my dears, I have deleted that particular credit card from my bill paying list to prevent myself from making that mistake again.

Fire and Lightning

Tuesday's excessive heat resulted in much lightning late that night. Sleep was being its elusive self yet again, so I wandered about the house munching arrowroot cookies and observing the lightning from several vantage points: my den window, front porch, bedroom window, and patio doors.

I tried a photo from the bedroom window, but the screens were a problem because the phone wanted to focus on the screening rather than the light show. I wasn't about to start removing the screens with Sue sleeping just a few feet behind me, so I took the phone to the patio door downstairs.

I didn't go out but just opened the door a tad on a hot night and took a few photos. It was sheet lightning, so it just lit up the sky generally as in the following image. Both before and after the lightning flash the sky was almost black.

The lightning will show up much better in the clip, below. The show went on and on like this for a considerable time. (You know that you can embiggen the video, right? Just click the middle icon of the three on the bottom right.)

The phone is amazing. It tells me to hold the phone steady for up to 10 seconds for night exposures, but it still keeps the image pretty sharp. I tried another app, for long exposures just to see how it would work, but it picked up unintentional camera movement because you can't hold a phone steady for 15 seconds, and its algorithm does not compensate for that. When I saw what was happening, I moved the phone even more, deliberately, and this ↓ is the fun result.

The power did go out but not for long. On our morning walk, I took a photo of our smoke-diminished sun. This happens every summer now, but I don't remember it too much in the first of our two decades here.

Meanwhile, we’ve probably all see stunning photos in our online haunts. 

Posting About Monday on Wednesday

I am posting in the present tense, but I wrote this piece on Monday, and have just updated it a bit since then. I say this in case the timeline gets confusing.

I am in my chair early in the morning, doing my morning things, such as checking your posts. My casement window is open on the perpendicular, which is as wide as it can open.

When the nights become cool enough to turn off the AC, I do open the window as far as it goes before I turn in for the night. 

When the window is open on the perpendicular like this, there are moments when it catches the sun in such a way that I am almost blinded as I do my morning things in my chair at close to a ninety-degree angle to the window.

It’s not quite blinding me this morning because there is a softening smoke in the air due to forest fires from northwestern Ontario, I think. If I were to crank the window back just a few degrees, it would not reflect like this, but I don’t think of that at night when I try to grab every cubic centimeter of cool air that I can. 

The sun is also reflecting off the computer screen. I do get some interesting light off the device.

And . . .  here I am, back after our walk (still written on Monday). We took a shady route, starting at the market and heading north to the trail bridge. But first, I snapped a photo of our echinacea.

When we reached the bridge, I zoomed in on the purple loosestrife growing down by the rocks. They return to the same spot every summer. One might think that the rushing water in other seasons would wash the seeds or roots away. Strange.

There are always dogs on the trail. Sometimes, they want to say hello. We lingered long enough for the couple to give us treats to hand out. 

Meanwhile, the man talked ot me for a long time about his photography. He seemed to know me and was asking abut my camera and software, and he was probably unimpressed that I now use the phone. I have no memory of previously meeting this man, but I know a lot about him now. :)

Sunday Walk, Mostly Flowers

Today will be blistering, climbing into the higher 30s Celsius and getting close to 100F. We shan't be venturing forth. However, Sunday morning was delightful when we walked to the park.

Wild Carrot by the Pond

Riverview from the Bench

I'll sneak in these Coneflowers: also from the park, but they were seen on a previous day.

At home, the first daylily had opened: posted especially with the Furry Gnome in mind.

I picked a few fresh flowers for the little bouquet in my room: especially for Boud.

Selfie + Purple

Selfie + Purple was Sue's photo prompt on Saturday. She dressed up with a purple scarf, and off we went to the park. I was to be her human selfie stick. She composed the photo, situated herself, and I pressed the shutter. 

Of course, she made a collage.

Here are two singles.

She has a flair, doncha thnk?

This Little Light of Mine

We have had a solar garden light out front for many summers, but when we set it up this spring, it decided that it was too tired to shine again. Because it still has some merit as a decoration, we left it up anyway. Lo and behold! More than a month later, just last week in July,we noticed it casting a minimal amount of light one evening. When, I saw a smidgen of light emanating from it for the second time on Friday night, I grabbed my phone and tripod to memorialize the event.

These photos cost me blood, for the mosquitoes were ferocious, and I was soon itching and scratching in many locations on my body.

It seemed right to get some photos of the light that is trying so hard to shine, but that is me anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. I have also tended to feel the same way about the last few vehicles that have lived fairly long lives, and I kept my Christmas poinsettia in the window until just a few days ago because it was trying so hard.

Sentimental and silly.

Big Job Done

Thursday morning at the computer: I turn to my right and spy a Tim's coffee cup — on the other side of the screening, if you please.

I was amused, for I hadn't noticed one of the roofers placing it there for safekeeping. If he had only known me and my predilection for Tim's coffee, he might have chosen differently, but I'll have you know that I did desist from nabbing it. The even funnier thing is that when I looked again it was gone. Obviously, he was a very stealthy roofer which of course is exactly what we all expect of roofers — to have ballerina-like twinkle toes. Admit it, you've always pictured roofers in their big safety books as being light on their feet and dancing on the rooftops.

While I had already been out to greet them, it was about time to check again. The ladders were up . . . 

. . . and the boys were beginning to get to work.

It took me some editing to bring out that ↑ much colour on a dull day, and I figured that I may be editing most of the day's pics in mono silhouette style. As it eventuated, I was pretty well right about that.

The boys were primarily going to be working at the back first, so we walked around the lengthy block where I got these images.

I really wanted to watch the boom truck unloading, so I made sure that I was back out front at the propitious time. I took video mostly of the loading of the pallet to the roof, and for the present, I now can't be bothered with them since they would require editing to trim to a reasonable length, so I'll just show one photo of the truck in our driveway.

I did grab a few photos of the men guiding the shingles pallet.

Then, of course, the typical thing happened. It poured, and they all went home early. I won't elaborate now, for I have done so before, but this is how my life tends to go. We'd hired the roofers almost two months ago or at least began the process then, so surely, we were doing it right. It's been hot and dry here lately, just perfect for laying shingles. But oh no, not so fast, old AC, we need to rain on your silly, little parade.

While they were up there, it poured. It wasn't just a passing shower either. Definitely not! It was the beginning of the whole rainy afternoon and a kind of continuation of my weird little life. At least no one was struck by lightning, and they did get the tar paper down on the one section that they had begun.

They returned on Friday and took all day to finish the job — about 12 hours. I was feeling a bit sorry for them, but they said that they are used to those hours. They seemed diligent and even fastidious about doing a good job. Hopefully. our somewhat exposed roof will be secure for many years. The former roof never did seem secure, and we experienced blowoffs a number of times.

Cool Morning, Hot Afternoon

It was so hot in Wednesday afternoon when I picked up JJ to drive him to work that I finally engaged the ancient car's AC which, somewhat miraculously, worked. The car thermometer read 32C which is 90F.

The day had begun much better, however. We were downtown for photos and a walk by 9am. Sue is starting to take photos for the summer view of the river scene that she has chosen for her 4 seasonal photos this year. I imagine that we'll be back for more takes before she finds suitable conditions.

We swung through the drivethru and took our coffees to a nice bench overlooking the river.

'Twas very pleasant in the cool of the morning, the moderate temperature abetted by a gentle, cooling breeze. As we sat appreciating both the coffee and the ambiance, a flotilla of geese paddled by bobbing ever so leisurely upriver. I think there were 13 in all. But then another gaggle of 19 came by, so I grabbed a short video of the strange procession.

Believe it or not, a third group swam by a few moments later, probably making it close to 50 young geese in all. 

Upon leaving the park we did our grocery shopping, and I also took Danica to her work. The whole morning had been quite mild, so I was taken aback by the extreme heat when I took Jonathan to work in the afternoon. 

Dragooning a Young Body into Service

We call on JJ for a bit of help with the garden and grounds every now and then. This week we brought him over to help spread new mulch and to cut down the overgrown easement. Sue and I had already laid a few bags of mulch, and while we could have done more, we thought it prudent to dragoon a young body.

Sue took various photos and applied her usual compositing.

Of course, I snapped a few using the lilac bush and the tree-bush as a frame.

I posed this one with the inukshuk in the front and the daylilies behind. The daylilies were about his height although they look less tall in the background.

All done.

It was nice of the boy to loan us his young body for a few hours. We might dragoon him again in the fall. 

I use dragoon in the second verbal sense although I don't really require force or violence to get him to comply. 😁

dragoon

1 of 2

noun

1

: a member of a European military unit formerly composed of heavily armed mounted troops

2

: cavalryman

dragoon

2 of 2

verb

dragooned; dragooning; dragoons

transitive verb

1

: to subjugate or persecute by harsh use of troops

2

: to force into submission or compliance especially by violent measures