Danica at the Bridge Street Bazaar

Yesterday was sunny and warm, and Carleton Place celebrated Bridge Street Bazaar. It's an odd sort of event, where about a hundred vendors set up their stalls on our main street, traffic is halted, and people stroll to and fro and up and down. It's really pretty pointless, but it's something to do.

Earlier, Danica had secretly phoned us and invited us to supper, with the parents being totally unaware. Anyway, from the conversation, it was decided that we would would meet up at the bazaar.

When we connected, she was already having her face painted. I think she was emulating a butterfly in this photo. ↓

JJ also had his face painted. ↓ Scary, eh?

Danica is a wanderer, and Sue and I were soon following and keeping track of her. JJ stayed with the parents, so we didn't see much of him for the duration.

However, Danica posed with someone who appeared to be Cinderella.

Eventually, we ended up at the Roy Brown Museum, which is in one of the original log cabins of the town. A few years ago, the cabin was relocated to Bridge Street, refurbished inside, and turned into a modest museum to Roy Brown, the local WWI pilot who, allegedly, shot down the Red Baron. When I say alleged, I should point out that he was given official credit, but that there is a bit of argument as to who really shot down the Baron.

Anyway, Danica found a retro toy and was quite taken with it. She could make a little replica of the plane fly around and around in a circle. Our flitter stayed playing with it for a long time. It surprises me when she hunkers down to one thing for so long.

Shortly after convincing her to leave Roy Brown's flying machine, she became quite taken with a few young girls who were performing on the sidewalk. Our flitter sat and sat and was very reluctant to be pulled away.

However, a bonus was in the offing. She met and had a little conversation with the mayor, Wendy Leblanc.

Be careful, mayor, she could grow up to run against you.

Fun at the Mill

It's a rainy, cold day in a rainy, cold week, and Johnny and Susie are pretty well housebound, so I might as well post a blog. This one goes back to our previous session with the kids, with our next one to occur next week.

One day, we took the kids to the mill. It's only about 20 minutes away, and we usually hit this place once or twice per summer. We have a picnic lunch, and then they play on the equipment for awhile.

The real fun is walking down to the river. We remembered their nets but no buckets in which to place their captures. This wasn't too big of a problem this time since their captures were minimum.

They were prim and proper, keeping pretty dry in the bank.

Of course, they were soon getting their feet wet.

And then they got braver.

And braver.

All in all, they had a splashing good time.

Daylilies in the Garden

Toward the end of July, our front garden is about at its best. Here it is as seen from my den window on the upper floor.

It's plain to see that the Echinacea (pink, bottom right) is in full vigour as well as the daylilies (hemerocallis) toward the middle left. The Shasta Daisies toward the top left are now fading quickly although they still look okay in this faraway shot. However, the Rudbeckia/Coneflowers (yellow behind the pink lilies in the left foreground) are just beginning to show, so they will help compensate for the disappearing daisies.

I have three daylily cultivars, below. In processing, I chose to emphasize their detail and texture and not their softness.

Sabra Salina

Allison's Wedding

Bathsheba

As I understand the Hemerocallis is a native plant, so it seems to do well in my garden, which is fortunate because being sited along the driveway is certainly not ideal, nor is the fact that the rock is very close to the surface.

Swimming Lessons 2014

Well now, somebody finally got around to put together a video montage from the kids' swimming lessons. This is the third summer that I have done this, but it took me two weeks of holidays to get around to it.

I despaired of adding music this time because I couldn't find any site to give me free music. But once the video was uploaded, I saw that I could do it right in YouTube. Sweet.



To jog family members' memories, I will embed the previous years videos below. I see that I was more ambitious last year and did a separate video for each kid. I also had some a title frame. I am definitely slipping.





And from 2012 ...

Cute Signs

I see that it has been a week since I posted and just about as long since I read any posts. Oh well.

I was fiddling with this sign photo ↓ last night night. I took it last February but never posted it, either here or on Flickr. So what I did was to add one of my photos to it. The scene and the colours are from another of my photos to kind of pizazz up the original.

This ↑ came from the Country Depot shop up near Almonte. They always have an abundance of cute signs, and if I have my camera, I cannot usually resist snapping a few, and here are some ↓ from our last visit in the past week. These are just straight shots with no compositing.

Speaking of waking up to smell the coffee, I woke up too darn early this morning, like around 3:30. I finally gave up any attempt to get back to sleep around 5AM.

I've had one coffee already. Maybe with another, I can summon the energy to check out your blogs.

Miscellaneous Photos

My goodness, our first kid-less week is coming to an end. We've just been puttering around a little. I've done a little outside work, read a novel, and taken a few photos. We have two more weeks  of down time before we are on deck again; perhaps we will get a little more accomplished.

This first photo ↓ was actually taken when we were still with the kids last week. It's of the Old Town Hall in Almonte. It's a fine building, and decided just to shoot a bit of it on that day.

↑ Sue and I took a Tims Maple Biscuit breakfast sandwich to the park, and I saw these pretty flowers blooming by the bank. I went back in the evening with my camera and took this photo.

As I was leaving the park, I passed the eastern edge, which is more of a beach than a park and spied a nice sunset developing, so I walked over to near the shore and took this photo. ↓  It's difficult to get good sightlines for photos around here. This is about as good as it gets, it seems.

The next evening, I could see another nice sunset developing, so I looked on Google Earth for a local spot. This photo ↓ was about the best I could come up with after searching. It's a spot just outside of town. Must. Keep. Trying.

Sue has been shifting her photography to her iPod (sorry we're behind the times when in comes to cellphonography), so I will try to make it a point to carry her point-and-shoot around. My thought is to experiment Snapseed as my processor for these images rather than my usual workflow in Lightroom etc. I will have to use the computer version, which is accessible through Google+ but only on the Chrome browser. In fact, I am linking it here from G+ rather than uploading from my computer.

It's a well photographed barn in the Stittsville area of west Ottawa. ↑ It's a remnant on a strip that is becoming commercial, and it will soon be gone. I played with various Snapseed filters. Interestingly, Google/Snapseed keeps a copy of your original, and you can also change your mind and re-edit the edited version. For example, I could go back and remove or change the border on this photo.

I don't know whether I will keep on with Sue's old camera or whether I will keep using Snapseed, but it's something to try for now.

Swimming Lessons 2014

The kids did their third year in swimming lessons this summer. We generally care for them in the first two weeks of July and request that swimming lessons are a part of our gig. They have both made significant progress since the first lessons.

Both kids with their classes and teachers ↑ . I rather doubt that the kids were quite getting the crawl that the teacher was explaining so sincerely to JJ's class. There's a time when things click, and this was likely not it.

They both received lots of help and attention, however. ↓

Meanwhile, grandma chose to watch from the doorway. ↓ The pool area is hot and muggy, and grandma does not do heat well these days. But she kept a very close eye on the munchkins from her vantage.

Speaking of things not clicking yet, at a more advanced stage, Danica was hard-pressed to keep up as her teacher requested many lengths each day. She hasn't quite mastered the art of breathing on her front, so she has to stop and catch her breath every few strokes. I've got to hand it to the kids though; she hangs in and perseveres.

What with Amma and Buppa's Excellent Summer Camp, Celtfest and swimming lessons, I have been busy catching up with photos lately, but videos are on my todo list.