Animal Life

After strolling through the park (yesterday's post), we headed along the trail for a little way. First, I saw a redwing blackbird up in a somewhat distant tree over the river. I was using my telephoto lens on that day, so I snapped a photo. I am, for sure, not a bird photographer, but I thought that I would try.

There are houses that back onto the trail. One house feeds the birds. There were no birds when we passed, but there was a very well-fed squirrel.

I recently showed a somewhat distant photo of a turtle in the swamp. On this day, it was close to the boardwalk. A polarizer filter would have helped me to get clearer photos, but these will have to do.

On our return to the park, we saw our first goslings of the season swimming in the pond.

I found this picture very amusing: the goose poking its head over the bank.

Our LIttle Park

Most of my park photos come from two parks. In the previous post in which I was taking-in the greening of the trees, we were at Riverside park, near downtown. However, we are in our neighborhood even more. It has the weird name of Anthony Curron park, but nobody seems to know who dear Anthony was. With that name, is it any wonder that I choose to refer to it as the neighbourhood park or just our little park? (Note: I did look it up once, but I soon forgot.)

Anyway, the day after the the Riverside shoot of the greening of the trees in the previous post, we ambled over to our little park. Once again, I used my portable stool to get down the dandelion level. 

You can skip this part; it involves photographic trivia. 😊

When you have objects both near and far in a photo, either the near or far object will be out of focus. The solution was to take two shots. One snap focused on the dandelions, the other on the far trees. I then let photoshop do its magic and combine them. I have done this before with a tripod to keep the two shots exactly the same, but when you shoot freehand there is some camera movement, so, I have never tried it sans tripod before. I did move the camera and, therefore, lost some pixels, but it worked alright, I guess.

There are houses that back onto the park. Some of them have pretty gardens on the park edge. It’s a delight to walk by and enjoy the results of others’ labour.

What a lovely clump of hybrid daffodils!

A bear has made its way into the park, possibly looking for picnic baskets.

There is a big boulder in the park, and one person has built a little garden around it.

After nosing around the park, we walked along the trail, but I'll put those photos in another post.

The Leafing

 

When I saw this pic by Sue the other day, I appreciated the fresh beginnings of leaves on the trees. The grass is very green, but the trees have been pretty bare until now. Then, I remembered a little rural excursion from two years ago in which I found some nice scenes of the trees just leafing-out in that wonderful feathery way.

I thought that we should reprise that little rural excursion, but we had stops to make first, and we never took that trip.

One stop was at the museum garden where Sue was trying to complete her photo of the day. 

That light, portable and adjustable stool does come in handy from time to time.

While she did her thing, I found a few pics, including the new leaves in front of the house across the street.

We picked up coffee and a sandwich for a little lunch in the car at the park, but I will spare you the usual selfie.

There was plenty of green in the park, so we decided to walk around there, so we never got around to our rural drive. The first photo was just in front of our parked car. It was a pleasant luncheon view. Repast done, I used the stool to get close to the dandelion level and getting that wonderful tree in the background.

I turned to my right to photograph the trees on the edge of the park. Sue walked into the photo.

I ambled over to about where Sue was in that ↑ photo and took another photo looking back to that first tree. I like the composition quite a bit, but the saturation was less from that angle. However, I do like the softness.

Some trees along the riverbank were in close to full leaf. It's not what I was looking for, but I took the photo as a reference. I framed much of the scene by using the branch of the foreground tree.

However, some trees within the park were just in the right stage for me on that day. 

I am not sure if we will get on my envisioned rural excursion or if we do if the trees will be in the stage that I am looking for. In the meantime, these park photos will do just fine.

Caturday 60: Trauma and Humiliation

My mind was a thousand miles away as I sat at the computer when I was jarred to hear a noise off to the right. Lacey was in the garbage can — the black one beside her cat tree that we refer to as her podium. She had knocked it over with the opening toward the wall, and she was pretty well upside down.

She had attempted to go from the desk (by the green basket) to the podium. It's not far. She can put her front feet on the podium while her back legs are still on the desk. It isn't even a jump.

But old bodies don't work like young ones, even in cats, and down she went into the garbage can from which she couldn't seem to extricate herself.  The fact that she was pretty well upside down only served to exacerbate her difficulty.

Of course, I was quick to rescue her, but I am sure that her sense of dignity lay in tatters.

It is the way that it is going for her. She recently couldn't lift herself onto my chair, even with the footrest out. After that failure, she hasn't tried again. I hope she doesn't also give up on her podium.

In the bedroom, we've made it easier for her to get onto the bed by placing a chair by the foot of the bed. If she wishes, she can then get onto the bureau by the window from there. I often leave a treat up there for her, trying to keep her keeping on as it were.

The cat and I are pretty well in the same boat. I should really have Sue take a picture of the two of us hobbling down the stairs for our breakfasts, partners in our disabilities.

Sha Saw a Moose

Shauna had a supposedly very Canadian experience when she drove into rural parts to visit her uncle. I say, supposedly, because in actual fact, we don't see moose very often.

If memory serves, I have only seen two in my life, and neither sighting occurred in Ontario. We saw a modest size cow moose fairly close to us in Cape Breton. We also came close to ending our lives by almost colliding with a huge bull moose in our car in Banff National Park, Alberta. Phew!

But Shauna saw one while travelling on a rural highway only about two hours away. She pulled off the road and took out her ever-at-the-ready, handy-dandy phone.

She soon sought cover in the forest: the moose, not Sha.

Off she goes.

What a special sighting. We have driven that stretch quite often, and never had a sighting. My brother-in-law almost lives in the woods, but I don't think any of us has seen a moose. We did see a bear cub once, however.

A Moving Experience

Hah! No, the title does not refer to an emotional experience, but I thought it was catchy. Mind you I am at the keyboard very early after yet another short night of less than 5 hours of sleep. Darn shoulder.

Yesterday, I was playing around with moving the camera while I was depressing the shutter. It's a real technique called ICM, which is short for Intentional Camera Movement. I have no experience with this technique, but I was moved to try it. (See what I did there?)

We were checking out the garden by our little museum, or at least I was. Sue had wandered over to the labyrinth on the other side of the building to look for a subject that would suit her potd.

I was taken with this gnarl of branches on the wall. Maybe it's a clematis, but only time will tell.

Also look at the emerging peonies at the bottom.
They will be featured soon.

Having decided on my subject, I gave the camera a little upward motion and then converted to b&w. It's interesting, but I think that a straight photo would be better because it just looks blurry to me, so not good. Let's move on, shall we?

I moved my attention to the peonies below the branches, and gave the camera a little more upward movement. It yielded quite an abstract. I think I like this one.

In a nearby flower bed, a few tulips were blooming. I took a normal photo and then another where I moved the camera a little bit. I combined the two images in post and added a bit of texture. I don't know about you, but I like it.

I moved the camera more and rotated it on an angle rather than just move it up and down. I don't know  what I think about this one, but it's something.

One final photo, also of tulips but different ones than above. I made a very slight upward movement on this one and then applied a very slight bit of texture in post. The result pleases me.

I think I like the two tulips photos best, both just the result of a modest amount of camera movement. The experiment made a change from taking essentially the same photos time after time. I will probably do more ICM as I go about revisiting the usual places around town.

MRI and Feet

For a fairly long time now, I have been declaring that if I had to make a choice between having an MRI or facing death, I would probably be forced to choose that latter option. I am not exactly kidding because the thought of being encased in a narrow cylinder bothers me that much. I am not sure that I could cope, mentally.

However, it was Sue who actually had to make that choice, and despite incredible anxiety, she committed her body and mind into this device yesterday,

There is a lump on her chest, and it had been measured to be growing, so into the wee chamber went she. We didn't time it very well, but she might have been in the contraption for up to 45 minutes — lying on her stomach with her face scrunched into a pillow.

When she registered in the radiology department, she was given the option of signing up for the app that would send her the results. By that evening, yesterday, she had them. She's just fine, thank you very much. At this point in time, the lump is no more than fatty tissue. The mass was deemed unremarkable, and the lymph nodes are, apparently, unaffected. Yay team!

Getting test results back so promptly is quite something.

Of course, she couldn't neglect her potd, where your feet are, so she took feet photos as she went.

1. Wearing sandals because back spasms make her want to avoid bending to tie shoes.
2 & 4. Sue's feet with mri technicians,
3. Gowned
5. Where her feet will soon go.
6. Back home in the driveway with my feet and Sha's.

Speaking of Shauna, we are so appreciative that she drove us, because at least part of the trip was through the rush hour, highway crawl as we got into the city. Then, once we were in the vicinity of the hospital, she was familiar enough to get us directly to the door in that big complex.

She dropped us at the door and drove elsewhere to spend the next hour or two thus avoiding the hassle of finding expensive parking within the congested jumble of buildings.

We trundled back through miles of hospital corridors, passing various coffee shops. The main floor actually resembled a mall. Our town hospital is tiny and hardly a hospital at all. The one we are usually sent too on the western edge of Ottawa is quite large, or at least I thought that it was. However, this almost-inner-city hospital was on another scale, with several coffee shops and a few other shops.

Once milady was done, or once they were done with her, we followed the purple dots back to the elevator and then the red dots to the main floor and door. TG for the dots.

We alerted Shauna that we were done and walking the long main hall back to the door. She soon texted that she was waiting near the door with lights a'flashin. And she had a smile cookie for Sue. The flowers in the photo  ↓ were seen in one of the mall-like hospital shops, and the coffee was obtained from a drive-though before we got home.

Shauna dropped us off and set out in the opposite direction for her half-hour drive to work. After a wee lunch, Sue went to bed for a few hours. I am here to tell you that her long nap did not spoil her nighttime sleep. Meanwhile, I managed almost 5.5 hours within a somewhat restless and uncomfortable night with my darn rotator cuff giving me more grief than absolutely necessary.