the weather

Even the horses think it's a good day to lay around. I did manage to move some of the "horse fertilizer" yesterday during a break in the weather. It's going to make awesome soil for the garden. The chickens are already scratching through it to see if there are any tasty bits in it that they might enjoy. I bought my potatoes to plant, but we're only going to plant russets because the red potatoes were just so expensive. I also bought my sweet potato to try and get slips off of.

Also, I mentioned in a previous post about the online photography course. I found out later that it's not a current course, but the information is still online. I'm still going to post the "assignments" here just to have someplace to chronicle my progress. So, the first assignment was "Assignment 1: Take at least one abstract photo based entirely on some of the compositional rules we talked about. Subjects should not be recognizable."

Ok, in this photo I used the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean. I also used the Triangle concept and negative space. The eye is in the center third of the photo, and also centered within the center third. The sky and the bridle create the triangles. The sky is also the negative space.

A Bit of a Break

I took some time off this weekend. The hubby was going to be gone this week, so I wanted to spend some time with him before he left. Then, after he left, I went to go a visit a dear friend and distant cousin who will be 95 this year. All I can say is that I hope I'm half as sharp and spry as she is if I live that long. She lives about 3 hours away, so I spent the night. At my cousin's house, the neighborhood feeds the deer, mostly to keep them from eating all of their flowers. I had this amazing experience of being about 3 feet from about 5 or 6 deer.







My cousin lives on a lake that is absolutely incredible! Her house is on a pretty steep hill, so they use this trolley system to go down to the water.

I saw this the next morning as I was leaving. There was this fog rolling across the lake and it was so beautiful that I had to stop and take a picture.



On the way back, I stopped at an incredible state park. I only spent an hour there, but I took some great shots.





So, back to the farm. Not much happens around here this time of year. Seed catalogs have started to arrive in the mail, but, my favorite catalog is the chicken catalog. (My nickname from the kids is the Chicken Lady.) The hubs and I want to update the flock this spring. We never seem to have enough eggs to meet demand, so we're going to go with some production reds this year. I also need to start getting my potato bed ready. My pops always said that bare root roses and potatoes need to be in the ground by Valentine's Day (at least in our area). The few potatoes I planted last year did so well, the hubs and I want to plant a lot more.


This spring I also want to plant some fruit trees and pecan trees. I might buy a couple of trees, to get a head start on the fruit, but I want to plant some from seed to see if I can do it.

So, the final thing is that I've opened a site on Etsy. I was trying to think of crafts to sell, and I might do that eventually, but something that I have now is photos. So, I'm going to see how that does. The address is http://www.shutterbugs.etsy.com/ I'd really appreciate you looking at it and telling me what you think.

More Pictures from my Wanderings

It was such a grey day yesterday, that I decided to play around with the black and white setting on the camera. It was interesting how it gave ordinary things (and not so ordinary) a different perspective.

A fairy gate? I'm not sure what this is supposed to be. It wasn't there, then all of the sudden it was. It's about 1 1/2 feet tall in the middle of a field, in the middle of nowhere.

I was driving along and saw all of these birds in a field. Since we have sandhill cranes who nest around here, I decided to stop and see what kind of birds they were. As it turns out, they were pigeons, which isn't what you expect to see in an empty corn field out in the middle of no where. This actually was only about a third of the birds in the flock. It just made for an interesting photo.

Most of the farmers around here started baling hay is big huge round bales instead of the smaller square bales. It's better for the cattle farmers because they can just put the huge round bales out in the pasture with a tractor and not have to haul hay every day. I saw this stack of round bales on the side of the road and thought it would make for an interesting photo.

What I See

I was reading some blogs from people from other countries. The authors had posted pictures of things they saw everyday. My first thought was "How lucky they are to live in such an exotic place!" My next thought was "I wonder if they get tired of looking at that every day?" So, it got me thinking. I know, that's a dangerous thing! ;o)

Maybe someone from Siberia or Zimbabwe will be reading my blog and see my pictures and think "I wish I saw those exotic things every day. " So, here are some things I see everyday (or at least pretty often because I don't go out every day.)

Our State Flag

Texas Longhorns

A pump jack

A white tailed deer