Scattered Thoughts . . .

B ack in mid-August, we had a nice evening of pitching and putting in the backyard with some of the grandchildren.  This type of thing is always a great opportunity for capturing photos of the grandkids so, naturally, I had a couple of cameras and a few lenses on hand.  While they played, I kept moving around trying to capture the best angles.   Shooting photos of kids means getting down on my knees or crouching or sitting on the ground but my knees have been painful and swollen since my first bout with COVID-19 so this little informal photo shoot was a bit painful.  Even if I sit on the ground, getting down onto the ground and getting up again is painful.  Kneeling or crouching, however, will put me back on crutches again so I always avoid those two positions.  Still, I refused to resort to shooting photos of kids while looking down on them.  Kids should always be photographed down at their level.  It was beginning to get dark as the sun set behind the trees but we still had some sun

L ukey and I played on the new putting green a couple of days early last week.  We had a great time and were looking forward to spending time "Pitching and Putting" more often.  Unfortunately, the putting green took a bit of a nosedive so we haven't been using the putting green at all.  Well...  we haven't been using the putting green for golf.  I've been busy working on trying to revive the new putting green. In order to choose the right remedy, I needed to figure out what went wrong.  This was a bit of a problem because I really only had a bunch of guesses on what went wrong.  Let's list them... 1.  We used the putting green too soon before the new grass had time to mature and become hardier.   2.  Maybe my new putting green had a disease. 3.  Perhaps I didn't keep it moist enough once we started using it. 4.  Or the opposite...  perhaps I had some root rot and I had been watering it too much.   5.  Maybe the pH wasn't right for this type of grass. 6

T he additional bag of grass seed for our new putting green arrived in the mail this morning so I changed my plans and finished up preparing the putting green before lunch today.  It didn't take long to finish up that project although my spine wasn't too thrilled with this project this morning.  Walking is exceptionally painful again this evening. I loosened up the soil in the putting green first...  cleaned out a bucketful of small stones (for the third time), roots and debris...  then seeded the green with the new bag of grass seed.  I had already put down 2lbs of seed the other day but that bag only got me less than halfway across the putting green.  A 5lb bag arrived this morning which allowed me to finish the seeding job.  Since I had more than enough seed this time, I just re-seeded the entire putting green again today.   Things are starting to look good.  I put a Fescue mix down in the "rough" or "mini-pitching-fairway" adjacent to the putting green l

I've really been slacking on sharing photos from the lake. I'm even further behind in editing and sharing video but that is a whole other story. Since I have hundreds of photos from this year alone, there are always new lake photos to share. Recently, I pulled out a few interesting photos. In this first shot, this loon was way out there on the lake. The lake is almost a half mile across to the opposite shore and this loon was much closer to the other side of the lake than our side of the lake.  I was on our dock at the shore... it was early morning and the bugs were feasting on me... you can faintly see the remnants of morning fog closer to the shore across the lake. The lake was flat, calm and quiet... I steadied myself against a post like a village drunkard leaning on a lamp post... slowed my breathing, focused... then I saw this distant scene more clearly in my viewfinder.  A boat had just passed this loon and the wake created by the boat was reflecting the

...other than sharing very similar palettes. I shot each of these three photos a number of years ago. Two of them were actually shot with very old point-and-shoot cameras before I started buying used (but better quality) digital SLR cameras. I can see the flaws with these photos but I'm a perfectionist and most people probably can't see them. I thought these old photos were worth revisiting. I've never had any of these three photos printed but I think the first photo (the colorful springtime image) would make a nice print.   I shot the spring photo while out on a walk about five years ago almost to the day... it was May 6th, 2011... I can tell you it doesn't look anything like this out there this May! The lack of a normal winter and having continuous unseasonably warm weather has taken its toll, I do believe. I definitely prefer the bright, sometimes pastely colors of springtime over autumn foliage and this photo is a good example of springtime color...  Th

I'd really love to find the energy to get up early... just before sunrise... grab my photography gear, including my tripod, and head out to shoot some early morning landscapes of the new spring growth... preferably on a morning with a dewy, misty, foggy, moody atmosphere as the sun begins to appear. Unfortunately, the weather has been rather lousy the past few days so I have no desire to get up early just to be frustrated and disappointed by attempting to shoot photos in the rain, with poor light, and generally lousy conditions. My health has been rather lousy the past few days as well and, when this happens, very little gets accomplished in my little world. I have, however, managed to capture a few photos of our spring season in the past few days. New leaves emerging from buds Now that the springtime rains have started, I don't think I'll be getting out there with my photography gear again until after most of the blooming has occurred. In the meantime, I have managed