Month: June 2015

René Our Eclectus Parrot

Timothy Price16 Comments

Tristan is trying to raise money to help pay for René’s treatments at http://www.gofundme.com/x9suzg. tandrene

Tristan with René our Eclectus Parrot.

Eclectus Parrots are very susceptible to hepatitis and poor René has had a bout with hepatitis.  If you can contribute, René and Tristan would appreciate it very much.

René has made lots of appearances on POTDE over the past few years. You can see old posts on René, the Eclectus Parrot formerly known as Joey, at in POTDE archives:

When we first got René: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/joeys-big-adventure/

René gets his new name: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/parrot-formerly-known-as-joey/

René eating a chip: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/rene-discovers-a-chip/

Japanese style: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/japanese-style/

René helping with ghetto scanning: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/bird-help/

René in the jungle: https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/bungle-in-the-jungle-2/

Search for “René” in the search field and you will find even more posts with photos of him.

The Week: June 8th — 14th

Timothy Price10 Comments

Click here —> T and L Photos Blog to see the photos and commentary for the week of June 8th — 14th 2015 at a glance.

I have been reposting old blogs from the same date in 2011 every night for the past week with a link to the current photos and commentary posted that day on my T and L Photos Blog (which is really the current Photo of the Day, Etc.); however, since I’m paid up on my WP account until the end of November, I was maintaining the WP site until the end of November 2015. So far I think the reposts from 2011 are just confusing people who think I’m back posting new photos and commentary on WordPress.  Now I’m trying to decide whether I should go ahead and transfer my photoofthedayetc domain to T and L Photos, shut down the WP blog, put it out of it’s misery, and end the confusion, or wait until November. Any thoughts (staying with WordPress is not an option)?

June 8th: T-Rex bouquet in hand —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/2015-corrales-garden-tour

June 9th: Sunbrella —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/the-first-garden

June 10th: Keep on building —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/continuing-construction

June 11th: Bike in a Bunker —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/bike-in-a-bunker

June 12th: Sasha does wrecking ball —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/on-the-ball

June 13th: Peace in the garden —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/peace-and-panoramas

June 14th: Cute town cats —  http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/new-cats-in-town

Smoke and Ice (repost from 2011)

Timothy Price14 Comments

Today’s post of new cats is at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/new-cats-in-town. On this date back in 2011 it was dry with smoke from fires darkening the skies and blotting out the sun. Today we got 1/3 of an inch of rain.

Originally posted June 14, 2011: The smoke was blowing in on my way home tonight and the sky looked interesting at the light at Alameda and 2nd Street, so I pulled off at the little ice house and got a photo of the cloudy, smoky sky with ice ads in the foreground. Laurie found a porcupine quill in Puck’s fur tonight. I’ll photograph it tomorrow, but this porcupine might end up being a problem. I thought the cats had enough sense not to mess with them, but maybe not. Their instinct to go after rodents, even though the rodents are three times larger and very prickly, might just be too much for their kitty sense. At least Puck’s kitty sense, apparently. He tries to be a tough cat, but messing with porcupines is a bit much. Then there are flies with major attitude, like the one pictured tonight. This fly was ready to take on the camera lens, or maybe its own reflection in the filter was getting it riled up, but it was ready to fight one way or the other.

Gladiolus

Animal Daze (repost from 2011)

Timothy Price13 Comments

Today’s blog is Peace and Panoramas at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/peace-and-panoramas. Back in 2011, I got a photo of the porcupine and a baby raccoon in the wee hours of the morning, and a daddy longlegs in my coffee filter.

Originally posted June 13, 2011: I got up at 4:30 am and went outside to play with my porcupine. I found it waddling down the road toward the ditch, but it didn’t want to play. It did stop for moment, gave me menacing look, giving me a chance to photograph it in the beam of my flashlight, before in slipped under a trailer on the other end of the property.  I continued out to the ditch, screwed down the main gate to back up the water, then watched the bright eyes of a raccoon cross the ditch as I walked back into the yard.

Just after daybreak, I was building up the borders, when I heard a raccoon screeching and chirping by the trailer the porcupine crawled under earlier. I walked down to investigate, and found a baby coon stranded in the junk in front of the trailer, and the mama coon on the roof growling commands to it. The baby wasn’t really stranded, just confused in among all the junk.

I tried to coax it to come toward me, which would get it out of its quandary, but every time it started coming toward me, mama would growl, and the baby would stop. It was confused between me and its mama, but was finally a good kid, listened to it’s mama, and took refuge in an old milk crate. The baby was whimpering and crying so much the whole time we were talking to it, I was afraid it had tangled with the porcupine — I got close enough to it to see it didn’t have any quills, making mama throw a growling fit. It was just wet and muddy from following its mama around in the irrigation water.

After I shut down the water, I came into make coffee, and discovered a daddy long legs in my coffee filter — I had to photograph it, of course, before I coaxed it out of the filter, before I filled it with freshly ground coffee beans.

A humming bird was dive-bombing something, I couldn’t tell what, but then it took a long rest before it resumed  its attack, allowing me to get a fairly decent view of it with a telephoto lens. I couple of bees were so involved in working a yellow daisy that my camera didn’t phase them at all.

Chile Galaxy

Timothy Price24 Comments

The post for today can be found at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/on-the-ball. Back in 2011, we cooked up our own chile to spray on the roses to discourage porcupine from eating our roses. We have since found an insanely hot chile sauce that we mix up with water and spray on the roses. The chile sauce is so insanely hot that I simply dipped the spoon that we used to measure the chile into a bowl of soup. There was only a slight residue of the chile on the spoon, and it spiced up my soup enough to make me sweat.

Originally posted June 12, 2011: vFrom a chile galaxy loaded with fresh garlic, then strained through a cheesecloth, we created a chile spray to discourage the porcupine from breaking canes, and eating the leaves and buds off the new growth on the rose bushes. We sprayed the mixture on all of our rose bushes thinking it will give them a hot, nasty taste that porcupines won’t like. If it turns out that Corraleño porcupines like spicy roses, then we are in trouble.

The rose floating in the purple cup is Singin’ in the Rain. While cutting the dead canes out of the rose bushes, Laurie got this really nice bloom and floated it in a cup. Puck was out sneakin’ around in a patch of long grass early this morning, when I got this distant shot of him eyeing something. Pink Iceberg is really putting on the blooms now, and I found a lady bug larva working on What a Peach.

Singin’ In The Rain
Puck In The Grass
Pink Iceberg
Lady Bug Larvae

Golden Unicorn

Timothy Price18 Comments
Golden Unicorn

My post for today is of an old bike in a bunker at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/bike-in-a-bunker. The kitty in the fourth photo is Puck. He disappeared in the summer of 2013.

Originally posted June 11, 2011: Golden Unicorn was in good form tonight. We are finally getting more decent blooms on the roses. The Chestnut Rose’s bud is very interesting with all it’s little spikes. I got a new dragonfly on Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick. The cotton under the trees behind the rake looks a lot like snow in the low sun. I did some more tightly cropped photos that made the cotton look even more like snow, but having the rake in the foreground was much more interesting.

Chestnut Rose Bud

The Eye of the Sun

Timothy Price23 Comments

You can see my wordless Wednesday post for 06/10/2105 at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/continuing-construction. A lot has changed in 4 years. We’ve gone from super dry with forest fires on this date in 2011 to above average snowfall and rainfall for the first 6 months of 2015. I also no longer have any Olympus digital cameras or lenses (I’m down to only two digital DSLR cameras and lenses), and I have gone from zero film cameras in 2011 to three 4X5 inch view cameras, two 6X7 medium format cameras, one 35mm film camera and a complete darkroom in 2015.

Originally posted on June 10, 2011: I got a new lens — an Olympus 80mm to 300mm zoom lens. It’s not fast 1:4-5.6, but it’s very light and compact. Since it was on special for under $100, I couldn’t pass it up. All the photos tonight, except for the bird, were done with the new lens. Since the smoke wasn’t as bad tonight, I got a photo of a yellow ball of sun behind a dandelion. There was enough smoke to get a clean edge on the sun, but the smoke wasn’t thick enough to turn the sun hot pink like that past few evenings. This morning I got an orange sun rising behind Iceberg. Queen Elizabeth looked great tonight despite the fact that many of her leaves were dirty and wilted from the smoke and ash. Rainbow Sorbet was in fine form for the new lens tonight. A lot more roses are blooming, and our garden is starting to actually look like a garden instead of a post -apocalyptic set for a Rose Warrior movie.

Queen Elizabeth
Ice Berg
Bird on a fountain at one of the gardens on the Corrales Garden Tour
Rainbow Sorbet

Sculpture: Corrales Garden Tour (part 3)

Timothy Price14 Comments

You can see photos of the first garden we visited on the 2015 Corrales Garden Tour at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/the-first-garden. Remember that this is a blog I originally posted on this same date 4 years ago. I’ve been on an annual schedule for follow up visits to the oncologist for 2 years now.

Originally posted June 9, 2011: When I left the office at 6:00 pm, I could see the smoke rolling in from the west. The last photo in the series tonight is a panorama of the smoke in the sky from the parking lot behind the office. On my way home, the Sandias were clear to the east, as the smoke advanced from the west. I stopped by the grocery store about 6:30 pm, and when I came out a 7:15, I could not see the mountains and the sun was complete obliterated.  Laurie said she saw the sun go through its yellow-orange to dark hot pink shift before it faded to nothing.

I didn’t hear from the doctor today, so I assuming that the radiologist hadn’t looked at the scan or that he determined that it wouldn’t be easy to biopsy either node. The doctor didn’t say she would call either way. I think it was only if they were going to schedule a biopsy; but she could call tomorrow.

The first six photos show sculptures from each of the gardens we toured on Sunday.

Flowers: Corrales Garden Tour (part 2)

Timothy Price16 Comments

Photos from the 2015 Corrales Garden Tour can be seen at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/2015-corrales-garden-tour. Interesting that the post for the 2015 garden tour coincides with part 2 of the Corrales Garden Tour in 2011.

Originally posted on June 8, 2011: The results of my PET scan last Tuesday are that, while most everything is normal, a couple of lymph nodes showed FDG activity. One had a standard uptake value (SUV)of 4.2, while the other was between 3.4-3.8. Anything over 3 shows excessive metabolic activity and is considered suspicious — however, the SUV is not necessarily an indication of cancer since an infection or inflammation will show increased metabolic activity.

My doctor is having a radiologist take a closer look at the PET scan to see if they can easily biopsy one of the active lymph nodes. She scheduled another PET scan in 8 weeks. If there had been no FDG activity, the next PET scan would have been scheduled in six months.

Our general feeling is that the FDG activity in the two lymph nodes is not a relapse, as a relapse normally shows FDG activity throughout the lymph system. However, since my lymphoma was very aggressive, we have to look at all suspicious activity closely; if it turns out there is indication of a relapse then we can treat it immediately.

The photos tonight are flowers from each of the gardens we visited on the Corrales Garden Tour on Sunday.