We’ve had Sasha for a week now, so you can see annoying kitten photos at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/sasha-and-the-box. On this date in 2011, it was super dry and wild fires were chocking us out with smoke. There’s been many changes since 2011 — the power line in the 6th photo was taken out when we upgraded our electrical service in 2012.
June 7, 2011: I was awakened by a yellow-orange glow around 6:00 am this morning, grabbed my camera, went outside and saw a yellow ball of sun creating a yellow-orange glow in the smokey sky rising in the northeast. When I got home at 5:30 pm, the air was fairly clear. I hooked up drippers, then walked the garden to see what was blooming and if any critters were hanging around the garden.
There were a few more roses blooming, but, besides America, which has been putting out wonderful blooms under the canopy, only a few were looking good, with Christopher Marlow and What A Peach putting on their best faces.
About 7:00 pm, Laurie came in and said “you have to come out and see the sun.” The sun was just a reddish/yellow ball in the sky. I photographed it with the 70 mm macro lens, which is a pretty close to a normal view, then with a 400 mm telephoto lens. Not long after photographing the sun, the smoke and ash descended on us. After sunset, there was a strange yellow/orange glow that became more yellow just before it got dark. The color was difficult to capture, but I came close on “Smoked Dusk.”
I went out at 9:30 to check the name tags on Christopher Marlow and What a Peach and discovered the bloom on What a Peach I had photographed three and a half hours earlier had been transformed into a crumpled-up wreck by the smoke and ash. The ash looked like snow falling through the beam of my flashlight, and the air was thick with the smell of smoke.
Christopher MarlowWhat a Peach at 6:00 pm before the smoke got badSmoked sun at 7:00 pm with 70 mm lensSmoked sun at 7:00 pm with 400 mm lensDirty yellow sky at 8:15 pmWhat a Peach at 9:30 pm after being in the smoke for several hours
Today’s blog for June 6, 2015 was taken from the center at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/on-the-edge-from-the-center. June 6, 2011 fell on the Sunday of the Corrales Garden Tour. This year’s garden tour is tomorrow, June 7, 2015, so photos of the 2015 Corrales Garden Tour should coincide with Part 2 from 2011 when I repost it on June 8, 2015. Confused?
June 6, 2011: We did the Corrales Garden Tour today. Six gardens were on the tour: three residential/commercial, three solely residential. What was most interesting for me is that all six had some type of water feature, from water gurgling over stones to large ponds with water lilies, gold fish, bull frogs, turtles and koi. So tonight’s theme is life in the ponds in part 1 of the Corrales Garden Tour.
The large ponds with critters were most interesting. The first garden we visited had two large green houses and a large pond as part of their garden. The owners were wholesalers of a variety of plants. Their pond had gold fish, turtles and bull frogs along with various aquatic plants. I discovered they had the bull frogs after a butterfly landed on a plant and a large critter jumped out of the foliage to get it. That critter was a large bull frog, who proudly floated for awhile after having his butterfly breakfast, which allowed me to photograph him. One of the turtles floated along the surface for a few minutes, then it would dive to the bottom of the pond.
The last garden on the tour also had a large pond which had koi and a lot of blooming water lilies. Koi are much more interesting than gold fish and, in turn, produced much more interesting photographs.
We’re sitting out on the deck listening to Luis Miguel in concert at the Sandia Casino Amphitheater. Dolly Parton will be there on July 20th. She’s sold out, but we will no doubt be able to hear her loud and clear. Santana is scheduled in September. He’s sold out, as well.
My regular post for June 5, 2015 has photos of hummingbirds. You can see it at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/hummingbirds. This post was from June 5, 2011. Stretch, lying on the cookbook, died of renal failure in 2013. We had treated him for renal failure since 2008, so he had a good life given his condition. Mama Manx, in the 4th photo, was Stretch’s mother. She died early this year from a bout of kitty flu. We had treated her for various issues for several years as well.
June 5, 2011: I squeezed a cup of lime juice, and poured it into the blender with a cup of tequila and a cup of sugar to make frozen margaritas. I plugged in the blender and foosh, half the mixture was all over the kitchen and me. The blender had been turned on before I plugged it in, and I hadn’t noticed the switch was on, because it’s never “on” unless you turn it “on”. This is a big, 3.5 HP, industrial blender that sounds like a 747 when you turn it on, so it’s not one anyone would simply “unplug” to turn it off. It has two switches: one for the two speeds and the other for pulse. The switches are well designed so that they are not easy to “accidentally” turn on, so we’re thinking it was the cats or the ghosts that turned in on while it was unplugged. The margaritas turned out well despite coating the kitchen and myself with half the base before I got the ice in it.
After discussing the possibility of the ghosts turning it on, we turned on Coast to Coast AM and they were playing an old Art Bell show with two EVP specialists for his guests. The had recordings of ghosts that were pretty clear and understandable. Real or not, they were pretty eerie to listen to.
Laurie thinks I’m getting too good at making messes in the kitchen. Last week I experimented with using a side scraping beater in the Kitchen Aid to whip cream. All it did was get cream all over the kitchen. So I switched to the whisk beater, which does a really great job whipping cream, except it leaves un-whipped cream since it doesn’t touch the sides or bottom of the bowl.
Stretch was holding down the cookbook for use tonight. He figured if the ghosts were being ornery they might try to take off with the cookbook. I found a tiny grasshopper on a dandelion this morning, and Carefree Spirit, a shrub rose, is putting out some nice blooms. Mama Manx was lying on the table, peeking through the leaves. Finally, we have a bloom on Berries & Cream that is “not even”, giving it an interesting shape.
Carefree SpiritMama ManxBerries & Cream — Not Even!
A brown dragon fly landed high on rose cane early this morning, and let me get fairly close to it from both sides. Normally I can’t get near dragon flies, but maybe the smoke makes them lethargic like it does honey bees — we used to use smokers to sedate honey bees when we would remove the full honeycombs and replace them with new ones. While I’m only speculating on the dragonfly, the smoke is definitely making me lethargic.
America continues to turn out beautiful roses, I found a new hopper on Ballerina, and the wasps were out this afternoon.
Off Center & Not Even 