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!
Last week’s daily photos found some nice surprises, especially with the kittens trying their paws at film photography. Photo of the Day, Etc for the week of March 23rd — 29th includes:
I went out early in the morning and I saw my shadow, long and lanky, as the sun rose over the Sandias. And my shadow asked: “Why do you continue to put up with it — the unwanted upgrades and continuous frustrations you’ve been having with WordPress, Adobe products and other post-processing apps that have been causing you so much trouble? You have other choices you know! You don’t have to be stuck in the same routine like Bill Murry in ‘Groundhog Day’ experiencing déjà vu all over again, and again, and again…”
My shadow had a point, and I remembered that the site I host T&L Photos on had added a blog feature as an option, which wasn’t available when I set up Photo of the Day, Etc. on WP almost five years ago. I logged on to T&L Photos, checked out the blog feature, added it to the menu, made some changes to the look and feel of the site, and I have officially moved my daily blog to http://photos.tandlphotos.com.
As I thought about it there are several advantages to moving my daily blog to T&L Photos, besides getting away from the constant frustrations I’ve been having with WordPress. I no longer need to process and resize my photos for WordPress. I can upload full sized jpegs to the blog on T&L Photos, which will allow me to start making the photos available for sale. I only have to manage one site for both photos and the blog. Since T&L Photos was originally set up for both me and Laurie, long before I started blogging, she can include her sketches and paintings along with her photos.
Off Center & Not Even 