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.
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 ElizabethIce BergBird on a fountain at one of the gardens on the Corrales Garden TourRainbow Sorbet
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.
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
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 