When Puck decides to get in your face, he does. Earlier he was giving me those big, liquid, pitiful kitty eyes like the kitties do in the “Puss in Boots” movie with Antonio Banderas, but when I tried to photograph Puck giving me the “Puss in Boots” eyes, all I got was a “Puck eye!” A peach colored dahlia bloomed, and I can’t resist shots of the Sandias.
This vintage GMC pick was parked at Lowe’s — I knew it would look great in B&W. Our dahlia’s are still looking good.
A little jumping spider was sitting on a blanket between me and Guildenstern on the couch. It didn’t seem to mind me shining my flashlight in its eyes to get enough light to get really close shots with my macro lens. It was also nice enough to hold very still for me. The depth of field is almost nil, but I got a clear shot of its eyes and pedipalps. Jumping spiders look very black to the naked eye, but as you can see they are quite colorful up lose and personal. It also has eyelashes, which you might not expect to see on a spider.
Fall colors are in — even the neighbor’s horse was sporting fall colors backlit by the low afternoon sun. Since I don’t have the time or energy to climb the face of the Sandias to get a closer look at the aspens putting on their yellow, I used my 600 mm lens to get a a little closer view of them by stitching seven vertical images together. Stretch has improved so much over the past couple of weeks, that we gave him a day off from waterboarding today. He was out contemplating French and “Intelligent Life” this afternoon — a jumping spider was hanging out with him. The last photo is a panorama of the Sandias using a 100 mm lens (2 vertical photos stitched together).
While working on the bathroom remodel today, I got scratched and bruised, so the by the end of the day I looked like a caveman. Laurie wanted to do a photo of me to show my scraggly look with scratches and dried blood on my cheek. The kitties come in at times with scratched up faces, but I don’t think they’ve been out fighting with bathroom cabinets. The second photo is the what the bathroom looks like after fighting with it all day. I may not look like it or feel like it, but I think I won the battle.
The leaves are turning yellow, and the last two photos are of the Zipper Spider multitasking. She is eating the wasp she had wrapped up and hanging in her web yesterday while spinning new silk to repair her web.
The Zipper Spider has been quite successful catching prey today. Laurie noticed the underside of the Zipper Spider looks a lot like the colors and patterns on the wasp the Zipper has wrapped up like a mummy. The spider had several insects fully wrapped up in silk hanging in her web, but this one was partially exposed. The second photo shows the pattern on her underside — we are speculating that the coloration of the Zipper’s belly may help her attract the wasps. The third photo shows her eating an insect that is probably a wasp that has been turned brown by the digestive effects of her venom.
On our way in this morning some of the towers on the Sandias looked like they were built in the clouds. I took the photo through the windshield at Alameda and I-25. After cropping the image, the towers ended up looking more like spires on a castle in the clouds than radio towers.
The Conservancy still has the irrigation water cut off, so I haven’t been able to irrigate one of our rose gardens that we don’t have on a drip system for a month now. While some of the plants are starting to really suffer, the roses are hanging in pretty well as you can see from the rose in the last photo. One of the nice things about roses is that once they are established, most of them are fairly drought tolerant.
The clouds put on a nice show on the way home tonight . I was trying to capture the golden glitter reflecting off the city in the photo of the Sandias, but the light looked much more glittery in person.
After attending a lecture on “The Holy Icons in Crusader Cyprus” at UNM this evening, I photographed members of the church’s chamber orchestra who were at bell choir practice — they were about a quarter of the orchestra, which just happened to be a quintet.
There never seems to be a shortage of interesting people hanging around downtown.
We drove home in a dust storm with a rainbow. The rainbow persisted most of the way home.
Off Center & Not Even 