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.

Animal Daze (repost from 2011)

June 13, 2015June 12, 2015 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.

Golden Unicorn

June 11, 2015June 10, 2015 Timothy Price18 Comments

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.

The Eye of the Sun

June 10, 2015June 9, 2015 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.

Bird on a fountain at one of the gardens on the Corrales Garden Tour

Sculpture: Corrales Garden Tour (part 3)

June 9, 2015June 8, 2015 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.