Monochrome roses http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/10/roses-in-b-w
Tag: Roses
Tiny Jumper
Tiny jumping spider exporing a rose http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/10/tiny-jumper
The Week: June 8th — 14th
Click here —> T and L Photos Blog to see the photos and commentary for the week of June 8th — 14th 2015 at a glance.
I have been reposting old blogs from the same date in 2011 every night for the past week with a link to the current photos and commentary posted that day on my T and L Photos Blog (which is really the current Photo of the Day, Etc.); however, since I’m paid up on my WP account until the end of November, I was maintaining the WP site until the end of November 2015. So far I think the reposts from 2011 are just confusing people who think I’m back posting new photos and commentary on WordPress. Now I’m trying to decide whether I should go ahead and transfer my photoofthedayetc domain to T and L Photos, shut down the WP blog, put it out of it’s misery, and end the confusion, or wait until November. Any thoughts (staying with WordPress is not an option)?
June 8th: T-Rex bouquet in hand — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/2015-corrales-garden-tour
June 9th: Sunbrella — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/the-first-garden
June 10th: Keep on building — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/continuing-construction
June 11th: Bike in a Bunker — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/bike-in-a-bunker
June 12th: Sasha does wrecking ball — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/on-the-ball
June 13th: Peace in the garden — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/peace-and-panoramas
June 14th: Cute town cats — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/new-cats-in-town
Chile Galaxy
The post for today can be found at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/on-the-ball. Back in 2011, we cooked up our own chile to spray on the roses to discourage porcupine from eating our roses. We have since found an insanely hot chile sauce that we mix up with water and spray on the roses. The chile sauce is so insanely hot that I simply dipped the spoon that we used to measure the chile into a bowl of soup. There was only a slight residue of the chile on the spoon, and it spiced up my soup enough to make me sweat.
Originally posted June 12, 2011: vFrom a chile galaxy loaded with fresh garlic, then strained through a cheesecloth, we created a chile spray to discourage the porcupine from breaking canes, and eating the leaves and buds off the new growth on the rose bushes. We sprayed the mixture on all of our rose bushes thinking it will give them a hot, nasty taste that porcupines won’t like. If it turns out that Corraleño porcupines like spicy roses, then we are in trouble.
The rose floating in the purple cup is Singin’ in the Rain. While cutting the dead canes out of the rose bushes, Laurie got this really nice bloom and floated it in a cup. Puck was out sneakin’ around in a patch of long grass early this morning, when I got this distant shot of him eyeing something. Pink Iceberg is really putting on the blooms now, and I found a lady bug larva working on What a Peach.
Golden Unicorn
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
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.
Smoke From A Distant Fire
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.
Kitty on a Cookbook
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.
Dragonfly
Post from June 4, 2011. My post for June 4, 2015 is at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/got-ya-covered-zagster if you care to see it.
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.
The Week: May 25th — 31st
Click here —> Photo of the Day, Etc to see the week of May 25th — 31st at a glance.
May 25th: Critter closeups — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/macro-monday
May 26th: Dr Huey on Parade — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/the-2nd-annual-corrales-rose-society-dr-huey-tour
May 27th: All pink — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/pink-pink-pink
May 28th: Another one bites… — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/another-one-biting-in-the-dust
May 29th: Construction progress — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/iron-grid
May 30th: Two mile high club — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/thirty-three-years
May 31st: Obligatory annoying cat photos — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/5/cat-and-the-hat
Off Center & Not Even 