Tonight

Dear reader, if there are any of you left. I hope to come back to this blog with something more substantial. But here is tonight's candle flame. A gift from my son, who knew we needed to signal that we had candy. And a good time was had by all.

After the Frost

The tomato plants crumpled into brown papery bits after a couple of hard frosts. And thus, this afternoon, I cold look out the kitchen window and catch the sunglow on these nightshade berries .
I ran right out with my trusty Lumix. In this shot you can clearly see the tripartite leaves of this non-native, but quite pretty plant. Here it grows as a vine.

Just a peek at Zion National Park

My brother took me here after the reunion.
We spent all day and I loved every minute!

Lavender Scent in Summer Air

My brother and I spent the late afternoon with our excellent second cousin, Randy, discussing our relatives and the upcoming Redd reunion in New Harmony, Utah. It was a lovely, wide-ranging conversation over families, Mormon history, art and other topics. We looked at many of his scanned photos of our ancestors and collateral relatives. On the way home, my brother thought to visit a Salt Lake City park on the site of the First Encampment the emigrants under Brigham Young made after they entered Salt Lake Valley. Our great-great-grandfather was a member of this group. We found that the names of these people were carved on stones through the First Encampment Park (link). Lavender was blooming near the plaque which explained this, and filled the air with heavy scent when we pushed it aside. It was a beautiful summer evening which had just turned dark. My brother decided to look for the name of  Solomon Chamberlain; (link) I didn't see how we could find it in the dark, but we had only located a handful of engraved rocks before we found his. So here it is, a flash picture of a rock. I was very happy to see it.

Albrecht Durer pencils the lower tier of colors

This is the lower tier of the 60 color set I blogged about yesterday. I am particularly pleased by the selection of greens and off-greens.

Perfect afternoon in the shade

This afternoon on the shady terrace was perfect for making color charts with a new set of 60 Albrecht Durer Watercolour Pencils
I got from Amazon. It was interesting to see how tricky it was to make matching squares to fill with each color, pressing hard and stroking the paper softly with each color. This is the top of the set--I'll put up the lower tier tomorrow. I was delighted with the strength of the colored leads and also the soft buttery feel of the application of colors. Only one color and the black was a little crumbly. I suppose these slight differences in handling are due to the pigments. I haven't tried wetting them yet, but I have seen lots of demonstrations of their use by Cathy/Kate Johnson who is a big fan. Today I read a book about doing something creative every day for a year. To judge by my neglect of my blog, might not be for me. But tempting, nonetheless.

The Mouse Bride

I call this the Mouse Bride and I think it is quite wonderfully weird! It is in the first lap of scanning a couple of boxes of family slides from the 1950s that have been in storage. Almost everybody is passing through rooms telling me that this search through the past isn't worth it. Still, I think this is a find. I had already left home, and my little sister is dressing for Halloween, I imagine. Isn't she sweet?

ADDENDUM: November 2015. I am reliably informed that Marjoty
was playing the lead as a Frog Princess. It still looks like a mouse costume to me.  jhh

By the time I got to Phoenix . . . .

my short visit was almosst over. Left to right, myself, my brother Dave, my cousin Susan. my cousin "little" Marita, my cousin's wife, Neva and my cousin Dwayne. Here we are (it is 110 degrees outside) eating delicious Chicago style pizza. Dave, Susan and I came to Phoenix to visit my Aunt Louise after she broke her hip. It was Susan's idea to celebrate her retirement after 22 years of teaching. We were housed and royally entertained by our Mesa cousins, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30-50 years! You should have seen Aunt Louise's face light up when we came into the room! We had a lovely visit and many memories were shared.

My brother came for a visit . .

And I took him to see the Mackinaw Bridge on this gorgeous blue day! This was taken below newly renovated lighthouse at McGulpin point.

The Yellow Trout Lily Proof

I think it really is SPRING! My brother, Dave came for a visit and today we went for a walk in the woods. I saw many of these mottled leaves and finally found a bloom. Hello, Sweet Baby!

Such good suet

These red breasted nuthatches are quite feisty at the feeder and often chase away the chickadees.

Sparrow

Several of these have been hanging around near the feeders with a pack of slaty juncos--the kind with cute little pink bills. I'm pretty much in love with the subtle colors and the feather pattern.

Yellow Roses of Memory

Trying to find another photo in my digital archives, I found this one and began playing with it using Nik filters in an old copy of Photoshop on my old laptop. I made several new versions, and I'm not really sure about this one, but I loved what happened when I brought up the light. I have lost my Silver Efex Pro software and was somewhat consoled by finding I can still use this. I wish I had mastered putting these filters into the new versions of Photoshop, but I never learn what I should and then it is time to learn something else. Here is a bouquet from the past, altered. Which is also a characteristic of the Memory Thread. Good night.

Morning light

P1040477, a photo by jhhymas on Flickr.

I took a lot of these this morning, but tonight they seem a little dark. It was a beautiful dawn!

Late winter browse in sepia

Late winter browse P1120244, a photo by jhhymas on Flickr.

I guess what I like most about this is the conga-line aspect. And that all three have lifted the left rear leg. I took this through the window, because if I go out on the porch, they all run away.

Rainbow at Sunset Tonight

I've been thinking a lot about blogs and what they are for, or what they might be for. . . I cannot say I have reached any conclusions, but I can tell you that just as the sun was saying goodnight, there was a rainbow! I want to write about the things I am reading this summer--because I have been doing an immense amount of reading. I am getting used books from Amazon and electronic books and classics for the Kindle. Never before have I been reading so many different books at the same time--but it isn't too hard to switch and keep track. I'm surprised. And the resonance, humming, or clustering of fact and thought can be wonderful. So maybe I will write about it after all. I guess I should write a thank you letter to Jeff Bezos. After having been a librarian all my life. . .

The beauty of sunset

P1120311, a photo by jhhymas on Flickr.

This is the third time I've tried tonight--there seems to be a problem with the Picasa-Blogger interface. I have been thinking a lot about blogging and what it is for and if I should start a new blog that is "for" something else, my year of reading. Since coming here, I have relied on Amazon Kindle and the used books from Amazon. I have pursued all sorts of things I want to write about on blog that are neither poetry nor photography. We'll see if this one uploads. Fingers crossed. To be continued. . .

A moment of light before the sun is gone

Maybe five minutes of this kind of light at the end of an extremely windy day! This is really beautiful and you can see it better by clicking on it for a larger image. I figured out how to upload these photos from Picasa into this template. I have to set it from the left edge. I used to center them, but it doesn't work with photos from this camera.

G. Randall Goss talks about photography

This is the wonderful photographer who chose a picture of mine to be included in the current year's exhibit at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. He has an exhibit, too! You can see two of his photos behind him. This morning he gave an informal talk at the Center; it was wonderful, I wouldn't have missed it for anything!

Last night at sunset

You can just make out our house tucked into the wood's edge.

Burt lake special

Well, the placement of the last post is weird! But here's another duck. Good night.

Another glorious way to fritter away time

I have just spent two and a half hours using the Google Photo thing and editing photos with Piknik from there. I was planning never to use Google photos, being very satisfied with Flickr. But last summer I uploaded several sets of photos by mistake and tonight I found them and began playing with a few. By making huge alterations in exposure and contrast, I found all sorts of lurking beauties, like the lovely subtle colors in this tranquil photo of ducks at rest in the twilight on Burt Lake. I am very happy and will spend some more time here, even though I keep saying I have enough hobbies already.

His yellow eye

This is the male; you can tell by his red moustache. I left both the similiar posts below to remind myself of the vagaries of computing. After I did the first one, I got a message that I could not blog because Java was not enabled on my browser. So I spent a while trying to "enable" it but couldn't figure out how. So I did it over from Flickr--I would like to do it always from Flickr because it connects to the other photos related to the post, but I don't like the smaller size photo I get that way.
I have had endless fun watching these birds--it is making the wintertime quite a delight!

Summer's Lease Hath All Too Short a Date

It will come again. There are so many wonderful blogs that another whine about the cold weather won't be missed, but this just popped up while I was looking for something else in Picasa. The Blues and the Greens, incredible!

SUET

Luckily, my feed store had a special on suet cakes!

Why I left that standing dead tree behnd the house . ..

And my wish came true. I have to photograph through two panes of glass, but he comes almost every morning between 9:30 and 10:30 and several times there have been two of them! Today was sunny and some of the pictures were better. Happiness!

He's Back!

Right now in my back yard. I tried to get a video, but don't know yet if it worked.
Very cool, no???

Hopper Family Christmas circa1947 Round Trim

Hopper Family Christmas circa1947
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

My mother had the unfortunate habit of trimming photos like this. Maybe somewhere the whole photo or negative exists, maybe not. This is what I have of the Christmas when I wore such dark red lipstick and held David on my lap at lower left. Dig the Santa mask, and notice how Richard (on Santa's lap) is always so sure of himself and self-directed. We were still living in Scotia, New York at this time.