i love the trees when the leaves have finally fallen. i have a smaller maple in front of my house that i think is so much more lovely without the green leaves. it's dark grey trunk exposed and so elegant in the cool grey of the winter...
this one is my neighbor's maple, it's self quite lovely in the morning sun.
but my computer conspired against me... so here are three.
three, to make up for the days i have missed.
this was my lunch on thursday.... garbanzo beans like molly says on top of sauted swiss chard... pretty good really.
i woke up and looked outside while still lying in bed and all i could see was a golden glow... so i whipped on some clothes and went outside to take some pictures... exactly what you would expect at 7:30am on a saturday morning... right?
and look! some goodies for the holiday season. i have a little show with some gals this weekend and am furiously (kind of) getting ready. these will be a few of the items that i will have. hopefully. as i mentioned before, december has kind of come up on me without me even realizing it was fall, let alone the holiday season.
the dewy wetness of a december morning...
there is a promise of more tonight.
it's snowy here in my part of the world... in a lovely sepia tone. before i 'fixed' it, it was snowy in a very orange tone and that looked strange.
some things i have learned this evening.... 1. it is best to take pictures of snow in the day time. 2. it is very hard with a semi-automatic digital camera to actually capture the snow falling without it looking like a driving rain storm. 3. i don't like fiddling with photoshop to correct color or contrast, or brightness, or hue, or saturation... i pretty much try to get photos as i want them when i take them... this fiddling might be better done if i actually knew what i was doing... i do not.
crafty items are making huge leaps of progress... but i am not done. i shall return later when i am done... until then, get your shovels, because this snow looks like it might keep falling through the night.
saturday here was gorgeous, and then yesterday? it rained like a mother, then it was sunny, then it was rainy, then it was hail(y), then rainy again.... a good day to stay inside and work on projects to sell at a couple small shows i am doing this season. this morning it was beautiful again so i took a walk to the neighborhood bookstore to get my book for book club...
i took my camera with me because, well... look. it really was too pretty not to take some pictures of my journey. taking pictures of my journey slowed me down a bit. no matter. you can see in the first picture there was even a little 'frost on the pumpkin' this morning. perfect.
i only trespassed once - it was to get this picture....
and, these are what i worked on yesterday while it rained... still lots to do, but i am making progress. will try and show some more as the week(s) progress.
happy monday!
the weatherman was right, today is one beautiful day. i enjoyed my breakfast outside, and did a little sketching for a craft, and took some pictures of the wisteria in all it's glory, and watched some birds and bugs and a butterfly, and soaked in some sun and then the loud, messy and loogie hocking contractors drove up to work on the houses behind me in the alley... end of lovely morning in the sunshine.
i managed to get the lawn mowed, it is now better looking but still pretty shabby. i am going to spend a good couple of hours in the front of the house and tend to the mess that results from ignoring it altogether. i am always amazed at how much better is looks after just a couple of hours of putzing around, you would think i would remember that... you would think my neighbors would appreciate me remembering that....
two years ago i came home with two ziploc bags full of clean fluffy dog fur as nesting material for the song birds in my neighborhood. the nasty european starlings* had outsmarted my caged suet feeder so, instead of suet, i decided filling it with dog fur would be a better way to help the birds. i filled it full, covered it - sort of - to keep out the wet, and waited. and waited. and waited.
in the mean time, i have added bird baths to the yard, additional feeders, nailed up four nest boxes and have another two sitting on the ground. all in the hopes that a couple little birds might find my yard the perfect place to raise their brood. nothing.... NOTHING.
until today.
this black-capped chickadee spent the morning pulling furiously on some seriously compacted dog fur. i spent the morning, leaning over the kitchen sink, camera against the window screen clicking as fast as i could to get a great shot of him with his bill full of fluff. he even posed on a branch looking at me with his bill full of fluff. i missed that shot, and about seventy eight others - but i got this and you will have to believe me when i tell you he made a lot of trips to and from that mess of dog fur.
while outside trying to get more photos of the chickadee, i noticed - for the first time this year - violet-green swallows flying above the house. then an anna's hummingbird feeding at the flowering red current, and afterward, picking little bits of bark and stuff to build it's own nest. down the street i could hear a northern flicker calling - advertising really - for a mate, and several house finches call as they flew overhead. and, under the daffodils, a bewick's wren was pounding the dickens out of a small grub so it could eat lunch.
it is finally, and officially spring, and as the weather gets warmer i am going to be hard pressed not to want to sit on the steps in the back and watch and wait as every bird in the neighborhood comes by to take a bath or find something to eat in my yard... i can hardly wait.
*i am not a fan - at all - of the european starling... until i saw this. it is almost enough to change my mind about them altogether. almost.
one of the birdbaths in the back garden, wednesday 5 april 2006, seattle
jonquilles ready to bloom in the garden, wednesday 5 april, 2006 seattle
old light fixture, scavenged from a kooky neighbor several years ago just before he took off for the dump. wednesday, 5 april 2006, seattle
the yard - obviously it didn't snow a great deal, but what managed to fall from the sky made it look mighty pretty around these parts.
a collaboration with the futuregirl!
plates & forks
hazel marcella