It's not a Photo this week ...

(c)2007 Susan D. Berg All Rights Reserved (but ...
seriously, who'd want to steal THAT?)

A "Mute Monday"

And you thought summer was bad where you are ...

Over at author, Angela Hunt's, blog -- there is this post about how hot it gets in Florida. A "way cool" (oops, sorry about that bad pun) laugh:

http://alifeinpages.blogspot.com/2007/08/its-hot-how-hot-well.html

A Late Entry to Wordless Wednesday because I forgot, fell asleep and thought I didn't have anything as good as last week ... but really this is better

Origami to WOW You!

PAINTED THREADS is listed on the Blogs of Note list at the Blogger Dashboard. WOW! You really need to check out this blog, and especially this post about an origami show that her son's work is part of.

Painted Threads: Ty's Big Night- The Origami Opening

My European City:

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam.Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

href=http://www.blogthings.com/whateuropeancitydoyoubelonginquiz/
What European City Do You Belong In?

Wordless Wednesday

I thought I was shooting a Lily Bud -- I got more ...

Haven't added to flickr lately

It's kind of a bummer, really.

I spent an afternoon and probably into the night going through the recent downloads from my camera and my husband's. I crop, rotate, etc. to get the shots ready to upload to the flickr albums.

Notice how blotchy the shots of the dragonfly are down a couple posts ago? Well, ijit here forgot I had been using the graphics program to build a small animated movie. I forgot I had changed the save compression to deliberately degrade the image resolution while working on the animation. And I saved those hours of work on the photos at a 61% quality instead of the 100% quality .jpg setting.

Now I need to go back, delete all the edited shots, retrieve the originals and do all the editing all over again. :-b

So ... when I get up the energy to go back through all those photos, I will upload a brand new set of photos to flickr. More herons. More sandhill cranes. More hummingbirds. New bitterns and tricolored herons. Lots of sunflowers and lilies. And the dragonflies.

In the meantime, enjoy a respite here or one of my other blogs for a spell.

Why the 4-Way Flashers Were On

Notes on "Scene at the Pond"

I had to admit to my husband that -- well, I'm not actually surprised, but -- I am pleaseantly pleased with something that happened this week.

I was heading home from the dentist. He finally put in the final bridgework and took out the awful temporary bridgework that had kept my gums sore and raw for five or six weeks. And it seemed like a good idea to take a different route home than I would usually take. I'm not sure which is the quicker route. Probably the usual route because the route I took offers too many opportunities to observe the Remnants of Nature in Our Midst.

I do live in farm country. Quickly, though, the fields are waking up one fine sunrise to find a "for sale" sign dangling out by the road. The corn, hay or soybeans groan and the ground just wants to crack up and crawl away at the thought of being turned into one more housing plan or gotta-look-like-a-golf-course lawn.

Knowing I would be driving very slowly past the little ponds and marshy areas, looking for turtles and heron, for trumpeter swans floating in the ponds, for sandhill cranes in the fields, and tricolor herons or bitterns in the trees, I turned on the four-way flashers instead of just my blinker light. As I was shooting a heron in one of the larger ponds, the cardinal flew over the hood of my minivan and landed in the tangle of tree and weed next to me. I tried to shoot him but wasn't sure what I got. Was happy when I got home and downloaded the pictures to see that he turned out so well.

As I crawled along about four miles of road, stopping often to shoot through the open windows of the minivan, I actually had three different people stop to make sure everything was okay and that I wasn't broken down.

It's nice to know there are people out there who aren't afraid to stop to help a neighbor in need. Thanks.

Scene at the Pond