Tell me a Story: October 2020

Woo Hoo, I am on 2 weeks vacation. We are going to be doing some hiking during the second week. I started looking at shoes and thinking I made need some new sneakers. Although I am so accident prone I probably need a good pair of boots to stabilize my ankles. I am already thinking that one of the hikes has a lot of tree roots across it and I am going to be watching my feet more than the walk. Added to that my feet have never felt right since I had the foot surgery. This is probably the most extensive walking I will do – 3 days of hiking, 3 days of coming home and putting them into the jacuzzi until I can walk again 😦

So I bought a new pair of sneakers. Now I have to make sure I can walk some distance in them. So Thursday evening I decided to go for a walk in the wetlands. I did the 2 mile walk. Ambitiously, I decided I would go the next day and watch the sunrise in the wetlands. I walked the mile loop and then decided to go back to the previous wetlands and walk that as well. By the end of the 3 miles I was feeling it. So I will be doing a few more walks this week.

Here are a few of images that came out of all that walking :).

Boat Tailed Grackle (Male)
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Alligator Flag
Roseate Spoonbill
Just a simple feather
The season is changing
Tri-colored Heron
Purple Swamphen
More signs of winter
Red-wing Blackbird (female)
Yellow Billed Cuckoo with a tasty snack in it’s beak
Roseate Spoonbill
Common Whitetail Skimmer
Redwing Blackbird (male_

Thank you for joining me this month as we spend time sharing another day in our lives. This is a quiet month for blogs however, this is a circle blog.  Take some time to view what the other artist has for you this month. My friend Beth of E Beth Williams Photoblog is up next and I can’t wait to read what she has to share.

30 Minutes in the Life: October 2020

This month I am going to do something just a little different for my 30 minutes. I am going to do 30 minutes of editing because it took me way longer than 30 minutes to capture these little guys.

I love dragonflies. Their mechanics are pure perfection. Have you ever looked closely at their wing formation. The design is fantastic. Along with the back of their heads. I am always amazed at what they look like/ I cropped in an image so that you could get a closer look. Their eyes are so huge and they watch every movement you make. Have you ever watched a dragonfly chew? Oh my, it is so cool. So here are a few dragonfly that I captured over 2 days, plus a few of my favorites. I have tried my best to identify them, but I could be wrong. Don’t hold that against me.

Four Spotted Pennant
Eastern Pondhawk
Isn’t the wing formation fantastic and look at all the tiny hairs at the back of its head. Along with the spiny legs. This little guy kept flying in front of me as though he wanted his photo taken.
Eastern Pondhawk

Needhams Skimmer
Blue Dasher
Scarlet Skimmer
Metallic Pennant (maybe)
Eastern Pondhawk
Four Spotted Pennant
Four Spotted Pennant
Needhams Skimmer
Orange Meadowhawk
Eastern Pondhawk
Scarlet Skimmer
Halloween Pennant
Four Spotted Pennant
Needhams Skimmer sitting on snail eggs

The best thing about dragonflies is that they eat the mosquitos. The sad thing is that in the circle of life, they become food for the birds, and the lizards. Red wing Blackbirds love dragonflies and I have seen them shove an entire dragonfly down a chick’s throat.

Redwing Blackbird
Hungry dragonfly eating lizard (since I do not know what it is called). I think it may be a Brown Anole

It’s either feast of famine for the lizard. He was not having a lot of success while I was watching him.

Please continue to stay safe, wherever you are in the world. Thank you for joining me for 30 Minutes in the Life.

You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.

Flowers in Macro: October 2020

I love flowers….period. One way to make me happy is give me flowers. Each week I go to the local store and try to find something I really love. This week it was these. I was sitting looking at the flower center the other day and wondered what they would look like in macro. So I got to play and enjoy the results.

Thanks for stopping by. If you are interested in seeing more of my photography take a look at my Facebook page or my Flickr Page.

Share Six: October 2020: Books

This month I chose the theme {Books} for our challenge. I wanted something that could be done at home. While things seems to be opening up down my side of town, I am still not convinced we are out of the woods. So I am probably going to keep doing what I have been doing.

The definition of books is as follows “a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers”

Books, however, are so much more to me. Book smell so much better than an iPad. They also don’t hurt when they hit your face. I love to turn the pages of a book. I love to escape to lands unknown, to medieval times, to Scotland in the days of the Bruce, to the bravery of men and women during WW2. Most often at night, you will find me on my couch in my office reading a book instead of watching the television.

I have taken a number of images over the past 4 years of books so here are some of those images.

I was playing around one day and wanted to capture a heart image using a book, so I pulled out the hard cover, “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and whalla I got my image.
Our trip to Seattle in 2016 was amazing and one of the highlights was heading off to the Seattle Library. A friend had said if you have time go walk the library, it is only 10 floors. Oh boy, I loved the library.
Columbus, Georgia, and we stopped into a unique little coffee shop that was filled with all sorts of knick knacks. I love the composition of the clock with the books.
Seattle again, in a gift store, and I loved how they had utilized a book to display the jewelry.
My father was a lay preacher, and I have a collection of his Bibles, my mothers and grandmothers, and my own. I find at times I go and look at the notes he made, and I was so surprised the first time I looked and found a sermon he had written. I loved reading his thoughts years after he had passed away.
Seattle Library once more
I think this was the same jewelry store as 2 images up. Again using books to display precious stones.
The cameo and pearls were my grandmothers and I have a lot of good memories of her. The Bible belonged to Richards grandmother and she passed it down to him before she died. Faith is a strong foundation of my life, and am always reminded that this Bible is an inheritance passed down from generation to generation.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrings. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. ~ A very familiar passaged used at weddings and one that I wanted to use to capture the beauty of this day.
When I say I have a lot of books I really mean a lot of book. These books were moved to the bathroom in an effort to paint my “library”. My Sims was checking out the collection.

When I thought about books for this theme, I wanted them to be timeless, so black and white was where I went this time around with the {Books} theme.

The art of using a quill to write is not an art seen much these days. Having bought a quill for this shot, makes me think I should go back and buy some ink and play some more.
I am in a study group with a number of women, and this is not an uncommon sight on my desk
Journaling. I have my moments with journaling. I will start and stop. I love to put thoughts onto paper, but I am not a big fan of putting my heart out there for someone to stumble across.
One of my favorite genre of novels is to read about the amazing men and women who gave selflessly during the devastating period of World War 2. Men and women who worked the underground system, who carried messages, who gave their lives. I had uncles that were prisoner of war and so it is also their stories that I read when I read these kind of books. These are stories I hope the world never forgets, and yet I know that children today wonder if that war ever took place.
The edges of books these days seems to be a rough finish and I love the grittiness that this edge gives.
I love books; I love that moment when you can open one and sink into it. You can escape from the world, into a story that is far more interesting than yours will ever be ~ Elizabet Scott

Books make me smile, they bring me to a happy place. I like to escape into them. I very rarely go to bed without reading. When I thought about what I wanted for this theme, I really wanted to show that books are timeless. Books for me are old friends. Stories of life, pages I can turn. I have some collections, but I have realized that the amount of books I read means I am running out of storage space. So nowdays I am using my Kindle app a lot more. But I do not like to get rid of certain books, my poetry books, my old English books, my Shakespeare, Chaucer, Thomas Hardy books. Classics, I have held onto them. Novels about WW2, favorite authors, they grace my shelves. General novels I will happily pass on.

Thank you for joining me for this month’s Share Six blog post.  This is a circle blog.  The sneak peaks that are shared are stunning.  The challenges always stretch us just a little bit further. I blog with an incredibly talented group of ladies.  Please take time to visit my friend and very talented artist who always amazes me with her images Katherine of Cobert Photography to see what she has for you this month. To view her  Facebook page click here and her Instagram page here.

Keep following the circle to see what the other photographers have shared this month. Don’t forget to leave a little love on their page as well.

Come and share your images  Facebook and Instagram tagging #sharesix_books