Aug. 14, 2025
Happy Birthday, Dana!
Gary brought me his Nikon.  So much fun.


 






Gary brought me his camera at nine this morning. I was up at the rookery by 10:30.  It was the first time since the drainage that I had a decent camera with me.  The highest lens he has is 200, but even that changes the view entirely, adds to the details in the distance and allowed me to see where the stream is actually running.   

It was already too hot to be up there and I'm in pain, but I watched dragonflies for the first time this summer and saw some delicate wildflowers.




There's no shake reducer on the camera and everything is different than the Canon or the Pentax, but I just started shooting and playing.  I tried to get this spider. I did get the dragonfly that was dancing in front of me. 

 I drove on up to my favorite pasture vista and wrote for a bit.  There was shade and a slight breeze.

I packed a picnic

In honor of my father

Ham and cheese

Wish I had a dab of pate

And a baguette 

Maybe some cherries

Instead of this orange

Some water,  no wine for me

Freshly mowed pasture 

Golden rod

And that tiny brilliant light

He planted in me

So many ions ago.





The summers we went to Europe we'd eat our picnic lunches in pastures or fields.  I've been thinking a lot about those trips and staring out at these fields, eating my lunch, allowed me some good memories.  




The pasture where the steer usually hang is now covered in purple thistle. It is so purple, tall and maybe impenetrable to man and beast.


I ate my ham and cheese sandwich and looked for large birds and four legged creatures. I saw a few crows, but nothing else, just the beginning of the end of summer. Even the maples have a slight tint to them now.

Off to work where I get to be with a team of people with great imaginations. We are fully programmed through December. Why do I feel like we just reopened?





Driving home, way up in the sky in a tree in the cemetery, I saw what I first thought was an adolescent eagle. I drove into the cemetery and I circled her. I think she's actually a hawk, a very large one, nonetheless, a hawk.
Then home again where I drove into a driveway of a home I did not recognize.   Gary finished the yard today and did a brilliant job.  It's beautiful.   
You can even see the swing again, but don't get on it, the limb is about to fall.
The end of day 1 with the Nikon.  Really great to have a camera in my hands.  

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