Sunday~~ day of rest???

 👇

Well, sort of. I promised myself not to do too much work. Well, that didn't happen.

Saturday I found pie at the Farmer's Market and purchased some fresh greens to eat. I decided to head out to a place where there is a Mennonite Store in Coon Valley. [Yes, that is a real name. Coon Creek runs through Coon Valley]

Years ago I got a couple of Hens 'n Chicks from a friend. I have been finding different ways to use them as they multiplied.
Since I am not a huge fan of pies ~~ baking, that is, but had many pie tins given to me in the hopes of making me a 'baker'....... 

I began to make Hen 'n Chick pies. I have added other little plants. Dragon's Blood Stone Crop and a yellow type of stone crop someone gave me. I add some soil, some rocks, and make a Succulent Pies.

I used a plastic dog dish one year and any other odd little containers I can find. Eventually, I ended up with multiple little pies and containers of cute little succulents.

This year I thought I'd try a little rock garden.

I purchased some little plants. I used Google Lens to try and ID this but really didn't get a good answer. The table I purchased this from just said: Succulents.
I liked its color so I went with it.

The next two are mysteries to me also. But I like them for their textures and shapes. So I put them in the one spot of the porch that is very sunny and warm during the summer.

It is also the place where I like to have my fossil rocks displayed. 

I don't know if these 3 plants will overwinter in my zone and come back, but I know that the other little succulents will.

I don't know if you can see the little dog planter I found -- in the photo below.. It was just too adorable to pass up. I worked on this part of the porch while the grass was still so wet from our heavy dew and foggy sunrise.

I still need to add some mulch to the area to tidy it up and make it look nicer...

and I need to tidy up the porch next to the bench so I can take the rocking chair out there and a little table for coffee.

This is the same spot last year at this time....how things change!
I did plant nasturtiums in this area last year.

The Ajuga I have on the other half of the porch has gone crazy. One year I lost so many plants and this past year, despite the drought, the Ajuga...or Bugle Weed has come back strong. It has presented us with an amazing carpet of purple.

Next year, I may have to dig some out and share the plants with others or find a good spot that they would like. This year, I will enjoy them. They make a good border for around that side of the porch. [And the bees are really loving them!]

I had to mow the hill on the highest setting on our self propelled mower and it still plugged up. I just mowed it last Monday. 

Insane! 

The setting says it is mowing at 7 inches. I nearly gave up and thought about fencing the area off for the mules to chomp on. However, I am very grateful for the rains compared to the last two years of very dry and dusty springs.

In fact, the rain and warm weather have been providing the forest with a huge Flush of Morel Mushrooms. My neighbor found 5 lbs yesterday in a spot where we have searched before and found nothing!

I turned the dirt over in my 4 little flower gardens and then weeded until my fingers wouldn't work any more.

I wanted so badly to start planting seeds but thought it was a bit too early.

My wildflower 'beds' are ready for planting along with the area next to the house that I plant zinnias and 4 o'clocks. 

Our foggy morning seen through my infrared camera.

Sleepy mules:

Box Elder tree and fog:

Enjoy your Monday.

Social Butterfly!

 Somehow this week, I became a Social Butterfly.

A few weeks ago, an old acquaintance of mine texted and asked if we could meet for supper in Mid March. She was one of my 4H students from years ago. I think we met when she moved into the area and I rode my horse past her house.

I stopped to say hello and she went nutso over my horse. She joined 4H and I worked with her in the Horseless Horse Program. We worked with my grade gelding as my mare was still pretty green. She was in High School and a great student. She went on to place in the upper 10 slots at State for Horseless Horse walk trot. A lot of other folks helped us do fancy things like doing the mane and tail and they provided her with a show saddle.

We've remained friends through the years. Now her older daughter is in her first year of college, the youngest will be 15 soon. They live near Racine so we don't get to see each other a lot.

We met for supper in Spring Green as that was about half way for the both of us. She was doing a travelling set up for the company she works for and ended up in Baraboo, WI. 

We spent a couple of hours at Culvers getting caught up on each others' lives. It was great to have just myself and her at the table without her kids or hubby interrupting. 

There we are. Not a great shot of us but who cares? We did the math and ... geeze, we've been friends for over 30 years! Yikes!

Hint. I'm not the blonde one. I'm the one in the old sweatshirt and baseball cap.

I drove home in the dark. Hmmm. Now a year ago, I wouldn't have done that at all. BUT!
I could see! I could see even with normal headlights. Things were clear as a bell unless someone with those new fancy LED headlights had their brights on and didn't dim them. I had no visual problems.

Wow. I was so happy and stunned at the same time. I turned up the volume on my Pandora Station and enjoyed the drive. This will be another positive I can report to my eye doctor next week when I see him.

Tuesday evening I did CrossFit, Wednesday I hiked at KVR in the morning and went out to meet my pal in the evening. This morning, I was at another great CrossFit workout and got my errands done before the rains started.

Friday my ex neighbor Teri is going to pick me up and we are going to dinner together! 

Whew!

Charlie leading the way
on Wintergreen Trail
[photo taken in IRChrome]

Ice Falls melting on
Wintergreen Trail
[IRChrome]

March may be kind of mucky, snowy, rainy, and icky. But this week I'm enjoying it. 

Monday Night Storms

Monday was a pretty good day.

Of course there was the whole struggle thing of getting Rich to PT, but I set a personal record in CrossFit so I was still pretty happy about that.

Most of the day was spent doing yard work and then as the storms approached, I grabbed the refurbished IR camera and decided to give it a whirl.

Since the storm was slow moving, I thought I'd try out a couple of filters to see what I could come up with.

This one is a bit wild and crazy. Normally this filter would produce a yellowish cast to the foliage when channel swapped, but I took it further.

When the sun disappeared and things started to get dreary, I thought I'd try out the 850nm filter. In filter speak...this filter strictly shoots in black and white with the foliage become white.
I really liked the results even with the poor light.

I love the threatening sky again the white foliage.

So I walked to the south end of the pastures and took another shot back towards the house.

With that done I decided it was time to get inside.

The severe storm was a Watch so I neglected to move the mower and 4 wheeler to the shed.

Silly me. Never believe the weather people.

This happened as the storm blew in. The tree was uprooted and came down.

I worked all day yesterday on 'limbing' it out.

No real damage had been done. But the Grill was killed. The grill needed replacing a long time ago, but ..someone kept limping it along. I guess I am relieved about that.

My argument for getting rid of those older trees on the West side of the house, just got stronger I think.

I like Infared !

I only use a Hoya IR72 filter with my Olympus OMD EM 5 mirrorless camera. I got this camera back in 2015 just when the new version came out and the old version was being discontinued.
Why?
Well, the cost savings is great while buying a used or a new one that is being discontinued.

I went mirrorless because the camera is supposed to be more compact and lightweight. And, it was. It is my go to camera on very long hikes. I've beat the crap out of it and it still functions.

Is it the hands down best camera out there?
Nope.
However I bought in a bundle and saved quite a bit of money. My Nikon D5200 is an excellent camera. But it is heavier and it is quite picky about moist humid days or extremely cold days. The Oly is supposed to be weather resistant.

A big plus is that it does read infrared light too. The Nikon doesn't, however the IR filter will work with the Nikon. It just acts like a very dark red ND filter.

That said here is what I shot yesterday. It was bright and sunny, the lighting was all wrong for regular color, so I switched over to IR.

The Meadow in color:

The Meadow in IR:

The greens turn white, the shadows and cool areas are dark!
The trails faintly show up in the grass.
The leaves are slightly blurry as the length of exposure was about 2 seconds and the wind was blowing.

Next time I will try a fast ISO to see if I can get a clearer shot. True IR will look different. But don't want to convert a camera just for that.

Another shot across the ridge:

And then in IR:

However, the colors are beginning to change rapidly and now I am thinking about doing a drive around and trying to find neat spots to pull over and take photos.

Tonight we are supposed to have frost. It is right about the normal time for frost. But it makes me sad as the fall colors rush by so quickly and suddenly we are in the icky brown time before the snow falls.

Here are a  couple of more IR shotsthat I took then I will be done with displaying my IR shots for now.

I have to contact the VA Tech Help to set up a laptop for a telehealth appointment with speech/memory therapy for hubby.

Have a good Friday. I have some doodling painting to do on my landing. It is coming out pretty neat.

Just work

I burned through half a tank of fuel in the weed wacker yesterday morning before I quit. It was getting warm and I was plastered with chunks of wet grass and weeds. 

So I changed into a pair of shorts and a lighter top and proceeded to start picking green beans until that got too warm too. I picked only a portion of what I should have picked but still ended up with nearly 3 ice cream buckets of beans.

I washed them and then set them on the porch to be snapped.

After lunch, Charlie supervised on 'his' rug while I snapped the beans.

He is such a good supervisor!

I blanched the beans and then set them in a strainer in the fridge to be vacuum sealed later.

I actually took an hour to myself and read a book until I fell asleep with Charlie on my feet on the couch. I figured it was a wise thing to do during the hottest part of the day.

I went out to do stock tanks and fell in love with the sky which was rapidly changing.

According the the NOAA weather, isolated storms were moving across the region.

I grabbed my Olympus camera and set up some Infrared Shots while I was waiting for the mule stock tank to fill with water.

I use a filter for the IR shots. The best photos in IR are from those cameras that have been set up just for that purpose.

I don't have cameras to spare just for that so I get along with a filter.

It does give the bright greens a different look and I left the pinkish hue in these shots on purpose.

Shooting IR is not easy and processing them properly is just as hard.

Most of my IR shots get tossed. I feel I am still experimenting.

This is the porch view of the sky yesterday afternoon when the isolated storm decided to move in. There was a lot of thunder but no rain. Sunday afternoon we had 1/2 of rain from one of the squalls.

Today we have an appointment for Rich to be evaluated for driving. He rarely drives any more and I will encourage the OT department to take into consideration the level of depression at this time too.
Perhaps they can evaluate him and then do a second eval in the spring.

I would hope that he be allowed to drive locally if he begins to feel better. The long drives are too tiring and even I am tired of them.

Big decision time. I have decided to go ahead and enter some photographs in the fair!

I'll let you preview them here. You can give me some feedback if you wish. I want honesty if you can!

Anyway, have a great day.

Some fun with Photos...

I've tried just about every photo editing program out there. I tried Light Room and loved Photoshop 7.0 the program I learned on. I didn't have formal training but learned it by the seat of my pants.

I tried Light Room and even though it is a masterful program I didn't like the fact that Adobe had you rent that and rent Creative Cloud to stay 'up' with the program.

One day I ran across a program called ON1 Effects. I downloaded it and actually enjoyed the free version for about a year before I invested in purchasing the ON 1 Effects version. I found myself using it a bit more and more and withdrawing from the old Photoshop CS3 I had. I also drifted away from Corel PaintShopPro. 

Last year ON1 announced a RAW processing program that they were developing.

I dove in headfirst. If you look them up and find discussions regarding the program there will be comments about the glitches, the crashes, and the program issues.

However.

Even with the problems I've encountered, I am loving this program. 

If I am to do some extensive edits, more creative art stuff, I sometimes go back to PS. 

I wanted to see how 'far' I could take a photo. The original is at the top, this was my 'vision' when I took the shot. Could I turn this into a vintage/sketch/artsy thing?
Well, perhaps I did. I would have gone to the old Creative Suite to do this, but I decided to pursue it in ON1.

I've found it the go to program for my IR shots too.

This is what the interface looks like.

This is the original Infrared shot.

This is the final outcome. I've worked out a workflow that really works well for me.
Some things I don't like. Using layers seems to crash the program often. Working on too many files seems to crash things. Some of it involves my RAM memory and my CPU and other technical things. My laptop is not the newest one out there.

Sometimes when you do extend beyond just the regular shots like adding filters and infrared, you do need a processing program to work with. IR would not look half this good if processed through an online program.

Here are a couple more I did that day ... while on a walk with Morris.

This shot of the cosmos is one I wanted to do in the same fashion as the Sumac leaves. I laid in the garden and shot upwards towards the cloudy dull sky to take the photo of the flower.

And I wanted and etching.
Or something like that.

This weekend, I hope to get out on some cloudy and rainy days to do some beautiful fall photography. Jersey Valley should be incredible.

A bit of Infrared Fun ~ Sunny Days vs. Cloudy Days in the Creek

Shooting with an infrared filter opens up some wonderful possibilites on a bright sunny day. The shadows are more intense, the greens are 'white' and true IR photography is sometimes a lot more interesting that what I've taken here. 

[By truer, I mean cameras that have been converted to Infared.]

However, I am just dabbling in it.

The end result of this shot wasn't that fantastic. But it was a good experiment.

I wondered what the bright sunlight on the rocks would do with the cold water of the creek running through it.
The unedited version looks rather strange.

However I think I got lucky with this one. It turned out pretty cool.
In my opinion of course.
I can see the rocks just below the surface of the water and reflections of the rocks also.

I should have taken another shot without the filter and seen what difference it made, but I didn't. I was pressed for time that day.

I used a bit of extra editing in this next shot, I wanted to accentuate the rays of light.

This is more in line of how I 'see' parts of the creek bottom. It is beautiful and mysterious all at once.

The next day was heavily overcast which is perfect for normal water photography.

This shot is from further away and I used a polarizing filter to cut some of the water reflections so I could catch the rocks. I like this shot but feel that I actually enhanced it a bit too much. In retrospect, it should be toned down a bit.

This is more what I was going for. A nice long exposure which softens the water but allows the mind to imagine the motion. The rocks below are just visible enough so that we know there is a rocky bottom.

And then just for fun...

One must add something that doesn't belong.

Gone Fishing

We do a daily morning list nearly every day to set out two things that should be accomplished.

This is to assist with Rich's Aphasia and mild Apraxia. He has had some difficulty processing new things. We found out that spoken language is harder for him to recall than things that are visual.

So to help with the memory issues we have been making our morning list each morning with our coffee.

The list can be super simple.
Mow yard
Move hoses
or
Do Speech Therapy Homework
Move water tank

Yesterday we thought about the list and I started getting some things together. Rich looked up and said.
"Fishing. I'd like to go fishing."
Then he went on to say that the fish are probably not biting, or it won't be any good or there may be crowds.
But I got the hint and said, "Fishing would be awesome. Let's go fishing."

I headed out the door and did chores while he got the fishing poles together and arranged his little tackle box.

Off we went. He wanted to go to the place where he and Daryl had gone a few weeks ago. That is all he has been talking about for a while now.
I knew where Blackhawk Park was, but insisted on asking him which way did we need to go?

He gave me directions.
I really wanted to go to a place just south of Ferryville below the lock and dam. However, Blackhawk it was.

The little fish were biting but no big ones. The waters had receeded in the park leaving some brown stained shorelines along with gnarly trees. All neat things to get your fishing hook snagged in.

The snags made for an interesting composition with a long exposure at least. I sort of cheated. I love fishing, but love photos of water too.

I took out my Infrared filter and attached it to the camera.

Things look so much more interesting in the bright sunlight with an IR filter.

The fish weren't biting here either. So we drove left Blackhawk.

Rich said we should have brought snacks and said he was hungry. I suggested we drive over to The Bright Spot in DeSoto and have lunch.
As luck would have it, fish dinner was on special. So we had our fish dinner anyway!

We drove past the Veteran's Park in DeSoto, and then checked out the landings on Hwy 82. The wind was gusting by then and so we decided to call it a day and head home.

The day was not a bust. We'd enjoyed each others company, went out to lunch, and scoped out places to fish.

It was a good day.
We'd gone fishing.

And I got a few IR shots that turned out pretty nifty.