Happy August

 

It has started out very August-y. Hot Hot Hot. But the gnats have started to dissipate here and being out in the flower garden is more comfortable [in the shade]. 

I am bummed. I woke up yesterday morning and listened for our resident wren. She/he always sings and scolds me when I go out with Charlie. In fact several wrens generally serenade the yard each summer morning.

I was left wanting. 

Their voices have disappeared. Left in their place are crickets and an occasional Robin, Wood Thrush, and Woodpecker voice in the predawn. Another voice not heard is the Red Wing Black Bird. The birds are starting to migrate.

Hmmm. Not to be a bummer, but I read somewhere that August is also the month where we lose a significant amount of daylight. 😔 

I still feel like it should be ... more nice summer and not heading towards fall. But that is how nature works, right?

Time waits for no one?

However, August is the time for flower gardens to shine in their glory with annuals!

My Zinnias that were not doing well have finally hit their peak! So color me happy!
They aren't as plentiful or tall as they have been in years past, but I adore being able to cut bouquets of them and add color to my kitchen counter.

This side garden of flowers was all my leftover seeds from last year. I did not expect to have this!

The girls say good morning!

Here is a closer shot of the orange cosmos bunch. They are thick as thieves and I don't think any weeds even grew up in between them. So much for spacing them out a few inches. I just dumped the seeds on the ground and raked it, then stomped them into the dirt. 

I'll be gathering a lot of these seeds again this fall.

This makes me smile even though August races us towards Fall.

Some other stray cosmos got in the mix. My favorite colors of cosmos are the multicolored ones, but the orange ones sure are prolific with their fern like foliage and bright colors.

And then there was a huge surprise. A white Malva aka known as Prairie Mallow came up in the middle of the orange cosmos!

They are related in a way to Hollyhocks, but are more sturdy and readily reseed. I hope to see more of these white beauties next year. I'll have to collect their seeds even though they will do it themselves.

The humming birds are going crazy over the 4 O'clocks in the evening and through the morning. The flowers close up during the day and re-open with a sweet scent all evening.

I have hundreds of these plants on the west side of the house.

Every year now, I collect Nasturtium seeds and replant a few around the porch. Each August I am always surprised as to how they want to spread out and take over everywhere. 

I let them. Here they crowd out the stepping stones to the porch. The violets are volunteers from a hanging planter I had there last year. They actually are doing better as volunteers than they did in a hanging pot.

I'm going to let the plants do what they want and just carefully go around them.

I have one more spot that I planted with Zinnias and Cosmos. It is an area where the old veggie garden used to be. Next year I hope to add another small extension of carefree flowers. 

The morning glories have gone crazy and have covered the wagon wheel. I had to put out a couple of posts to give them more climbing area.

Have a good weekend and stay cool. 

Hot Hot

We've had a pretty decent summer so far. Cool mornings and nights even though we had a lot of rain and bugs.

Now? Yikes, I was not ready for a 79* dew point, with 79% humidity and 80* temps yesterday morning. Yuck. Yuck and double Yuck.

I did outdoor work and my errands early. I made cold Italian pasta  salad for supper and retreated to the indoors for most of the day.

I continued to mess around with my Lego bricks and lights to make that Space Challenge Scene that was on for last month. Even though I didn't come close to 'winning' I enjoyed the fun in making interesting scenes to celebrate Lego's Space Theme for the past month.

This really didn't work out as I imagined but I had a lot of fun building the Labratory. I created a space environment with an AI generator for the background.

I placed the works on top of a wooden block on my keboard...

and ended up with this....          👇

I am learning now to build and then set up a camera and see what view the camera can see and use that area for details. It is different building for fun and building a little 'set'.

Setting up the 'set', lighting, and characters is hard! It is so much easier to do a Lego shoot outdoors in my opinion.

Here I just took my Little Tourist Alien and set him on the porch with some rocks and one of my garden Gargoyles.

It was rather easy to deal with the lighting and scene.

Since I was avoiding the heat and humidity, I thought I'd build something fun and unique to use a new character with. It was to be Spacey and have Cool Lighting.

I began with a plan. I wanted a blue eerie lit background. That meant making a part of a wall with see through blue bricks. I put it on a white baseplate and used irregular Lego 'rock' bricks to make the back wall for a cave or alien planet texture.

[The brick texture didn't show up because of the lighting!]

So the idea was to have a space creature walking down the path of blue crystals with cool lights. I noted that the back wall didn't really show up and how was I going to include that in the photo?

As always, I never take the easiest route when trying this out. 

I first tried it with two little blue balloon lights and a white light. I laid the face mister on its side and turned it on to add some glow to the light.

It was sort of cool but it was hard to tell what was going on.

So I went with more color. Of course. When in doubt, make it harder.

I like this version just because of how the red lit up the bricks around the Glaciator Power Miner Minifig and set a menacing tone. Apparently this Power Miner was the supposed to have the power to turn things into ice and explode them. There was a game based on these characters and sets that saw popularity from 2009-2010.
I just saw this guy at a garage sale and picked him up for $1. 

He is also partially made out of transparent plastic.

After all of that what did I learn? I learned that I made something fun and cool. However, the picture doesn't tell any story at all. Nothing. It is just a cool lit up minifigure. I learned that indoor photography with added lights takes a lot of experimentation and adjustments.

I kept this build so I can try again to re-shoot it to tell some sort of visual story. I realize that I should have had a little bit of light coming from directly above the 'set'. That might make a difference.

I was frustrated and pleased with the experiment.

So early this morning I went out with my pal Glenda and created an easy story on the porch.

Glenda rarely needs any explanation for what she does. 

She just does her thing and I follow her around....

It promises to be another extremely hot and humid day.

PS~
Welcome August.