Photography (and stories), 7/10/14

I'm extremely behind on sorting photos, so in the interest of just catching up, I'm going to try to keep some of the "stories" parts of this post brief. On with the photos (which do most of the telling anyway)!

Another field trip
Boy 1's class went to a petting farm (as opposed to petting zoo), and Girlie, Boy 2, and I tagged along. The kids had such a fun time that we did again what we'd done with the aquarium field trip: signed Boy 1 out when his class was ready to go back to school, and spent the rest of the day at the farm together.

donkey

Boy 2 (orange shirt near left) sat right down among the first graders and CLEANED UP in the tour guide's local bird trivia game.

in the demonstration garden: ant on squash blossom

These kids had been born just a few hours earlier.

We were collectively too short to enter the alpaca and llama enclosure. Apparently, these animals can't see anything lower than their own neck level, so small people are in danger of getting accidentally kicked or stepped on. But we did enjoy petting them--they're super soft--from the other side of the fence.

A small aviary had quite a collection of domestic and exotic birds, including this crowned crane.

There were several different colorful varieties of pheasant, unfortunately quite hard to photograph well from outside the wire mesh. This was the only pheasant photo I caught.

pig

goats

Why tortoises make good pen-mates with goats, I never heard, but there were several large ones. This one was the smallest, around 15 inches.

This pretty goat suffered no fools. He posed peacefully for a picture, but when Boy 2 got a little loud near him, he butted Boy 2--which of course the wild child thought was hilarious.

But apparently the best thing about a farm is chickens. We discovered we are quite fond of chickens. (I don't know why that's funny, but somehow it is.) Boy 2 loved catching them. Girlie loved petting and holding them. Boy 1 loved holding them, too, so much so that every time we left another animal area, he immediately said "May we go see chickens again now?" I liked the gentle clucking background noise--calming in the same way as the sound of trickling water. I can see why people like having a chicken or two around.

a polka-dotted tail!

More polka-dots: Guinea fowl live in the chicken coop, too...

...and also a couple of blowsy, self-important turkeys.

Is that not a classic rooster profile?

The coop had lots of ordinary egg and meat chickens but also fancy breeds. A few of the ladies have fluffy feathers all the way down the legs, like this soft gray girl. They look like they're wearing petticoats.

This fellow strutted up and down the rail (apparently put there just for strutting purposes), letting out a loud squawk and peck if anyone put a hand near the ladies in the egg boxes. He's unquestionably the flock's sentry.

Look at the fluffy crown of feathers on this guy! (The rooster, not the boy.)

In the backyard and garden
a mixture of mid-to-late spring and summer (so far) pictures

common wisteria. You never notice it wound around the pine trees the rest of the year, but it explodes in color and fragrance in spring. It can be invasive, but I leave it alone. I've never seen it intruding anywhere else in my yard, and I love the smell.

Bees love it, too!

The kids built and painted this birdhouse during spring break.

It was rainy most of that week, but we did get one perfect outdoor weather day.

Whee!

Clever use of a bunch of stumps! This is at our school's playground.

We planted Calypso beans (similar to pintos in flavor) in the garden this year. We call them "killer whale beans" for obvious reasons.

The garden as of late May still didn't look like much.

But as of a few days ago, much more promising!

in hills: Schoon's hardshell melon (similar to cantaloupe); trellis: Calypso beans. A few volunteer tomatoes are scattered around, too. We love tomatoes, so I let them grow where they will.

bear's paw corn (a type of popcorn) with Henderson lima beans

4 types of tomato, green bell peppers, and some volunteer marigolds

Staked in foreground: nothing but a few weeds. We sowed Utah celery too late in the season, and it didn't take. On trellis: Hidatsa red beans. Between:  marigolds

strawberries. These plants are now three years old, and we got berries for the first time this year.

sweet corn of some variety I don't recall. As you can see, that last row gets far too little sun. I won't be planting corn in this section again.

Carolina jasmine. It was an enormous, tangled, thickety mass last fall. After a very cold, very long winter, I cut away all the dead vines and found there was absolutely no healthy wood. Lo and behold, it sent up new shoots from the root!

black-eyed Susans--great for attracting goldfinches

daylilies

bachelor's button

dogwood fruit. The tree is covered with them this year. Turns out, they're edible. I found a recipe for dogwood jelly that I'm thinking about trying once they're ripe.

 

Funny how up close, this dragonfly looks like he has a beard.

Easter 2014
Told you I was behind on photos!

basket full of eggs, mouth full of candy

Woo, what's that?

Do you think I have enough?

 

Reunion weekend
These are just a few pictures from the annual Independence Weekend trip to T's family picnic. There were several other good ones of the larger family, but something went wrong when I downloaded. If I can figure out how to fix and resave the files, I'll put those in the next photos post.

We left town not long after Hurricane Arthur started pounding the shore a hundred miles south of us. The Chesapeake Bay was a little stirred up.

(No, I don't snap pictures while driving. This was taken from the passenger seat, thank you.)

I imagine for someone who gets motion sick, this 17-mile bridge-tunnel was off the agenda that day.

my brother-in-law and my newest nephew. I don't think I've ever seen a more contented baby. He got passed around quite a lot and never whimpered. Not even when I held him--and that's saying something.

Hammock! You can't quite see it, but the boys are eating watermelon, too--a perfect summer scene.

craft time with Aunt S.

Sun feels pretty good after going down that water slide filled from the very, very cold well!

Girlie driving the kid-sized ATV, two of her cousins picking raspberries in the background

This and that
a few stories that don't fit in a larger photo category

Boy 1 said he wanted spinach, carrots, and sunflowers seeds for dinner one night. I told him that sounded like salad, something he insists he does not like. He considered that for a long moment, then repeated his request. I shopped accordingly, and he ate it--a feat for which I required photographic proof.

Girlie and Boy 2 went strawberry picking with me (but not Boy 1 as school hadn't let out yet). I like what the offset center does to this picture.

Boy 2, the real Spider-Man

Boy 2 and Girlie took swimming lessons.

Boy 1 took lessons, too. They all loved it. We'll be back.

Blackberry picking. We found out quickly that picking blackberries is a much different kind of work than picking strawberries, but we were determined. That huge bucket was almost all the way full before we gave up--and only because it started raining, hard.

Boy 2 entered a hula-hoop contest at our neighbor R's 7th birthday party.

The focus is awful, but it's a fun picture anyway: Girlie and the birthday girl.