Photography (3/18/16)

Long time, no post...it's not that nothing's going on, it's that everything's going on! You can mostly get the gist from the pictures and a few labels. Enjoy!

Winter harvest
These carrots are, admittedly, not impressive. I've never yet had much luck with carrots.

But the lettuce looked great through December, and the Swiss chard kept going all the way through January--and both were tasty all the way, no bitterness. (Naturally, I forgot to get pictures of any of the greens. You'll just have to take my word for it.) This overly-warm winter has been really strange and disorienting, but it's not without a few pluses.

A dusting
Only three snows all winter, and they were all of this sparse variety. Check out these bird tracks, though. The swooping lines were made by the dragging tail of an exceptionally fat mourning dove we see around here regularly.

Still figuring out this new camera...and was able to get a couple of super-close-up shots of snowflakes on the window!

A birthday
He's 9...and despite taking three tries to blow out the candles, it was a happy one.

A little "assistance" from the siblings?

A quick trip to the zoo
Our zoo has had a rare pair of tiger cubs for a little over two months. They are being hand-raised, and we finally were able to be there to see a public bottle-feeding when the cubs were six weeks old. The pictures are blurry from being taken through dirty, visitor-smudged glass, but still. Can you imagine anything cuter?

I don't know how to tell the grown tigers apart. This is either the mama or the papa of those new cubs. The cubs were around 12 pounds each that week...the adult, well over 200.

There are other animal photos to share from this quick trip, but I'll post them later. For now, get a good look at these specimens, the amazing, rare, exotic Little Ms!

 Caught in flight
I've been surprised how much patience and plain old trial and error it takes to catch a picture of a bird in flight, even set to a super-quick shutter. They move crazy fast, and not always in the direction I anticipate. Here are the best attempts so far.

Blooming
Winter wasn't really ever fully here this year, but spring isn't waiting for a gradual entrance. It's plowing in, ready or not.
 

You just can't imagine how good hyacinths smell until you get a lungful firsthand.

LOADED with cones this year!

Layers: jonquil, azalea, maple

Bees and wasps of all kinds have been out in force for weeks already.

A category called ?????
Just to leave you with a laugh (or a stunned head-shake), a couple of nonsense items I've seen in stores lately.

If ever a food color was simply WRONG, it would be turquoise. Yet...

Because every lawn tractor needs a little bling. Right? I said RIGHT??