Tag: Photography

Posted on
by

There’s a small creek that runs behind Winfield Village. It feeds the ponds in the Lake Park subdivision, and then the water flows on to the Embarras River.

It usually has only three or four inches of water in it, but after heavy rain it swells quite a bit.

A swollen creek, overflowing its banks enough to reach nearby trees
This gives you some idea how swollen the creek is.
The weir in our little creek is completely under water
Less impressive to you than to me, because you don’t know that there’s a weir across the creek which is completely hidden by the high water.

Posted on
by

I use micro.blog to send out my newsletter. I’m generally pretty happy with its newsletter system, but it does have a serious mis-feature: There’s a very narrow window for editing the newsletter between when it generates it, and when when it sends it out.

The main thing I want to edit is the front text that goes at the top of the email, ahead of the blog posts that I’ve identified as ones that should go into the newsletter. As near as I can tell, there’s no way to create that text until micro.blog gives me the draft newsletter. By default (the way I had it set up until a few minutes ago), there is then only 30 minutes before the newsletter goes out.

That might be fine, except in practice it turns out that the alert arrives after I’ve left on my main morning dog walk, and then the newsletter goes out before I get back.

A dog standing on a picnic table

As a stop-gap I’ve increased that gap to 3 hours (the largest gap the system allows, it would appear). That’s not perfect—I’d like to be able to write the front-matter anytime in the month before the newsletter goes out, and then edit it repeatedly over the month. But it’s good enough that at least I won’t keep missing it just because my dog gets to luxuriate in a long morning walk every day.

Posted on
by

Now that I’m over 65 I qualify to get the pneumonia immunization. The doctor mentioned that it has much less in the way of side-effects than common viral immunizations—flu, covid, shingles, etc.

Maybe that’s true, as far as the fever and body ache side-effects. But as far as the soreness-in-my-arm side-effect, it is really, really not true.

I’ve been whacked in the arm with a steel bar and not had it hurt as much as my arm hurts right now. (Admittedly, I’ve mostly been whacked with steel bars very gently.)

Ow.

My upper right arm with a bandaid over the injection site of my pnumonia immunization

Posted on
by

Ashley is on her Very Best Behavior since picked up after being boarded for our trip. I don’t know if they did a bit of training (insisting that she not jump, having her sit to put her leash on), or if she’s nervous that we might take her back if she’s not a good dog.

Three pictures of Ashley, with her head turned left, forward, and right.
Three moods of Ashley.

Posted on
by

As one of many pleasant outings during our visit, Steven took us to the New England Botanic Garden. It was a good choice for the group, providing opportunities for walks of all different lengths for people who wanted to walk further or less far.

There were, of course, lots of plants to see (f you’re a fan of diverse hostas, you’d be in heaven), but I found myself drawn to the art, and particularly enjoyed the sculptures. Although not religious myself, I don’t mind religious art, but I do find the endless Christian iconography one tends to find especially in the Midwest to be tedious. So I always enjoy anything different.

The New England Botanic Garden had a lot of western classical art, one sort I particularly enjoy. (I always like allegorical personifications (like Liberty and Justice, but lots of others as well), and I saw figures for Summer and Autumn (although I failed to get pictures of those). I also like classical western architecture—especially faux architecture, such as follies, which they had one of, along with a Temple of Peace. And I did manage to capture a photo of the statue of Pan.

Folly at New England Botantic Garden
Temple of Peace at New England Botantic Garden
Sculpture of Pan at New England Botantic Garden

Well worth visiting, if you’re in the area, and like botany or classical western art.