Garden Time

Well, my favorite time of year is here. Tomorrow is a day off of work for me and my plan is to garden! All day long. I have a significant amount of clean up to do: a winters worth of dog debris, blown around garbage, dead plant matter. Then I have two large planters and a compost bin to get D to make for me. And then comes the fun stuff! I've just been reading NatureScape Alberta again, and can't wait to get out there and design and plant food gardens for me and for the critters that live nearby.
This winter, inspired by advice on dgrin, I've been eating a diet much higher in vegetables (especially raw) than ever before. I've had mixed results in terms of weight loss, but in general I have felt much better, especially wrt joint pain.I read Michael Pollan The Omnivores Dilema, and quite enjoyed it. He describes things about industrial farming that I 'knew' about, but really didn't think hard about. He makes a very strong case for growing ones own veggies. I've read other stats that claim that eliminating meat from your diet would reduce your carbon footprint by 25% and that growing your own veg reduces it by 20%. Don't know if those things are cumulative, but I think its worth doing. And gardening is fun!
Garden seasoon is very short here. I usually get stuck waiting for the May long to plant, and then encounter delays. And have had pretty mediocre results gardening here, without the ability to water at will. This year, I am going to risk planting before the magic frost free date and hopefully will get good results. We intend to buy a couple rain barrels so that should help with the water problem (maybe we will have services next summer!)
This summer I have big plans for garden design: veg gardens, flower gardens, the beginnings of an outdoor portrait studio, and features to attract birds, bugs, butterflies and bigger species in to the yard. Photo subject matter! I'll try to diarize the progress here, through words and photos! Fun, fun, fun.

Family and Friends

So I've been doing a bit of traveling for work. I've been to Boston twice, once in February and once in early April. I am very impressed with Boston and hope I can continue to visit. It is a beautiful, historic city with fantastic brain power. On my second trip I tried to arrange a shoot with locals, and ended up with something bigger an better. I met 12 other dgrinners in D.C. for a shoot on April 12th! What a great day!! I was graciously hosted by Christina, who had joined the preshoot trip last fall. We started early and met a whole bunch of grinners over the course of the day. Some we had known from the Montana shootout (schmoo & zwiebluemen, davev & katev, grimace & kendal), others were new to us(visualxpressions & cassisp, eorin1). It was one of the best days that I've had the pleasure of experiencing, and I hope that I can wrangle many more like that.

Last week I went to Vancouver on a course, then to Seattle area to visit a customer and friends and relations. Unlike the DC trip, this one had very little photography. It was about touching base, getting to be face to face, catching up, rekindling and building relationships. It was very, very good and really reinforced the message that, whether one is talking about business relationships or friendships old or new, nothing - absolutely nothing works as well as being together!

White Knuckles, Grey Hair!!!!

Colin drove to and from his practice tonight - about 40 km each way, across the Henday, through traffic, at rush hour. OMG, it was sphincter tightening to say the least. Going to, traffic was very heavy and stop/go/bumper to bumper in some places. Coming home was not as difficult. He did very well, but has three main things he needs to do better: manage the brakes, his speed when cornering, and his shoulder checking.

Shoulder checking has gone from NOT to a full out Look ALL the way behind me (picture an owl turning its head) while travelling 100kmh and not keeping an eye forward......

Slowing dwn for the turn happens AFTER the turn is complete.

And coming to a full stop doesn't happen until just before the welding of bumpers.

But he has to practice and he IS getting better.

While he was at practice, I had some camera time. I found the access to the river in St. Albert - the Sturgeon River - and it has a lovely walking trail, bridges, trees just leafing out and all kinds of water wildlife. I was able to shoot a couple species of ducks, and the most cooperative beaver!

On the drive home, there were a pair of juvenile moose in a field by 137 Avenue. No room to stop, but a really cool sight. There were also flocks of very large birds flying north - I didn't get a really good look but I have a feeling they were birds of prey, maybe eagles. And finally, as we crossed onto Terwillegar, there was a really spectacular sunset going on.



So, despite the grey hair and white knuckles, I had a pretty good evening.

Macro Photography & Garden Photography

I love the garden. It provides so many opportunities for observing and capturing natural settings and beautiful scenes. Our garden here isn't nearly as developed and lush with flower beds as our past garden. I also haven't really figured out how to do great macros with my Canon equipment yet. The 100mm macro is pretty high on my wish list.
I just participated in a thread at dpreview about lucky shots - and a couple of the ones that I chose were garden macros. A pair of mating spiders, dew drops on the whirls of a mallow blossom.


A reminder of how much I used to shoot in my garden, and how I should get out there and shoot some more.

I came across a site with some truly inspirational garden macro photography recently, MacroArtInNature
There is really beautiful work there, and technical discussion. I suspect I will visit it often.

The problem for me though is that garden season here happens to coincide with soccer season, and my time to do both is limited. I know there are some cool photos from last summer, not yet edited, on my hard drive.

So, here is to a great summer and a great season of garden photography.