Sunset Pano

Took this last evening because of the clouds. Our afternoon sky was clear blue then a few wispy white clouds drifted in. Then towards sunset these clouds showed up. The news said chance of rain. No rain. Today was mostly overcast but still no rain. This pano was made with five photos. I took seven...didn't need them all. I don't have a program to put these together so just do it the hard way in Photoshop.

 

Easter

We had a lovely dinner with the family. I had bought lilies last week. The trick to buying them is to pick ones that are not open yet. By Sunday they were starting to bloom and looking really pretty. So yesterday I got my camera and took a few photos.

Time Change

Time change! URF! I hate the time change. Actually I do like the summer savings time the best but I would like standard time OK if only they would pick one and keep it there. I have read that the time change causes traffic accidents for a few weeks after every change. Getting up an hour early causes tiredness and stress. Not good. Then in the fall getting off work and driving home in the dark when not used to it is not good. Now they are saying that we go through this twice a year for mostly nothing. No gain and lots of pain. Did I say I HATE the time change...

Rainbow

Yesterday morning the sky was blue with white clouds and raining too. The rainbow was over my palms. I took some photos and realized that my polarizing filter was preventing the rainbow to be photographed. Turning the filter let the rainbow show up very well...something I will have to remember for the next rainbow.

Two of a Kind Sort of

The theme challenge on the group that I was booted from was Deuce...two. So these are the pictures I posted plus two I was going to post for the theme challenge. Also I tried to opt out of the miserable ads but they are still here. URF.

 

 

I Was Booted Off

A photo group I joined a couple of months ago has theme challenges. When posting a photo for the theme the name of the theme needs to be posted too. The winner of the theme is determined by likes recieved. One photo that I really liked got the most likes. The theme was song title. The photographer wrote a song title but forgot the words "song title" With a warning she could have changed that in seconds by editing the name on her photo. No one noticed. The group owners could have warned her but they didn't.

They put another photo, which was posted by the other group owner as the winner...which I didn't think was very fair anyway. I made a comment about the situation only saying that another photo had more likes. I really didn't say that much, but the owner wasn't happy that I even mentioned it so he deleted my comment. Dumb me...I thought I had forgot to post it...I've done that before so rewrote the post.

URF I was booted off. I think that he knows that he did the wrong thing about this and was over sensitive when I brought it up. He claimed that he wrote to me twice before booting me off the group, and he did write two long messages that I read after I posted the second time. His second message was written after I was booted...said that they were sending me to the cornfield. He suggested that I needed a time out. My granddaughter laughed at that! I'm not going to rejoin the group.

Hummingbird in the Kitchen

No new photos lately. I missed a great photo op the other day...didn't even think about it. A hummingbird was trapped in my kitchen. She was trying to fly out a window so opened up the next window over and tried to guide her to it but she flew the other way. She was against the window near the back door. I opened the back door but it wasn't possible to get to her over the built in nook. So Dave brought me a broom and I tried to guide her to the door with the broom. She landed down on the broom and I thought good I can just lift her to the door. She flew back up to the window. So tried again. She sat on the broom with her wings spread out touching the broom. This time she let me move the broom to the back door and she flew. I know I should have gone for my camera but I was so worried about the hummingbird that a rescue was more important.

Morning Sky Show

Yesterday morning the changing sky was so beautiful. I grabbed my camera and caught these.

 

I posted these photos in the same order that I took them. There are more but I try not to post similar photos as it is so easy to just snap away with digital cameras. Not like the old days when I counted the exposures on the roll of film and thought about the cost.

 

This morning it was overcast and foggy. That did burn off and we had a lovely sunny day...just no morning sky show.

Another Sunrise

Woke up this morning to a beautiful sky.

September 11

My parents could remember what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My young life was touched by the war. Not in a serious way but growing up at a time children were silenced when the radio news was on and knowing our parents were upset over something we couldn't understand. They talked about ration stamps and things they couldn't buy. Being scared by the noise when tanks drove down our road seems silly when children in other places were close to or in the fighting. They had a true reason for fear. I remember the day my first stepfather drove us to San Diego with the car lights on and he honked the car horn and we were told the war was over. We didn't really know what a war was.

 

My mother was again divorced and married to a man that had gone through the worst of fighting in North Africa and then in southern Italy. Now they would say he was PTSD. Then he was just angry. My mother didn't know that he had married right after the war and had terrorized his wife by holding a gun to her head. Being married to my mother didn't help. After she left him, he came by where we were living and pulled her into his car and took her out on a narrow road in the woods and beat her up, threw her out of the car, and then tried to run over her. Some people drove down the road and saved her. My Great Uncle Burt had fought in WWI and came away with his own troubles. He talked about the war to us as we got older. We grew up knowing that war didn't help anyone. Uncle Burt left his medals in his suitcase and never went back for them.

 

Looking back it seems that there were a lot of wars in my lifetime. My cousin was over in Vietnam and suffered from agent orange and a smashed up back from a chopper crash. He died recently. I remember him as a lively two year old and now he is dead.

 

I was still managing the storage when the planes hit the towers. I had Hailey ready for school and was getting ready to leave to bring her up here when I saw the burning tower on the TV. I had started Hailey in school up here because we would be moving up here when the storage was sold. E.R. fed her breakfast and took her to school and I went back down to open the storage. That day I needed to turn off the TV but stood there and watched in disbelief as the tower burned. The news people were not sure just what had happened yet. The second tower was hit just before we left the house. I felt stunned. I felt stunned for days afterward and still when I think about 9/11 will always remember that hollow dreadful feeling. I can't listen to the voices or watch the movies of 9/11. It is just too tragic.  I can listen to survivors tell their stories. And be glad for them that they made it through. I am getting old and think that I need to think about peace and something good happening in this world.