Inside the White Beauty

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No time to pp today. I think it could use a boost but my computer is hung and Joey has an 8AM baseball practice.  Here's an alternate wider view.

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Took some more Mountain Laurel shots but still not THE one.  I'll keep trying.

Glorified Iris

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I pp'ed this bearded iris shot that I took on Tuesday.  

Maybe you like it with a green vignette.  I wasn't sure if I liked the borders bounded or not.

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Here's the perfectly reasonable sooc shot, but I couldn't help but prefer the intensity of the version I pp'ed in Color Efex Pro.

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SmugMug was down for a while.  I'm glad it's back.

Another Day Another Flower

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A flower shot taken in my neighbor Judy's yard this morning. I didn't have a chance to take many shots yesterday due to work and clouds, so I was out again this AM trying.

Here's the original for comparison which I punched up due to the low light and clouds this morning too. Hopefully it doesn't shout pp'ed and you like the more saturated color and stronger detail.

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I'm monitoring the Mountain Laurel that's not too far from my house.  In another couple of days, with some sun, there's a POTD coming!

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The Mountain Laurel blooms alongside Middle (or is it Black) Creek.

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Johnny's Little League team, the Ironbirds, won their game last night although I don't think Johnny himself field the ball or made any hits.  Still, it was an exciting high scoring game for his team.  Before the game, they did pictures.  I bought a team shot from TSS Photography but couldn't help but sneak in this shot of the team myself too.  Johnny is the child looking at me:-)

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The Beauty of an Iris

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I went for a bike ride in my neighborhood at lunch yesterday and took some bearded iris pics and other flower pics in several different yards.  It was fun and relaxing and I got a few shots that I liked.  Besides the daily, here are a few others.

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If I had more time, I'd remove the web in this shot.

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In the one neighbor's yard, I had some help from Buttons:-)

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Joey's Little League team tied 6-6 last night.  Joey almost had an in the park homerun due to errors, but he got so excited running the bases that he missed third and was tagged out.  Still, he got 3 RBI's and for a while the team was up 6-5.  Loved the excitement of that game!

Kids track back in today!

Wet Feet!

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My doctors are near the West Point on the Eno park, so working around appointments, we had a picnic lunch and a quick dip of our feet in the river.  Don't worry, it was just pre-op for surgery next week, and the surgery is for reconstruction and not because the cancer is back or anything else bad.  Surgery is always a bit scary, but hopefully it will be routine and I'll be past it and healed up quickly.

Donnie is so sweet.  He knows I like to take pictures, and he knows how much I like to stop at parks like this, and on nice weather days when we have time he always makes sure we end up at places like this usually having a picnic lunch.  It sure does help ease the stress of day-to-day life, and I really appreciate it and enjoy the time with him.  And, we really need to enjoy wonderful days like this before the intense summer heat and humidity not to mention insects set in.  Days like yesterday are do over days where they are so good you just want to do them over and over again.

The scenery near the mill was great for our picnic lunch, and we saw other families wading in the water, so it didn't take Johnny and then the rest of us too long to get out in the water too.  Walking in Crocs or other water shoes is a good idea because the bottom is rocky and squishy.  The view towards the dam and towards the pedestrian bridge was beautiful.  We saw a few fish and heard about a northern water snake in the area:-)  I studied the few flowers I saw and soaked up the sun and mostly just enjoyed Donnie and the boys especially Johnny whose youthful enthusiasm for the river was a real joy.

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It's back to work today and baseball tonight and the grind of the week, but I sure did enjoy yesterday...  And I'll long for the contentment of more days like yesterday...

Eurasian Eagle Owl

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The kids and I traveled to Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park again yesterday.  We try to go each track out from school which is at least 4 times a year.  I've said this before, and I'll say it again, if you're passing through NC near the VA line on I95 you really should plan a 4 hours visit to this park.

I don't think it was my best shooting day ever, and that's OK.  The kids and I had fun.  My goal was to take a really great Eurasian Eagle Owl eye shot.  I asked permission to go over the wooden rail keeping visitors an extra couple of feet away from the cage and it was granted, but I was warned that the female can sweep down and extend out past the cage very quickly.  I said I'd be careful.  She, and he, never flew down.  Whew.  I pretended not to be afraid and to have super human abilities to move faster than an owl just in case.  However, I didn't like any of the shots I got yesterday.  Her eyes looked like she was having spring allergies or something.  Instead I cleaned up and have posted a shot I took of her from January.  I had originally dismissed this shot because I didn't like my reflection in his/her eyes.

I also worked on this Mcaw, I thnk, shot a bit.

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And here's a collage showing the rest of the bird shots I tooked and though worth taking a second look at.  We really enjoyed watching the Roseate Spoonbills and Sandhill Cranes.

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The kids always have a good time at this park playing on the playground and in the tree house and the beaver blind.  I put together this pano of the kids in the tree house using Canon's PhotoStitch (because Microsoft ICE would not do what I wanted in this case) to have some fun with the kids.

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The kids love it when the staff lets them 'pet' a chick up in the main building and when they get to feed Matilda the Cape (Africa) Barren Goose.

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Bluebird Chicks

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The bluebird box at Donnie's house had 2 eggs in it on March 22nd and yesterday on April 14th there were 3 very young baby bluebirds and one more egg that hopefully will hatch.  I put up a shot with my cell phone on Facebook and everyone was excited about it, so I thought I'd share a shot from my camera for my daily.

Here's a macro shot from a slightly different angle.

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The mother bluebird was watching me closely, and I put the nesting cup back in the box pretty quick and let her come back in to check on her babies.  If I get a chance before they get too big, I'll get another picture when they have some feathers:-)

The boys and I had a lot of fun at the Robot Rumble at The Museum of Life and Science in Durham yesterday. Here's a fun collage showing my favorite pics of the boys and their robot friends at the event.

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Here's another collage showcasing those same pics in with some of the activities that we did.

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In the upper left, Joey is getting some help from one of the IBMers who was hosting a one hour session using  Lego Mindstorms robots.  The kids built 4 sensors including sound, light, and touch and then downloaded code to operate them and then had a blast testing them out.  I was very impressed with the session, and the pairs of 7-9 year olds seemed to follow along and enjoy the activity well too.  Johnny also built a Lego WeDo kit in the upstairs lab all by himself.  That pic is 3rd from top on the left and 2nd from top on the right.  It was another computer-assisted kit/activity. Also, there were lots of teams of kids of all ages their with the robots that they had built for various competitions.  3rd from top on the right of the collage are several of the larger robots that were used to shoot basketballs and/or act as goals for basketballs.  Very neat to watch these guys in actions and the high school kids running them and making adjustments.  We got information on how to start an elementary school team.  I'll think on it.  The boys enjoyed playing with Zibits and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots too.  All in all, a very fun day!

I didn't get to explore the flowers or wetlands at the museum like I usually like to do, but I did sneak in 10 minutes in the Magic Wings Butterfly House entrance way garden where I took pics of this Pipevine Swallowtail.   It took me a while to identify this guy as a pipevine vs. a spicebush vs. just a black swallowtail or even a red-spotted purple.  Ugh...  I'm fairly sure the one row of orange dots make this one a pipevine.  We won't get into if it's a male or a female:-)

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This guy never stopped moving his wings the whole time, and despite the bright light, all of the shots show the motion.  Still I thought you might enjoy this presentation that I took a few extra minutes to build vs. just collaging up three pictures.  The background is a missed shot of the scene where he and I were moving and it was entirely blurred.

I chased this Monarch Butterfly with even less luck!

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Here's one last shot of the day of Joey's baseball team getting their group picture made.  Joey is top row left.  I ordered a real picture.

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