Snow And Ice, Shadows And Light

This is just an excuse to post some winter pictures.

Of Murder And Moonlight

I ran for thirty minutes again, today! Never ran that far in my life, and now I've done it twice. I felt kind of dizzy afterwards, but it soon went away and I did the rest of the workout.

In other sort of "first" news, I was stung by a wasp today while mowing the lawn. I've been stung by bees once or twice, but so far as I know this was the first wasp. It hurt a little, but it's a lot less trouble than a mosquito bite. The mosquito bites itch like crazy and can sometimes get really red and big, but the wasp sting is small and seems to already be fading. Interesting how the immune system reacts differently to various insects.

I reacted to this provocation by unleashing chemical vengeance upon the wasps, both the (presumably) guilty one and its many innocent sisters were all sprayed, and to top that off I jammed a chemically saturated rag into where I think the entrance to the nest is. Have to see tomorrow if they're still around.

It bothers me that so many of my posts on this blog seem to involve killing animals. First mice, now wasps. I hate doing it, but they keep trying to move in on me. I've only got one small patch of land in this world, and if I don't defend it then it will no longer really be mine. The mice come right in the house and make life a misery if they're not killed, and the wasps will apparently sting me if I'm even close to them with a roaring lawn mower. There's literally not enough land for all of us, and since I'm smart enough to have a credit card and know the way to the pest aisle at Canadian Tire, and they don't, that means it's curtains for them,

In better news, here's some recent photos I took of the Moon. One when it was full, and once when it was a crescent. I would love to get into astrophotography, but that takes expensive equipment and darker skies than I can reach. Maybe some day. In the meantime I'm getting better at taking pictures with the point-and-shoot camera I bought for the trip to Mexico. These moon shots look pretty neat.

April Photos

Yeah, I know. It's halfway through May. But I didn't take enough pictures for the current month yet.

Here are some of the images of April:

This is the fifty or sixty year old dogwood (Maybe ash?) behind the garage.

The yard looks like Mordor in this picture. That's because the tree trimmer I hired convinced me that Dad's magnificent fourty-year-old rosebushes needed to be trimmed to the ground. You know, for their health.

I'm really scared that I've killed them, but everyone says that roses like to be trimmed.

My hope is that these will be the "before" pictures, and when the roses have grown out again I can post the beautiful "afters."

The Blood Moon of April 15.

And here's the regular Moon. I'm a bit obsessed with it.

Hello there, Magpie.

These birds are hard to photograph, because they never stand still! And on top of that, they have black head feathers, black eyes and black beaks, which makes the features blur together. Got this one, though.

And finally, at long last, the first robin of spring!

This little guy was nearly invisible, but I saw something hopping around on the other side of the alley and just knew it was a robin. So I ran for the camera and viola!