It's the last day of January and it's also Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is another of my favorites. This is Queen Anne's Lace. This bloom has the very distinctive dark spot that gives the flower it's name as it is supposedly a drop of blood spilled while Queen Anne was sewing a lace doily. I find it to be a very picturesque flower in it's various stages of growth. It usually blooms June through September.
This is another type of bird that has been visiting the bird feeder recently. This is a White Crowned Sparrow showing off his crown very well while sitting in the River Birch tree. It was getting ready to fly to the feeder in this capture.
Happy Monday and happy new week. We are supposed to be warmer this week, getting to 60 possibly. What a difference after all the snow and bitter cold. Today's image is a bloom on my Christmas Cactus that I took against the refrigerator for a background. I don't do anything special to my cactus and it reblooms on it's own.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! I am looking forward to warmer weather and being able to run steam locomotives again. This is our friend's locomotive as the boiler was being blown down to empty out the water and any scale that may have developed. It is an Ottaway locomotive that was built in Wichita, KS in 1948 and restored by our friends here at the C & H Railroad. This locomotive is what our blue locomotive would look like if it had not been converted to an 1800s looking type with the cab and smokestack and domes.
Today's image is another I captured of the wonderful fern frost that developed on the top of my heated birdbath. The temps were around zero and there must have been some warmer air coming off the water and it clung to the top edge of the bath and created these lovely formations. This image is a focus stack of 5 images.
It's Friday, TGIF! Today's image goes back to this past autumn. This is my Golden Raintree is autumn colors with some lovely bubbly bokeh behind it. Sharing today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
I felt for a summery picture today, I am tired of winter. This is a Dragonfly that I captured on a Pickerel Rush leaf this past summer. Looking forward to sights like this again this summer.
It's a double digit day! 😸 It's also Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! We have had a lot of dreary cold days so I feel for a flower that makes me happy and that is Black-eyed Susans. They usually bloom May through September. This past year I saw them in October still. This is a group that I have by my Gazebo pond. They usually prefer sunny spots but this spot is fairly shady and they do better here than anywhere else in my yard. Weird.
One of the few things that I enjoy about winter is when the Juncos show up. I find them very cute and fun to watch visitors to the food I put out. They are only in our area when it's cool and cold out, must not like the heat. Can't say as I blame them. 😸 I captured this one sitting in the tree resting between feeding. It was a really cold and windy day and the feathers were ruffled a lot.
Happy Monday and happy new week! Today's image is one more that I was able to capture and process from a snow we had in November. This one had a lovely center and rime covered extensions. It is 8 images stacked for focus.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! Today's image goes back to Rollag, Minnesota and the Western Minnesota Steam Thresher's Reunion. This is a drone shot I got while the 353 and it's train was leaving Baker Depot and heading out to the other side of the grounds to it's stop by the water tower. It was the year of Military Vehicles and you can see one displayed on the flatcar behind the locomotive.
When it is bitterly cold out, at times our storm doors will have these neat looking ice patterns on them. This one was very different than usual. I think it was due to the thawing that occurred during the day and then the re-freezing at night. The patterns reminded my of little suns with the re-frozen water drop in the middle and then the fern like ice radiating out from that. There was a bit of photo shopping involved because I overlaid the ice image on an orangy background and then blended the 2 layers. The color brought out the patterns more and I thought it appropriate due to the "sun" type patterns.
It's Friday, TGIF! When we had the Hoar Frost event recently, I was out walking. On the beginning of the walk it was all frosty and lovely and then on the way back it was melting and creating these lovely drops in things like this branch of my spruce tree. I chose this image for the lovely bubbly bokeh captured as well because Fridays Are Bokehlicious!
We have had some really bitter cold temperatures lately, at 0F during the day and below at night. The birdbath is heated to keep the water liquid and it had some really neat looking fern type frost on some ice around the top edge. This is some of it. This is 2 images stacked together for focus.
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is one I have always liked a lot, Cobaea Penstemon or Cobaea Beardtongue. It usually blooms in May and June. I find it to be rather picturesque. It has 4 fertile stamens and 1 infertile that has yellow hairs on it so they are often called Hairy beardtongues because of this.
The Cardinals have been very cooperative this winter, relatively speaking. I captured this one on New Years Eve as he was getting drinks from the backyard pond.
Happy Monday and new week! It's Martin Luther King Day here in the US and a holiday for a lot of people, myself included. We are hopefully on the last day of our bitter cold snap. Today is only supposed to be a high of 4F. UGH. The snow we have gotten the past few days has not even been good because when it was cold enough, then it was windy and broke it up. 😞 My image for today is another I captured back in November. This one was clear of rime and is a 15 image stack.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! It's a bitterly cold winter day here with a high predicted of -1F. 😨 Today's image goes back to a much warmer day at the beginning of October at the Abilene Heritage Days Festival. The Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad was running some of it's last excursions for the year. I captured this image as it was heading out for it's first run of the day. Unfortunately, unless things go more quickly than expected, the railroad will not be operating this engine this year because it is due for it's tube replacement and FRA inspection.
We actually had a significant snow again last week from Monday into Tuesday where we got about 7 inches. I took this image at 9:30 at night with my phone. My Pixel really impresses me at times, I did brighten this up slightly for the web but the detail it captured and the amount of light made it look like early morning or late afternoon. It was so beautiful and quiet out, I love snow like that. It wasn't good for macro snowflakes though, the wind was breaking them all up unfortunately and it wasn't very cold while it was snowing.
Happy Friday, TGIF! Today's image is another from the frost event we had a short time ago. My Teasels make for interesting subjects due to how the frost clings to them. I liked the subtle bubbly bokeh in this image as well. Sharing it today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
I feel for summertime today since we are cold and snowy and will be getting even colder. I captured this image in July of this past year of a Monarch butterfly on my Zinnia flowers. It's a sight I hope to see again this year. Hopefully many butterflies will come to visit.
It's a mirror digit day. 😃 It's also Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is one that I find quite lovely. I took this photo back in late May. This is Showy Evening Primrose. It usually blooms May and June. The flowers open in the evening and then usually close during the heat of the day but may remain open if it is cloudy out. This image shows very well how, as they age, they turn more pink in color.
Today's image is my first Red Tail Hawk capture for the new year. The light was pretty crappy, the sun was basically above it and it was very cloudy out. I had to play with it a lot to bring out detail and I think it turned out OK to share. 😊
Happy Monday and happy new week! We had some hoar frost again last week and it was even more pronounced than the frost in December. It's rare we get these conditions and now it has happened twice within a month's time. Makes for great photo opportunities. This is a branch of maybe my Lilac that looks like it was sugar coated.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog and the first one of 2024! I like to start off the year with my very favorite railroad, the Cumbres & Toltec in Colorado and New Mexico. I want to get back there and ride again soon, it's been over 5 years since my last trip and this photo is even older. I took this back when I was using a Sony point and shoot. It was a good camera though with a nice built in zoom. Anyway, in this image they are taking on water at Cumbres Pass before the locomotive heads back to Chama, NM. They had just been double heading up to the pass and this is the helper locomotive. I decided to go back to my roots of B&W for this image and I think it worked pretty well with that great sky.
Today's image is another snowflake that I was able to capture near the end of November. This is a 5 image stack where I was able to get it all in focus. You can see some of the rime that was affecting a lot of the flakes during this snow. We don't often get the very cold weather and snow at the same time needed for the really nice, clean flakes. When it is warmer they pick up the little pieces of ice as they form. It provides interest to them at times I think when there is not too much covering them to block out the beautiful details.
It's Friday! Normally I would say TGIF, but my vacation ends today. 😒 Anyway, Friday's here on the Blog are about bokeh mainly because Friday's Are Bokehlicious! I am going to start off 2024's bokeh images with one of my new favorite flowers, Cosmos. I am looking forward to growing these flowers again this year. The bokeh was provided by the fern-like leaves in the background.
Today's image is one I was able to get on a visit last year to the Overland Park Arboretum. The Arboretum has several different types of Peony flowers and as I was photographing this variety I was photo-bombed by this honeybee. 😁
It's the first Wildflower Wednesday of 2024 here on the Blog! I am going to start the year off with one of my favorites that always makes me happy. This is a Common Sunflower and our state flower of Kansas. These bloom July though September and can grow to 12 feet high! When actively growing the leaves and flower heads follow the path of the sun as it moves overhead.
Just a mention as we start the year off, there are pages on the Blog where I have the wildflowers I have seen and photographed here in Kansas listed by color to help identify the ones you may see as they start emerging.
I thought I would start off the new year and birds with another of my Kestrel hunting photos. Maybe it will bring me luck in having more opportunities like this to photograph birds. It was quite cool to be able to see and capture this one while it was hovering and looking for food on a trip to Missouri in November.
Happy New Year!! It's a double digit day to start off the year! 😀 Hope this year is a good one for us all. I thought I would start the day off and the year off with a beautiful sunrise that I photographed in mid December. This one was so stunning that even one of my employees pointed it out to me because he knew I liked to take photographs. A beautiful start to that day and hopefully a great start to this year.
