7/31/16

Last day of July already and what a different one with the high heat and good amount of rain.  It rained a bit last night to make it nice and steamy today.  My image today is of a different kind of steam, my favorite, a steam train and of my favorite railroad so as not to bore too much with images from the Henry Ford.  :-)  This is Cumbres & Toltec locomotive 463 working in the yard in Chama New Mexico after a trip we went on a couple years ago.  The C&T was voted in a poll from USA Today recently, the Favorite Tourist Railroad.  I have to agree, love it.

7/30/16

I felt like a Cardinal image today.  He looks like he is right out of Angry Birds. :-)  It's an older image I captured in winter and I like the bright pop of red.

7/29/16

Well, we got a little over an inch of rain yesterday again.  The Farmers Almanac was partly wrong this year so I am glad about that.  We were supposed to be hot and dry but it's been kind of a wet summer off and on.  Had another cool morning today so that was lovely as well.  My image today is of a Pond Hawk Dragonfly that was visiting the pond and garden last weekend.  I captured it on a flower stalk as it paused to rest in-between darting around.

7/28/16

So I finally saw my first Monarch butterfly around my house that was sitting on a flower the other day but before I could get a photo of it a stupid wasp chased it away.  Ugh.  So my photo today is another from the Milford Lake Nature Center.  I captured this lovely male Black Swallowtail butterfly sitting on a Cone flower.

7/27/16

So this is the other bird that I was able to get, what I feel for me, are very good images of that is elusive here in Kansas.  While in Michigan, I wanted to see Lake Erie so one evening we drove to the shore.  While we were walking I saw a Heron so I put my zoom lens on.  Well, I was quite surprised but this Heron walked so close to me that it became difficult to get the whole bird in the shot with that lens.  It was quite different when here you are still at least 50 yards from them and they are flying off.  I got several very nice images of it and this was one of my favorites.  

7/26/16

What a beautiful morning there was today!  Mid 60s in July, ahhhhhhh.  :-)  My image once more is from my fabulous day of being able to have a flight in this B-17 bomber aircraft from 1945.  As I mentioned another day, it was hard to get an image without someone in it polishing the plane and in this shot there are 2 people doing that.  The plane was gorgeous and shiny because of their work.  I did take out a couple of people who were standing near the plane.  The man walking on the left was our pilot, a very nice guy who sat and chatted with us a bit before the flight and who gave us a very nice ride.

7/25/16

Well this week is starting out very nicely!  Rain this morning and cooler temps this week.  Yay.  My image is one that I shot lat week while I was out watering.  This is a female Mantis that I spied moving about in my Cleome plant one evening.  I had never seen one so green and she blended in very well and I would not have spotted her if she hadn't been moving about the plant.  I apparently watered her a bit because if you look closely at her, you can see a drop of water hanging off her alien looking face.  :-)