Is this a look or what?

I think the ribbons on her ears are a nice touch.

Sadie's embarrassed by them.

I like them and think she looks adorable.

Jay, the good sport who walks her in the park, thinks they're ridiculous.

He was ready with a story should anyone ask:

"They're antennas; she's actually a robot."

I like that, too.

The original art car

Finster's Caddy.

You can keep the painted daisies and faux rhinestones...

Paradise Gardens

A couple weeks back I visited Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens. I'd never heard of Finster before visiting the High Museum in GA and had been sort of plotting to see the place ever since.

: )

He's probably most well known for the type of work featured in this post... the fact that I included such a photo in a post relating to a client's mental illness tells you what I think about Finster's mental stability, but anyway...

Rather than being turned off by the religious nature of his art, I think I like it because of that... it's so improbable to find bible verses painted on bicycles, on Cadillacs, on windowpanes and random pieces of cardboard.

Sadly, most of his "good" art has been carted away to museums and what's left behind at Paradise Gardens is mostly just the weird stuff, but I enjoyed that, too.

; )

I could (and may just!) do a whole post on the randomness of the place.

Mostly I thought I'd share these couple pix of the mosaic work I found throughout the garden...

Finster was a collector of found objects and a recycler extraordinaire.

Nothing there is very well-kept anymore, but that makes the beautiful bits that much more interesting, I think.

Caption this!

from last week's visit to St. Simon's Island, GA

A not so favorite thing

Looking tortured in the Chattahoochee River...

: )

Sadie's first adventure

How to lose a new dog in less than 4 days

Maybe she was bored. Or wanted to get to know the new neighborhood.

Maybe, disoriented, she was trying to find her way back to the shelter and a life she knew.

Most probably she was just terrified.

Whatever the reason, last Thursday she bolted out the front door, took a left at the end of the driveway and disappeared for good into a steamy August morning.

We searched on foot, on bikes, in the car. Despondent, I called out to her in unfamiliar places, my voice still unknown to her, using a name she hadn't yet learned.

It was hopeless.

We put up signs. We waited. I walked the neighborhood for the tenth time. Shelter volunteers that had grown to love her in her time with them came out to help us look for her. Nothing.

Until the phone rang that evening and someone had rescued her, yet again. It was incomprehensible to me that she'd been found; I thought I would never see her again.

How she spent that day, we'll never know... how she navigated two very, very busy roads without being hit to end up 3 miles away... how a Good Samaritan convinced her to stop in her running long enough to be caught...

I am so thankful for this happy ending and for this dog I barely know and already can't help but love...

Sadie: starting over with a "senior" shelter dog

We sat in the parking lot of the shelter and very nearly went home without her, for a second time. Then we twisted each other's arm and, just like that, it was done.

A new dog!

Some very basic and important part of me is made happier by having a dog. I'd been trying to deny that the past couple years since splitting with the ex-DH, but all the practicalities in the world couldn't change that part of myself.

So... meet Sadie!

She's 10 years old and a mix of perfectly polite and adorably unsure of herself. She's cowering under the desk as I write this during a thunderstorm. Her first inclination when feeling anxious is to climb on top of something. She wanders around, following behind us like a houseguest that's run out of tourist attractions to visit. She's scared of cars and utterly oblivious to the cat who's in a state of permanent hiss.

Nobody slept the first night. Last night we slept shifts on the floor beside her. For tonight I'm stil hopeful. Little by little her head and tail are coming up and she's making tentative eye contact.

Who knows what her life before was.

Her eyes are sad, sad, sad.

We mean to change that.

Blue daze

Of the twenty-five (!) or so plants that I'm experimenting with out on the deck these are, by far, the happiest. It was so beautiful out there early in the season... I should have thought to photograph the flowers sooner.

Says who?

Who says you can't have strawberry shortcake for dinner?

: )

It's summer, after all and strawberries are in season. I've been using this recipe and the only challenge has been getting the real whipped cream just right. Any tips?

Gardening in a furnace

"One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides." --W.E. Johns

Finally (!) I'm starting to feel overrun with tomatoes. Luckily, it's the cherry tomatoes that are first to bear and those disappear easily enough. Better than half of what's ripe at each visit is devoured before I even leave the community garden with the day's harvest. I munch away while I water and while I weed. Makes all the sweat seem so much more worthwhile somehow.

: )

I planted a bunch of heirloom tomatoes... Rutgers was the first of the "big" tomatoes to ripen, but I haven't tasted one yet. Each one I've brought home has mysteriously disappeared before I got a bite! The first of the lovely pink Brandywines is almost ready... those are a favorite and will be hidden away in my purse, if necessary!

The heat of the sun here is something else... like gardening in a furnace! I'm surprised anything survives, really. I'm approaching this first summer as little more than an experiment to see what'll grow and how well. Cucumbers did well, but the vines have turned to dust in the last week. Just as well... I was getting a bit overwhelmed with them. The summer squash looked beautiful and I got half a dozen that I still need to cook, but the plants were overrun with bugs. I'm still waiting on the peppers. I also planted tomatillos for the first time... anyone know anything about them? Lots of flowers, but no fruit set. Curious.

I spend some time at each visit just wandering around the garden, enjoying being around growing things. I think that's what I like most about being there. I love to see what other people are growing and how well their vegetables are doing. There's a couple of beehives maintained by students... those are fun to look in on. Plenty of bluebirds and towhees, too, keeping the bugs at bay.

It's supposed to be 106 this Saturday... you'll find me somewhere shady, for sure.

Sunflowers

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals.  Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.  ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers

Dear June

I love your school's-out new-found freedom. Your sweet morning sunlight that tastes like past-ripe strawberries. Your just-right weather that's not too hot, not too cold. Your seventh inning stretches and horses waiting at the gate. Your sun-colored pines and blue-eyed skies. Your traveling butterflies and too many birthday celebrations. Please stay for a while...

Self-portrait at 42

Birthday silliness at the Fernbank Science Center where we had hoped to watch Venus do its thing across the sun. There was a sell-out crowd, so we played in the kaleidoscope instead.

9/100

It's been forever since I posted a stranger photo, hasn't it?

; )

Back at the beginning of March I stumbled across a Civil War re-enactment that was happening in north Florida.

That's an interesting sub-culture, let me tell ya.

I wandered around for a pleasant couple of hours watching these men and women while they waited for the rain to stop so they could have their battle. I still can't get straight which color uniform belongs to which side. But I know who won the war!

Such a Yankee...

This man had one of those faces that the camera loves; I only wish he weren't so shy and would've looked at me...

This photo is #9 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

Fledging day

Necessity does the work of courage.  

~Nicholas Murray Butler

Too close, too far

Ever been too close to a Sandhill Crane? I wouldn't have thought it possible, but anything's possible in Florida, I think. Much like a previous encounter with Sandhills, I was pretty dazzled!

We found these at the Viera Wetlands in Brevard County, Florida when we visited in mid-March. It's such a cool place... be sure to get there someday! We drove the car loop and happened upon these two Sandhills moseying along the dike as if they owned the place.

What a gorgeous bird! And to think that they're hunted across much of their range.

Ridiculous, really.

I'd been hoping to spot a group of cranes in their migration over Atlanta; tried, in fact, to listen for them anytime I was outdoors in early Spring, but I never got that lucky. Instead I was pursued by two across the dike at Viera... we kept pulling the car forward... me in the grass, backing away in retreat...

These birds are very, very tall.

And not afraid of cameras.
 

Later in the afternoon we found a pair at their nest... at this, they were alarmed by our presence and we left to watch some Blue-wing Teal that weren't bothered by us nearby. Someone in a car after us lingered too long near their nest and we heard their unmistakable rattling calls of protest.

And still later in the afternoon, we spotted this... a Sandhill Crane colt! It was far off in the distance, feeding with its parents in the middle of a cow pasture that borders the wetlands. You might have to enlarge this pic to spot the baby... too far away this time!

Nauset Light and around Cape Cod

"Sometimes just looking up and seeing the light is enough." 

~Terri Guillemets

Birders are a generous lot, as a rule. Mention on FB that you'll be visiting a particular place and before you know it, birder friends will have dinner plans and an itinerary made for you, including convenient stops along the way from the airport where you can find whatever species of bird it is that you're pining after.

I'd been pining away for Piping Plovers, it being March and all. March is the month when plovers return to NJ beaches from wherever it is that they've spent the winter months. March in the Northeast is the most miserable of months, I think, because Spring is so close on the horizon and you want it so badly, but the weather is dank and damp and mostly miserable, cold and gray.

On the tails of a short vacation in Florida, a couple days on Cape Cod in March seemed an impossibility... I'd given away most all of my cold-weather clothes before moving here and going from shorts and flip-flops to thermal underwear and gloves in the span of a week felt ridiculous! But... there might be Piping Plovers!

I spent an afternoon wandering around the city of Boston... remembering the cold and delighting in a Dunkin' Donuts on almost every corner! Spring had the willows in Boston Commons that lovely green that willows know how to perfect.

Weeping willows are not very common here. Surprising that I should miss them...

The coast of Florida is, of course, beautiful and I'm glad for each and every chance to visit, but beaches there lack something that beaches in the Northeast have in abundance. It might be the wind that never rests. Or air that is thick with salt and the smell of low tide. Oh, how I miss that smell! Maybe it's just atmosphere and the feeling of home. There are beautiful and scenic places where I live now, but no easy access to the ocean.

We met up with a local Cape Cod bird club and spent an appropriately cold and misty, rainy morning on the beach at Nauset Light (thanks for the suggestion Mojoman!) looking at winter birds. We wandered along dirt roads on the Cape looking at ducks and exploring the ponds that Mary Oliver described in her poetry.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast perched on Gull Hill in Provincetown... and scanned the harbor for breaching whales while we had afternoon wine and cheese and watched Northern Gannets dive into the ocean from the warmth of our rental car at Herring Cove Beach.

Race Point Beach had plover fencing installed, but no Piping Plovers, yet.

Compensation for the lack of plovers was found at the wharf in P-town, where we found Harlequins and Common Eiders within spitting distance! Eiders have always been one of those birds for me... I'd never had a really satisfying look at them before and anywhere that one can see Harlequins without a treacherous jetty-walk (like at Barnegat Light) is worth a visit.

Of course I didn't have a proper camera with me, you know.

Silly.

I'd love to get back to Cape Cod in the summer someday... maybe even visit Nantucket. I'd imagine late September to be the perfect time of year... maybe I could catch the Piping Plovers before they depart...

Elf Orpine, blooming

An Atlanta Audubon Society bird walk at nearby Panola Mountain gave us an excuse to check in with the Elf Orpine at Arabia Mountain...

It was blooming, finally, that last weekend in March.

The wildflowers carpet the outcrop in pleasing patterns of pink and white... 

Sandwort was in full bloom, too!

Enough soil accumulates for these neat little plants to grow...

Enough water had accumulated in this one depression for baby froglets to grow! I hope they mature before the pool dries up...

Arabia Mountain is such a neat place; I can't wait to see what is has waiting at our next visit.

A show of feathers

A caveat*

Photographing terns on a nude beach requires careful cropping.

 ; )

So my dilemma was this: resist the opportunity to photograph the royal terns, laughing gulls, willets and black-bellied plovers loafing together in the sunshine at Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore or bare (tee hee!) with the discomfort of using a camera amid a bunch of naked people.

I chose the assumption that those folks wouldn't mind the long-as-my-arm telephoto lens so long as I didn't ever point it directly at them. I never figured on them to walk purposefully, almost, and repeatedly through my frame. Or to approach me, full-frontal(!), to talk camera gear.

What was I thinking!!!

Never again, never again.

Lesson learned.

*parts of this photo have been excessively blurred in deference to the comfort of readers.

Gem of the Woods

"All the wooden path is broken 

By warm tints along the way,

 And the low and sunny slope 

Is alive with sudden hope. 

When there comes the silent token 

Of an April day, -- 

Blue hepatica."

Dora Read Goodale

(1866-1915)