Monday Macro

From my walk last Thursday.  I love the colors in this photo!  I won't be walking this week because I have some early morning appointments on Tuesday and Thursday.  I did 2.5 hours of walking yesterday at Sam's and that messed with my left foot/ankle so it's probably good to avoid a two mile walk for the next couple of days.

We seem to be experiencing a monsoon this afternoon.  Torrential rains, no thunder, no lightning.  Good afternoon for viewing three new DVD's I bought -- the subject?  Watercolor painting instruction. ;-)

It's Thursday

It's Thursday and that means it is time for a walk  -- and a blog entry about the walk!  I got some really pretty shots with my cell phone this morning.  You'd never know this is just one of the cheap little Motorola flip phones.  It has a web browser, though -- and most of the stuff that other, more expensive phones have.

So, let's get to walking.

The clouds were magnificent this morning.  I don't think I need to say anything else.  Just look at this first shot I took.  We had not been walking on the causeway very long before I slowed us down to take this.  I loved the reflected light from the sun rising behind us and the reflections in the water.  Pretty, huh?

While I was taking that picture, Dolores, who had brought her camera this time, was taking a picture of the silvery vista behind us.  So I did, too.

Loved the icy look to it but, believe me, it was NOT cool out there this morning.  It was at least 80 degrees and humid with no breeze to speak of at that point.  We turned around and continued toward the island.  As we came to the second bridge, I was drawn to the sky again.  I'm sure you can see why.

I resolutely put that phone away in my waist pack and concentrated on walking as it was getting warmer and warmer with still no breeze.  We finally got to the island and I was drawn to my favorite spots on the north end.

These palms are where I used to sit with a book in my lap.  I read very little because the view is so distracting.  The clouds above them were a little wispy.  Since my surgery for skin cancer last winter, I am very careful about sun exposure and will not be sitting under those palms again.  Reflected light rays from the water and the sand is just as bad as sitting in the sun.

I walked my favorite path in the opening in the sea grape hedge and took another shot of one of my favorite views.  I never tire of it.

And as I looked at the sea grapes I noticed that the leaves have started to turn a little.  They are getting that rust color that the grapes will turn.  Can Fall be too far away?  Wishful thinking. ;-)

The grapes were still really green.  I did get a macro shot because I loved these two complementary secondary colors.  I get so many of my color ideas from the colors around me.

I think I will eventually use that one in a painting of some sort.  As we rounded the end of the island, we finally felt a breeze.  I noticed one of the dunes that our park rangers had constructed and decided to take a picture of it and the palms that they planted about 3 years ago now, I think.

I love our little beach and its causeway.  I love our park, too, but right now it is full of mosquitoes!  I and my friends wasted no time once we hit the trail to the parking lot.  Another walk completed, it was time to get home, shower, and spend the rest of the day doing less physical things. We'll meet again on Tuesday to do it all again. 

Tropical Downpours

I guess we're back to normal Florida summers.  The rainy season has definitely set in.  You would never know that it was 8:00 AM when I took this picture this morning.  It is literally pouring.  I think we have gotten an inch and a half already.

And the webcam up the coast shows how socked in we are.

Lots of thunder. Lots of lightning.  It has been impossible to sleep since about 5:30.  For me, anyway.  My hubby seems to be managing well. ;-)

Monday Macro

"I don't like cameras."

Beau's groomer, Lee, has his work cut out for him tomorrow.  He is very scruffy right now.  His hair is so long and thick, it makes his paws look gigantic.  In fact, I told him just the other night that if he grows into those feet, he will be a BIG DOG.  He just looked at me.  His look said, "I AM a BIG DOG."  I guess he's right.  He sure runs the show around here.

Love Modern Technology

We all know what a geek I am about anything remotely "techy" so I'm sure my friends are expecting today's blog entry to be about one of my Kindles.  I do love my DX and my Fire and use them every day.  "Or maybe,"  they think, "she's about to write about her new DVD duplicator or her new battery-powered portable HD-TV."

Nope.  But it's close.  It doesn't even belong to me.

It's web cams. Yes, web cams.  The hundreds and thousands of web cams around the world.

On a night when storms coming from the south and east prevent a trip to the beach to watch the sunset, all I have to do is find a good web cam and "Voila!"  I can watch the sun set 15 miles north of us while lightning cracks and thunder roars in the skies over my house.

Inn on the Beach
Hudson Beach, FL

Lovely evening.  In Hudson, anyway.

Reflections

I've been back from my walk for a little bit now.  Fed the pup, read my email, transferred my pictures from my cell phone and  am ready to share my photos with you guys.  We "upped the ante" this morning and decided to walk at 7 instead of 7:30, hoping it would be a little cooler.

And it was -- just a little.  But what it was the most was spectacularly beautiful.  I got there a little before my friends, Betty and Dolores. I got out of the car and walked over to the seawall on the edge of the parking lot and saw this.

Looking south toward Sunset Beach from Howard Park Sea Wall

"Wow", I thought.  "The water looks smooth as glass this morning."  There had been storms off the coast this morning and I listened carefully for any thunder.  You learn early living here that if you can hear thunder, you should not be outside.  Lightning has killed or permanently disabled many a Floridian or visitor to Florida.  You do not want to be in the middle of a causeway where you are the highest thing around.

I looked toward the west and actually did a double take.  Can anything more beautiful than a sunrise in the east reflecting on a bank of clouds on the western horizon?  Not for me this morning.

Looking west past the mangroves from the seawall at Howard Park.

As lovely as that picture is, the real scene was far more beautiful/  A mullet jumped just before I snapped the shutter of the cell phone and the slight ripple to the left of the small clump of mangroves was the only movement of the water.  While this makes for wonderful reflections, it bodes ill for cooling breezes for our walk.

As I was taking a picture of the walkway to the causeway, I heard another car pull into a parking space.

Trail from parking lot to the causeway at Howard Park

Soon, our third walker pulled in and we all began our walk promptly at 7.  No matter whether I am walking or riding, I never tire of the view in front of us when we emerge from the park onto the causeway.  And this morning's was just spectacular.

Looking from the east end of the causeway out toward the island at Howard Park.

It was definitely worth getting up before dawn to enjoy the beauty of the rising sun's reflections in our western skies.  And, it was a little cooler.  We did find a nice breeze on the island and had more breeze as we were walking back toward the mainland.  But not enough to ripple the reflections....

Monday Macro

"Phil"

Left Over Paint

I had some paint left in my palette and decided I wanted to experiment with my liquid watercolors and also use up the paint before cleaning up my palette to do a small landscape.  So I wet the paper and sprayed liquid watercolor in different colors and intensities and went to bed.  This morning I looked at it and decided that it should be a bouquet of some sort of  flower.  So that's what I named it after I took my brushes and turned the blobs in to some semblance of flowers.

Bouquet of Some Sort of Flower

Plus Baby's Breath.

Snicker.

;-)

Walk this way ....

Smiling as I type this.  I'll tell ya, by the time we finish our two mile walk in this heat and humidity, no one wants to be walking "this way." "Trudge" is a more apt description. At the beginning of our walk, we're all pretty perky and keeping a pretty brisk pace.  Except for me because right away as we come out of the trees from the park, I am greeted with this spectacular view.

Isn't that simply gorgeous?  The building cumulus clouds along the horizon predict high humidity and possible summer storms later.  The reflections on the water tell you that, once again, we've got "not nary" a breeze.  It's going to be a long haul this morning.  We continue to keep up a good pace and are relieved to find that there is somewhat of a breeze on the island itself.  I tell my companions that they can continue around the parking lot and I'll catch up or meet them after I get a picture on the beach for my blog.  Dolores and Trish follow me instead and I snap several pictures with my phone, not realizing that because it has been next to the frozen water bottle in my fanny pack, all those shots will be unfocused because the camera got too cold. By the time I got to the beach, however, the camera has warmed up.

It is obvious that the park rangers have been busy.  We can see tractor tire tracks up and down the beach and piles of seaweed are waiting to be moved to the rocks forming the jetty. This picture is taken from the north end of the beach.  Lots of nice sand.  TS Debbie didn't do us in as we had feared.

I turned around and walked up a slight incline and looked over on the rocks at this end. The water is very still and gently laps at the shore and rocks.  There are those gorgeous clouds again.

We walk along the hard packed sand instead of going back to the parking lot and then the "trudge" truly begins -- up hill through loose, powdery white sand.

We reach the path and have a brief respite under the palms. I'm bringing up the rear...

The sun is very bright and hot now.  It as been up since 6:40AM and it is now around 8:00.  We walk past my favorite palm tree and I cannot resist another shot.  I am grateful that I am not having to buy 35mm film anymore.  I must have a hundred different shots of this thing.

I put my cell phone back in my fanny pack; we stop in the shade of a storage shed to hydrate and then the "trudge" resumes. We remark now about how much longer the causeway looks now. When we leave the causeway and hit the relative coolness of the trail leading through the mixture of palms, live oaks and pines to our cars, we slow down.  We are telling ourselves it is because we have to have a "cool down" period before getting in the cars.Yeah, right.  We are definitely walking far differently than when we started out.

Another walk behind us, each person in this tenacious trio admits that if we hadn't had someone waiting to meet us at the park this morning, we would have rolled over and gotten another 40 winks.

We're glad we didn't. We allowed ourselves to get into the shape that makes this a long haul right now, but it will get better and maybe we deserve to suffer a little right now. The long term benefits will be awesome.

Crockery

It has been a long time since I have done a still life and it is really not my forté.  I prefer landscapes and seascapes, birds and flowers, but I have been studying some art books and decided to give it a shot this afternoon.  I'm not unhappy enough with it to throw it away. But I came close. ;-)

Crockery

I do have a favorite still life, though.  Two of them, in fact.

The Vase

A Bucketful

I need to keep working at it to get it back.  It is very true of this as it is in many things in life.  "If you don't use it, you lose it."  I have let too many other things take precedence over my painting.  No more.  I promised myself at the beginning of this year that I was going to cut down on my volunteer commitments and take more time for myself.

I am finally doing it.  And it feels very good.

Tuesday's Walk

It was "hotter than heck" out there yesterday morning at 7:30.  Breeze was 5 mph or less and the Gulf was standing still with only the occasional ripple; and, those ripples were caused by a fish or bird -- "not nary a breeze" as my grandmother used to say.

We noticed the seaweed as we started walking toward the island.  Before we were through, the park maintenance people were out there raking it off the sides of the causeway.  They can use tractors on the beach, but have to rake the old fashioned way along the causeway.  Hot work, but somebody has to do it.  Just glad it is not I.

It was so calm and peaceful.  It seemed odd that there were not many birds around.  I don't think we saw a single gull.  Those feathered rats were probably up at the shopping center parking lots dumpster diving.  But we did see that egret and a heron.  A few of the cormorant colony sat on their favorite rocks but the tide was pretty high so the rest were probably still in the mangroves that you see in the distance.  There were a few dolphin in the distance but they didn't come close despite Dolores's whistling to them.

It was so hot that the causeway seemed extra long yesterday morning.

I was hoping for a breeze once we got to the island, but was disappointed once again.  Still no breeze.  So I stopped every once in while in a shady spot and took a picture with my cell phone.

Northeast end of island on the Sound side.

Path to the beach on the north end of the island.

View of the Gulf from the south end of the island.

As we were finishing the last leg of our two mile walk, we stopped to watch the water because there was a pod of dolphins roaming around looking for fish.  The cormorants had their eyes on them, too.  But no luck for the dolphins or the birds.  We gave up on getting the dolphin close enough for a photo op and headed back to the cool A/C of our cars.

This morning is the 236th birthday of our wonderful country.  As we celebrate today, I pray for reasonable compromise between the factions that are ripping our country apart at this time.  Hatred of anything Republican or Democrat is to me a completely unreasonable stance.  There is good on both sides.  And bad.  Our country was founded by men who believed in religious freedom, many of whom were not Christian.  They were Deists.  They were not atheist. They believed in God.  They also believed that so one should be persecuted for his or her religious beliefs -- whatever they were.  Some of us have forgotten that.

Enjoy your Fourth.

Monday Macro