A nice night for a walk...

I took advantage of one of the great days in Minnesota to walk around my neighborhood lake,  Lake Harriet.  It was, as one one person said, one of the six or seven days of the year that make it worth living in Minnesota.  I expect the next day in September.  Maybe it seemed so nice because of the awful weather news in the rest of the country.  51 inches of rain since Friday?  No appreciable rain since May?  We have a screwed up country, weather-wise.  I am just glad that there isn't any global warming. 

I jest, but Houston and the rest of Texas is breaking my heart.  The images are searing and the suffering is real.  My donations are on the way, but how do you ever fill that bucket of need?  I am heartened by the real sense of cooperation and community that appears in times like this.  There is not a red or blue state when the state is really just very very wet--I can only hope that this small spark of unity might continue.

My walk was nice--it is about a 4.5 mile jaunt so that is good for me.  At this time of the day there are LOTS of people on the paths and also lots of puppies.  I got to pet some of them.  The puppies, at least.  The people are, well, sleek.  And then there is me....  I have been called a very many things but never, never, have I been called sleek.  Lots of tennis tans and ripples from running and other things.  Then there was me, in a 20 year old tee-shirt and jeans instead of spandex.  I wore "running" shoes only because they were blue and matched my eyes!  But there was room for older pudgy people, too, and it is a very nice walk.

The pictures are pretty blah,  A good camera but apparently not that great of a lens.  I am road testing lenses because of an upcoming trip.  Yep, following my standard, "I am not working so let's go to Europe" financial plan, I have a trip planned in October with a friend to the hinterlands of England.  Poor financial sense but a great thing to look forward to.  But not with this lens.  Sigh.  I only have about 9 other lenses to choose from.  What to do, what to do?

Dew bejeweled and heron tongues...

I was able to visit the local heron rookery and flower depository in scenic Golden Valley this past weekend and got to photograph a plethora of visual treats.  My friend was persuaded to get up early for this adventure and we definitely enjoyed the time and coffee and muffins made it even better.  Dew still bejeweled the flowers and, gasp, Helen the Heron graced us with her queenly presence!

Someday I will take a macro lens with me, but these flowers were taken with the simple Canon zoom on a Canon 7d Mk2 for all those geeks and gear heads out there.  The heron photos were takem with the same camera but with a Leitz Telyt 560mm F 5.6, though you probably knew that just by looking at these shots.  They are surprisingly sharp for a 50 year old lens.  It was well worth schlepping the 12 pound lens to the pond, and Helen cooperated beautiful, flying nearer to me just for her close-up.  These are cropped pretty tight, but I think that you can see her beauty and charm.  That lens seems to be a 830mm lens on that Canon so it appears about 18 times closer than our "normal" view.  Kind of fun.  And who knew herons had tongues?  Or eyelids that slid from the side to protect them from the water when they fished?  Helen is amazing!  Double click to make them bigger!

Tattered

Tattered,  I like that word and it seems fitting in lots of ways.  I went with my friend to her neighborhood bird/flower sanctuary this past weekend to stalk the mighty herons of Golden Valley but I came up dry on that quest.  They were probably doing heron things in some other first ring metro suburb.  There were several markets and hmm.,,did the Twins play at home?  One never knows with those wily and shy birds.  And yes, that is how you spell wily.  It is different than that stupid dog and bird, the chaser and chase-ee.

The flowers, however, were out it all their tattered splendor.  It is still in the 70s and 80s around here so it does still seem like summer, and the calendar does give us another six weeks or so of the season  but it is waning.  Flowers are fading and are more concerned about their seeds than their brightly-colored petals.  Cone flowers are among my favorite flowers but they are more cones than flowers at this point in the summer.  I am not sure of all the rest of the flowers but they caught my eye for one reason or another.  Remember--they all get bigger--just click on the photo.

This camera also caught my eye.  An 1908 Kodak Premo Pony No 7.  In general I have little interest in Kodak cameras as they are too numerous to be all that interesting.  The older ones like this, though, are just stunning.  It cost more than $125 in  1908 when the average salary was $400-600.00.  A dentist might make $1,500.  It is all rich leather mahogany, and shiny chrome and it works like the day it was sold.  Since it is so "un-tattered" it is for sale on Ebay with a hope that it will go to a good home.

Me?  Well, I am a little tattered. Work of late was not fun and I guess the operative word is "was."  New adventures, right?  There has to be at least one or two windmills to tilt or wrongs to right within 40 or so miles, right?  Right?  I am looking now but if you see any that you think I might be interested in, let me know.