Winter wind

 On January 22 we had some high winds and our power was out for about 4 hours.

 The weather forecast had said that we would have this wind storm, so I was ready for it.  I had heated the soup.  Found the candles and flash lights.  We had plans for cooking on the wood burning stove in Pat's room.  Just like camping; we were going to have our treat... fried spam.  The power went off before lunch.  I spent the time building and maintaining a roaring fire in the fireplace, and Pat had his stove going.  I really like this fireplace heat but never seem to be bothered to make a fire.  The power came back on again before supper, but we had our fried spam anyway.  The house smelled rather like a campfire, so this worked well.  The photos were taken later in the evening when it was dark out.  These little lamps each contain a different alcohol based fuel that burns in the three colors.  Very pretty.

 During the storm, the birds were flocking around the suet feeder that Andy has hanging in the back patio area.  The humming birds were hungry too.

 Rufous sided towhee

Starling

There were more birds and I have more pictures, but do not have time to process them all.  Our big patchy colored robin still dominates the robin population this year.  Next year, maybe I will have to put the feeders out in the front, on the tree.  Maybe I will see the woodpeckers visiting again.  I want to see more butterflies and think too many birds might be bad for the butterfly population.  

Andy and Tara have moved into their own home and we have the suite empty again.  We will do some renovation -- floors and paint and then decide what we want to do with it.  Its kinda nice to have our home to ourselves again.  They might take an orange tree or two; but later.

Marlene and Art were over to dinner.  We had mulligatawny, smoked turkey legs with ratatouille and quinoa, with chocolate mousse for dessert.  Was all good.  They are thinking about whether or not they want an orange tree for their new place. They are slowly getting unpacked, too.

I have made batches of soup and ratatouille, and so have some good lunches and dinners on hand, without a lot work.  The indoor plants are watered and the laundry is done.  Now, I need to find some time to do some stuff on Megashot.net.  It seems I am going to be creating another community for butterflies.  An internet contact from Megashot and before who is from Oregon has become very gung ho about raising Monarchs.  This is very exciting and to be encouraged.  We need more monarchs on the West Coast.  I need to get some milkweed growing.  Dave has some plants on order already.  Last autumn I brought home a couple of milkweed seed pods.  I put the seeds into pots last Autumn and they have been on the deck for the winter.  I hope they sprout.  The milkweed seems to be on the noxious weed list.  Strange.   I don't see any of it growing here.  There are different kinds of it, so hopefully I will be able to find some plants at the nurseries later this year.   

I managed to get the rose by the front door pruned back a bit.  It has been very warm out today.  I also cut the butterfly bush back to about 12 inches high.  I stuck the cut ends in to the ground along the strip between our driveways.  Hopefully they will root.  These plants, too are suppose to be invasive.  I have never noticed too many of them around, either.  Broom... yeah... far too much of that stuff.  What good is it anyway?  Maybe sheep can eat it?

Birds at the feeder

The starling, the rufous sided towhee, and the fox sparrow are all usually ground feeders, but having a look at the feeder is always an option for them.  There was a Flicker on the deck railing but I did not get a good photo.  Actually none of the photos are that good.  The back garden is just teeming with birds.  There were juncos, and house finches, house sparrows, alaska and western robins, and I have probably missed some. 
I have four pint jars of very yummy pickled peppers and 3 of pickled beets.  These pickles are really easy to make.  There is no salt in them just lots of sugar, vinegar and pickling spice. 
Megashot continues to grow steadily, and there is lots to do on the site!

Birds in the Autumn Garden

The humming birds are around and feeding.  There are two of them squabbling over the feeder.  Thie house finch was in the apple tree, which is a fairly long reach for my little 12X lens on the Canon S3 IS.   Seeing a group of birders walking down the street carrying tripods and probably cameras, too; has inspired me to try to capture a few of the the birds in the back yard.  I don't know if I am ambitious enough to carry my tripod around though. 
I have put some apples out in the deer pasture and they are slowly being eaten.  We made a heaped up apple pie today.  There will be roasted chicken and apple pie tonite.  Our Scottish guests have arrived but we have not seen them yet.  They seem to have disappeared.  Have no idea what they have planned for dinner.  They can join us if they want to.. there will be enough to go around.

Garden in February

 

The Anna's hummingbirds have over wintered.   They seem to have survived.

The view of the drystream meandering under the deck.  The moss is luxuriant under the steps and up to outter post that holds up the deck.  The rest of the moss garden needs more encouragement.  It is coming along nicely, considering I just started it last summer.    This is a view of the water garden from deck.  Photos from the 15 of February.

Today when I went to throw fish food over the deck railing into the pond I was dismayed to see that the pond was about one quarter empty.  I had just topped it up two days ago.  So, this required immediate action to rectify the situation.  Some of the stones from under the little Lebanon cedar had slid into the pond.  They were on the pot ledge, so I could reach them and drag them out.  I examined the area around the pond and found no other damage.  I can only assume that the water fall was running too  fast and I was losing water out the side of it.  Either that or there was a great pink elephant drinking and I missed it!  I cleaned the filter on the pump and reset it to run at a lower feed of water to the fall.  And topped up the pond again.  I shut off the pump to the waterfall.  If I lose water again, I will have to consider that I have a serious pond leak in the pond.  I have no idea what I would do if that is the case.  Perhaps get the pond done professionally.  Later in the afternoon I went out to see if the water level had changed.  The water level seemed to be topped up.  AND.. I saw the fish... I could count at least 6 of them.  So, if there was a creature in the pond, it had not been after the fish.  I have some black plastic pipe where the fish can hide from predators, too.  My fish are very wary and do not even come up to feed.

I have most of my clothes ready to pack for our trip.  I need to have the legs of one pair of pants  shortened.  Tomorrow I shop again.  I would like to get a couple or three blouse tops and some very comfy black pants for traveling.  

James and Bruce have finished the restoration of Pat's 1912 Ford Torpedo Roadster.  It looks great.  I hope to get photos of it tomorrow, or soon, too.  They say it will be slower than the Speedster, but it has a roof, doors and glory be! a windshield.  Not nearly as wild as the Speedster but far more comfortable!  Excitement abounds at our house!

Cyrus has got Megashot moved to the new cloud servers.  They are having a few little delays in sorting it all out but today it was great, fast and more and more people joining and building their pages.  No new communities yet.  We are over 100 registered now.  It is going to mushroom, fast.  People seem very impressed with the quality of photography and photo art on the site and are very protective of the site.  We have soooo many great features... not all totally finished yet... but they are in the works.  One that really rocks is the ability to make a slideshow with music on our profile presentation.  In fact, when they are finished building this feature, we will be able to make up to 20 of these slideshows, and save each of them in a playlist.

The humming birds

This photo, unlike the previous one, seems to me to need a lot of work. My photoshop abilities are just not up to it. So here it is, cropped much closer, sharpening added to the bird. I tried to tone down the background several ways, none too successful.

Our Anna's hummingbirds stay all winter. In the summer when flowers are out they do not seem to be very interested in the feeder. As it gets cooler out, I start to feed them again. In the winter, when it is freezing, I try to remember to bring the feeder in at night and put it out again at first light. I really should have 2 feeders... one to unthaw and the other to be put out.

I walked back from the Lab at the mall today. It was beautiful! I walked through the forest instead of along the street. My pedometer showed a distance of about 1.5 miles - one way from the mall. I brought back 8 Burgundy lily flowering tulips, 5 galanthis flore peno (double snow drops) and 2 star gazer lilies. I planted these bulbs in the front garden with the lilies by the tub, the tulips along the stone walk and the snowdrops near the front trillium. I clipped a few perennials and did a bit of repair on the boxwood hedge.

Yesterday I finished another sub page for my old web page. I have the car tour page done, but have yet to set up each car club page where I will put the links to each event album. This old page is seldom seen by anyone. It is slow to load because I have added music, and have slow loading 'banners' because I did not 'save for web'. No matter, this is primarily for my own easy accesses to information.

Snow

Last night we began to get snow and this morning there was about 8 - 10 inches piled up everywhere. My waterfall is running and keeping the water open. Its quite a contrast between the dark water and light snow. I am pretty happy with this shot.
The Anna's Hummingbirds stay around all winter. I have been trying to get a photo of this bird for 2 months now. This morning I finally got a semi decent photo of it. It has its feathers all fluffed up and is not wasting energy flying. I refilled the feeder and the bird was back for a few sips all day. I did not manage a flying photo of it, though. It sits on the perch at the feeder to eat, so I would really have to be fast to catch it flying. The background is too light because of the snow on the branches of the trees.

Yesterday I loaded the Vilnius photos to my Multiply Travel album. I shall do the Amsterdam ones and then have the 2008 trip up on line, at least, if not on my own home page. They are on my blog, also.

I have my Flickr groups and comments pretty well caught up and had some time to surf around at bit. I followed a comment on my stuff back to the commenter's photostream and found some really nice Carlsbad caverns stuff, and another girl had some excelent stage shots of some band.