This is Winter, isn't it?

 We have been having balmy weather for the last 10 days, or so.  There were many people and dogs using the trail through the Panama Flats/Hill park on Feb. 2nd.

 My stop at the Pond where I tried to get a good picture of the red winged blackbirds.  I used my little Sony to do a video and captured some good birdsong from these birds.  In trying to edit my video, I found that I did not have the Windows Movie Maker.  So, that lead to an afternoon of downloading Windows Essentials, which included the Movie Maker and a few other things.  I have yet to edit the video.  I don't think the Canon video editor will accept the Sony.  So, more playing required to get the two clips edited ... hopefully I can add clips from one into the other to get a good video. 

 This is not a good photo of the classic red winged blackbird on a reed by the water.  I need a longer lens!

 These birds, I think, are eared Grebes.  Could not get close enough to them, either.  They were diving.  There were also mallards on the pond. 

 This was farther along the trail and past the pond.  This area is the bog that is covered with a shallow depth of water.  The geese seem to like to feed in this area.  I like the layers of color in the grasses and shrubs in this shot that I have cropped to a wide angle format.

 This is a majestic Garry Oak tree at the top of the hill along the path.  Of course I have photos of it every year, in every season.

Here it is, the same day.  I was playing in Photoshop, as you can see.  There really was no sunset, but there was a rather interesting cloud formation.
We have been having lovely warm, sunny weather for the past few days.  Today I was out piddling about in the back garden for a couple of hours.  I cleaned up the patio a bit, added 3 fruit tree feeder spikes to the front plum tree, added a bag of compost to the perennial bed next to the old sidewalk.  Cleaned up the ferns a bit, and the fig tree.  There is really not a lot to do right now.  The cyclamen is in bloom!  This is the most fantastic plant.  I see more of the leaves growing where I was cleaning up the ferns.  ... Hmmmm... I wonder how they move everywhere.  I will have to keep an eye on them to see that they are not those invasive ivy with the lovely patterned leaves.
My yellow lady slipper is in bloom and the Andean Fire (orchids) has a fat bud.  I shall need photos of them both to record the blooming times and to try get some good 50mm lens shots of them with my dslr.   In the light garden, I have 5 pots of orange trees.. containing 9 trees.  Marlene and Art are still deciding and  Tara said they would like one or two at their new place.  They are still not finished moving or cleaning up downstairs place. 
Megashot is really quite busy.  I have made a 'Butterfly" community and hope to get some good discussions going... like forums, to make the optimum use of the community.  These Megashot communities still seem to be stuck on the Flickr type with a free for all of dumping photos and trying to collect these silly whirling blinking awards.  Except, we do NOT have the ugly things on Megashot, and so people are beginning to pay a bit more attention to photography.   We do have a lot of good photographers on Megashot. 
I have been spending quite a lot of time in the kitchen... soups, oysters that he likes, lots of good vegetables.  Life is good on the West Coast.