Monday

I have this week off from work. Originally I was going to go to my parent's house for most of the week. Spend some time with them, catch up, all that.

But the plan changed and so I'm spending a few days at home instead--and then going to their house. Probably a good thing since there's a lot here that needs work. Today I spend 90 minutes mowing the back half of my lot. It was really overgrown from all the rain we had last week so I mowed on the highest setting. It's even now but it's still pretty deep out there.

See those berries over there? No, they're not from my lawn. It's not quite that overgrown out there. At lest not yet. Actually I went hiking in the late afternoon despite the heat and went back to that place with the gravel quarry, Occoneechee Mountain park. And that's where I got the picture of the berries.


I also wore those new shoes I posted about on Thursday to try them out. They were just a little tight but worked pretty well anyway. They'll be great for everyday use and can be used hiking as long as there's not a lot of downhill scrambling. That's where the tight toebox stuff really gets you.

It might not be easy to tell, but that's a picture of a deer I saw in the woods during my hike. There were a lot of deer out today but it's difficult to get the camera to focus on them with all the branches in the way. There's just too much underbrush to get good pics---at least at the kind of distances I was shooting at. Each time I tried to get a picture I had to use the maximum zoom (12X).

At least that wasn't a problem with this little guy. My lens was only a couple of inches away from him---and he wasn't very happy about it either.

As soon as I took one picture I scooted off and left him alone. I'm sure he sighed in relief. I have that effect on amphibians for some reason.

Comments

srp said…
Wow! That toad has great camouflage. I had to enlarge the picture to pick him out.
1:39 PM
rosemary said…
There is something special about seeing deer in the forest....even if i see them every day. Emma our kitten brought a frog upstairs Sunday as a gift. we have a playpen off the slider for the cats and this froggie must have jumped inside. thankfully it was still intact and relocated.
4:54 PM
Unknown said…
Utenzi: Great photos and story. Reminded me so much of the deer I saw while living in Ohio where their habitat is quickly disappearing.
8:18 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
Read more

ankle update

S ince a few people object to seeing my feet --poor misdirected souls--I have the two pictures below hidden behind links. Behold them at your own risk! *evil laugh* Actually they're not scary though the first one is a little colorful. T he first picture shows my ankle and foot from the side, as labeled. You can see a lot of general edema of the entire foot. There's also a good bit of discoloration of the ankle area and to a lesser degree the top of the foot all the way down to the toes. The side view is a lot worse in this regard than the top view. T he second picture shows the two feet from the top so you can compare the somewhat normal looking right foot to the injured left foot. There's not much abnormal color on this view but you can see the "sausage like" swelling of the left foot. It's this swelling that is causing my main problem--I can't get the foot into my boots and I need the boots to support the ankle. Damn Catch-22. Side view, looking inward ...
Read more

Ostrich poop found here

Image
I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?
Read more