Sort of. I mean, really, I didn’t go anywhere. I just took a break.
I didn’t get a whole lot done either.
Work has been crazy busy. Plus, we decided to hang out at the WV place all last week. So, no progress on projects at the MD house.
It was a great week in WV, though. We didn’t really want to come back. But now that we’re here, it’s good to be home.
I don’t have a whole lot to say, really.
But I took quite a few pictures last week.And if I don’t share them here, they’ll just be stuck in my computer, unseen, forever.
So here goes…
If you’re not really interested in looking at pics, you might want to stop reading now. Because there’s lots of ’em.
Now, to really appreciate these pics, you should click on each for a larger view so you can see the detail. They’re cool, if I do say so myself.
Critters
Snake! Not a great picture, but one I had to share. It was about 6 feet / 2 meters long.Ladybug (in bright morning sun).Another ladybug. (Diffuse, soft morning light.)Small butterfly on thistle.Butterfly or moth? You tell me. I have no clue.Slightly larger butterfly.
Spider.
On a Dewy Mountain Morning
Drippy leaf. Another drippy leaf.Wet grass.Wet pine.Big drip.
These berries are some of the few bits of color currently in the forest other than green.Drippy berries.Not sure if this is a diseased version of the same tree that has the red berries, but I love the color of these particular berries.
The plants weren’t the only things covered by dew…
As luck would have it, this week’s You Capture theme at I Should Be Folding Laundry is “fun.” Since I am currently on vacation having the most fun I have ever had on any vacation, I didn’t exactly struggle for material. Actually, it may even sort of be cheating. Sorry.
Okay, I’m not REALLY sorry. Like I said, I’m having fun. And since that’s this week’s theme, here’s some snapshots for proof…
Passo dello Stelvio
Passo dello Stelvio is in the Italian Alps, not very far from Switzerland and Austria. Actually, we’re staying near Innsbruck, so we rode through Austria into Italy specifically to traverse this pass. We did a little bit of riding in Switzerland on the way back, too.
It Was Cold at the Top
There’s a ski resort at the top. There’s not much snow left, but there’s a glacier, and people are still skiing.
ToadMama After Riding the Pass
I was quite happy to reach the top of this very challenging pass in one piece and without dropping my bike or riding off the side of the mountain.
Hubby was the first in our group to make it to the top.
This was THE coolest riding day ever for both of us.
Hubby with the pass behind and below him.
The road actually winds down the side of the mountain below where Hubby is standing.
My bike perched atop Passo dello Stelvio.
This last shot is the only artsy one I took specifically for You Capture. If you want to see what other folks did for fun this week, be sure to visit Beth’s site.
When I visit my Flickr photo sharing space, the first image I see is always the last image I uploaded.
Sometimes, that’s good because it happens to be an image I really like.
If I visited my Flickr page at the time of this writing, this is the picture I’d see. NOTE: click on the image for a better view.
Toad!
That toad picture makes me smile. Not just because it’s a toad, silly. Because of the way the light is hitting the toad.
For several weeks, this is the picture that occupied that spot.
K and Her Stoic Expression
That’s cool, too. K is generally way happier than she ever looks. I like this picture because it just tickles me how K always wears this serious expression, but at heart is such a goof.
Before that, for a little over a month, this is the picture that sat in that top spot.
Joey Stuck in the Snow
See the distress on his face? This was taken on February 12 when we had 40+ inches of snow on the ground. He slid off a short wall into a snowbank and got stuck.
Daisy Mae (one of my friend Carol’s cats) happened to be the top image for a little while, too.
Daisy Mae
Then there was the time K and Belle were in that position…
K and Belle Playing
I’m sure there’s some setting, somewhere, that would let me change what picture appears there. But I sort of like the way it works now. Why spoil that perfectly happy coincidence?
StillMary at Musings of the Sixties gave me an award on Tuesday. An AWARD! Thanks, StillMary!
It’s not a huge award and it won’t make me world-famous or rich or anything, but I still think it’s pretty cool. Because it’s a total stranger saying, “I like reading your Blog.” Which is awesome, if you ask me. I like reading her Blog, too. And seeing her pictures. She’s a mother of six, one of whom happens to be Beth (I Should Be Folding Laundry), the lovely young lady who started the You Capture meme I participate in sporadically. She’s got 19 grandchildren and 1 great-grandson, too. She’s no boring Granny, though. Be sure to check out her Blog when you have time.
Anyway… people who have been given this award are supposed to share the love as follows:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award (done!);
2.Tell seven things about yourself; and
3. Pass the award on to other Bloggers you find to be versatile, too.
Hmmm. This might be harder than I thought…
Although, truth be told, my department at work is having a contest where you have to match everyone’s picture with their brief bio. To participate, we all had to write a bio, so I could just cheat and use that. But I’ll be different and reveal some stuff that fans may or may not already know…
Thing 1: My Job
Most people know I have a full-time job. I’ve been working for this particular employer for almost four years (gasp!). The job isn’t always fun, but I do work with some very nice, interesting people.
Wanna know what’s weird, though? Most of the people I work with on a regular basis, I have never met in person. There are some I’ve seen once or twice, but most of them I have never seen. That’s why we’re doing the picture + bio contest.
Are you wondering why I don’t get to see my co-workers? It’s because, like me, many of them are regional employees and work either from their home or one of the company’s more-remote locations. We communicate primarily by e-mail and telephone. When I say I’m having a “meeting,” I really mean a teleconference. It may sound easy and full of perks, but I gotta say the hours can sometimes be long and it is often very stressful. I write proposals, which are subject to pretty tight turnaround times. Not only do I have to write the proposal describing the services we are providing, I have to develop the budget to go along with each. Sometimes there are multiple budgets.
Imagine being given a week to crank out a 60-page document and 1,000-line budget describing services you sort of understand and detailing costs others, who are often too busy to respond to your requests for input, have to define. Like I said, it can get a bit stressful. And as deadlines approach, the days can be long.
One of the quilts I've made.
Thing 2: What I’d Rather Be Doing
As jobs go, I guess mine is okay. But there’s lots of other stuff I would rather be doing. I guess you’d call these activities hobbies. Photography is one of those things, of course. But then y’all knew that, right?
Did you know I like to sew? I’m a total novice. And I don’t have nearly enough time to do as much stuff as I’d like. But I will one day. What I like most about sewing is the creativity in finding a bunch of different fabrics that I think will work well together. Most of the time, they do, too. The quilt pictured here is the one I made for one of the guest bedrooms at the WV place (I made the curtains to match, too). It is a very rudimentary, hand-tied quilt. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the patience to do the really intricate hand-stitched quilting, but some of the projects I’ve made have turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.
ToadMama the Ranger
Thing 3: The Job I Wish I Had Chosen
You know what they say about hindsight… I should have been a forest ranger. That would be a job I would really enjoy. I could work at Yosemite National Park. Or maybe Yellowstone. Although they might be too crowded. How about a more remote one like maybe Katmai National Park in Alaska? Or Denali?
Although, with my luck, I’d get stuck somewhere hugely boring like George Washington Birthplace National Monument. That is NOT the same thing as Mt. Vernon in Northern Virginia. It is in Virginia, but it’s in the sticks.
Can’t you just see me as a ranger? I wouldn’t want to be stuck at the entry gate, though. I’d want to be doing stuff like patrolling the woods for lost hikers, or monitoring the critters in their habitat, or guiding kayak trips in Glacier Bay. You know, nature stuff.
Thing 4: Why I Haven’t Been Online Much Lately
Hubby and I have been on a house beautification kick. The MD house has been sorely neglected over the past several years. With us spending most weekends at the WV place, we just don’t have much time to do things at the house in MD. Things like flower bed maintenance. Painting. Home improvements. You know, normal stuff. We’ve been doing all of those things lately and it’s been keeping us pretty busy. That’s why it took me so long to acknowledge this award. That and the fact that it’s hard to come up with seven interesting things to say about myself.
Thing 5: I Am Really Bad When It Comes to Deleting Pictures
You all know I like to take pictures. What you probably don’t know is just how many pictures I have taken over the years (a lot, trust me). Sometimes, you have to take 20-30 shots to get one really good image. So I end up with all these extra images that I say I’ll delete one day. And then I don’t.
Couple that with the fact that I take pictures of odd stuff, too. Like these cinnamon rolls…
Hubby's Famous Cinnamon Rolls
Most of the really weird images you’ll find on the computer are shots I have taken for the Blog.
Thing 6: Which House I Like Best
Hands down, I enjoy being at the WV place more than I like being at the MD place. Most of you know the story behind the WV place. For those of you who only discovered me recently, you should CLICK HERE to see what “story” I am talking about. THAT was quite the DIY project. Looking back, I’m glad we did it, of course, even if it was a lot of work. I really enjoy living in the woods. Hopefully, once we whip the MD place back into shape, we’ll be able to spend some more time there. I mean, jeez. Pretty soon I’ll be saying the WV place has been neglected…
Thing 7: I’m Playing Soccer Again!
I can’t remember if it was eight or nine years ago. Either way, I was either 34 or 35 when I started playing soccer. I grew up in Baltimore City during the late-70s/early-to-mid-80s. They didn’t have soccer programs for girls. Heck, there weren’t a lot of sports programs period. Except for in the high schools. I played a lot of baseball and football (the American kind) when I was in elementary and junior high school. Had I known anything about soccer back then, I would have just played on the boys’ team.
Anyway… eight or nine years ago I saw an ad in the paper about this program to create real soccer moms. Not the sideline-riding, kid-taxiing, snack-bringing kind. The kind that actually got out onto the field and play. I’d always enjoyed watching the kids play. I thought it looked like fun, so I gave it a try. And I loved it.
I stopped playing a year or two ago mainly because I needed a break. I hated having to rush back from the WV place to make it to the games, which are played on Sundays. I mean, we’d finally finished the WV place, I wanted to be able to enjoy it. Plus, I’d packed on some pounds and running wasn’t easy.
Last year, I decided to shed some of those extra pounds. (I lost 30 pounds!) Of course, I gained a few back over the Winter (who do you think ate those cinnamon rolls?). And, honestly, I’ve missed playing soccer. It really is a fun sport. So I rejoined my team in April. And I am so glad I did. I am also happy to report that I made it through the season injury-free. Except for a couple of pretty big bruises, but those aren’t really injuries.
Versatile Bloggers I Know
Talk about tough! There are quite a few blogs that I frequent. Most are on my Blogroll on the left side of the screen. Rather than give this award to any of those folks, I decided to pass it on to Bloggers I’ve only recently (relatively) discovered. These are all people whose Blogs I think you might enjoy, too.
So here goes…
Household Diva 6: This Blog belongs to Ann Marie, an American mother of three, married to a soldier, who happens to be living in Germany right now. I met her through the aforementioned I Should Be Folding Laundry (StillMary already gave her the Versatile Blogger Award). Ann Marie takes awesome pictures, she makes really cool cakes, she’s got three adorable kids. The list goes on. Just check her out. Really.
The Old Nichols Farm: Meet Jess, another Mom photographer with a twist. She lives on a farm. So, in addition to her very good photographs and cute kids, she has lots of cool critter pics, too.
Random Ramblings: Finally, there’s Melissa. An Iowan with three dogs (one that’s REALLY bad), two cats and a husband that’s a kidney cancer survivor. She doesn’t post nearly as frequently as the other two, but she’s got some great stories and also takes very nice pictures.
I hope you take a few minutes to visit each of these blogs. And be sure to leave a comment saying something like, “The awesomw, amazing, VERSATILE, and witty ToadMama sent me!” Or maybe “ToadMama sent me” would be sufficient.
Coming up with topics for this Blog isn’t always easy. It’s something I struggle with often. There are often snippets of stuff to Blog about, but that would be like showing you a pile of fabric scraps instead of a finished quilt. Sometimes scarps can be cool though. So today I’m going the scrap route.
Hubby and I have been working on a few very different projects of late. Some of those projects are bigger than others. Beautifying our long-neglected MD yard is one of them. I’ll give you the whole scoop on that later. For now, though, I’m giving you some pictures.
Rain Isn’t Always Bad
There’s just something about droplets of water on plants the intrigues me. It makes for some interesting images, that’s for sure.
NOTE: you’ll really appreciate the images if you click on each for a larger view.
Droplets on Leaf
Look at the colors. I tweaked the photo a bit to make the colors stand out more. And I really like the result. I never realized that the stems of the honeysuckle were sort of purple. That bush has the coolest colors. Purple stems, green leaves, and coral-and-pink flowers. Like these…
Honeysuckle Flower
I still don’t know the exact type of honeysuckle, or whether it blooms all Summer or just during the Spring. I just love the colors on this plant.
Honeysuckle Flower
The blooms in the pictures shared above are slightly past their prime. Here’s one that’s just emerging…
Newly-emerging Honeysuckle Bloom
I’ve bought quite a few flowers over the past couple of weeks. I’ve planted some of them. Hubby has planted some, too. But there are more to go. Here are some marigolds that still wait to be planted.
Wet Marigolds
Dry Plants Are Interesting, Too
Plants don’t have to be wet to be interesting. Last April, I planted a little shade garden. In it are a Mountain Laurel bush, several ferns, and a hosta or two. All of the plants have actually done very well. And now the Mountain Laurel is starting to bloom.
Mountain Laurel
The blooms are quite interesting, wouldn’t you say?
Mountain Laurel
But the ferns? The ferns are VERY interesting. I’ll have to get a shot of the whole garden. These close-ups are awesome, if I do say so myself. But I’d like to show off the whole garden.
Fern
The ferns stayed green all during the Winter. The multiple feet of snow we had smushed them a bit, but they survived. And now they are huge.
I’ll try to get a picture of the whole garden to share with you soon.
Yesterday was one of those I-just-can’t-stay-in-this-house-today days for me. That’s okay in a way because it was my day off. I have plenty of stuff that needs to be done around here that I could have done instead. But the weather was supposed to be in the 80s and not very humid. I figured I could do my chores on Saturday and Sunday when it’s supposed to be rainy.
So, I threw my camera equipment into my backpack, grabbed the keys to Shannon’s car, and headed out for the day. Her car hasn’t seen much use, so I figured it could use some exercise.
I wanted to do something different. Something urban. Don’t ask me why I decided to be among people. I’m not usually a city girl. Maybe it’s because I was driving Shannon’s car. She is a city girl. Since we almost never go to Washington, DC, despite the fact that it’s only about 30 miles away, I decided to go there. The last two times I was there, I went to the National Mall / Capitol area. So this time I decided to head to Georgetown. I thought it might be cool to see this end of the C & O Canal (as opposed to this end).
Mid-afternoon temps hit 92 degrees (taken at just one of my MANY traffic stops).
Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.
I was totally not prepared. I mean, I pretty much knew how to get to Georgetown. But on the whole, I don’t know DC very well. I didn’t take a map. I also didn’t bother to check out what was going on in Georgetown yesterday. As I learned later, this is graduation weekend at Georgetown University which, of course, is in Georgetown. Traffic SUCKED. Traffic was heavy all of the way through the city, but it got really bad in and around Georgetown.
I made one wrong turn on M Street and ended up heading away from the main shopping area. No worries, though. I have a great sense of direction and knew I’d get back there eventually. I was almost back to that spot, though, when I made another wrong turn and ended up heading across the Potomac into Virginia. I could have just turned around and headed back at that point, but opposing traffic heading back into Georgetown was backed up all the way across the bridge. I’d already had my fill of the whole stop-and-go scene, so I hopped onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, instead. It pretty much parallels the Potomac River from Great Falls, Virginia (northern end) to Mt. Vernon (southern end). Because one of my Flickr contacts (Nikographer [Jon]) has shot lots of great critter pics there, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to head to Great Falls National Park. I’d never been to the Virginia side before.
Aside from the kamikaze commuters doing 80 mph on the GWMP, my drive to the Falls was without incident. NOTE: click on any of the images below for a larger view.
Great Falls of the Potomac
Great Falls National Park in Virginia has three “official” overlooks providing views of the river. You can see it from many more spots, too, where some of the gazillion visitors over the years have blazed their own paths to the river’s edge. An average of seven people die from drowning here each year. Not all, but most of them fall into the river after blazing or following one of these paths and climbing on the rocks. Idiots. I stuck to the overlooks (a sure sign of impending old age!).
Overhead shot of a Great Blue Heron
I didn’t realize until I was at the Falls that I’d left my zoom lens at home. I was so bummed. There were Great Blue Herons all over the place, fishing for lunch. Luckily, I had my doubler (doubles the power of a lens). That did allow some degree of closeness. But I would’ve ended up with much better bird shots if I’d had the zoom lens along. These are just snapshots to give you an idea of what I saw.
That Great Blue Heron was on the rocks right below the overlook. I got a couple of half-decent snapshots of him (or her).
My favorite GBH shot of the day.Same bird, different angle.
There were a lot of international visitors there, which surprised me. I never knew Great Falls drew tourists from afar.
Another thing that sort of surprised me were how many people would come to the overlook, “ooh” and “aah” about the water, but not even bother to notice the birds. These are BIG birds; they’re 3.2 to 4.5 feet tall with wingspans of 5.5 to 6.6 feet.
When I left the park, I was not at all happy to discover that traffic on 495 was stopped. I wouldn’t have needed to be on there for long, but I didn’t feel like sitting in traffic. So I just stayed on the Georgetown Pike. I’d never been on the road before, but I figured with a name like that, it HAD to lead back to Georgetown. I was right. But it was even more crowded and congested than it had been earlier in the day. So I just decided to get out of the city. Remember, I don’t know my way around DC. So I just drove. When I saw a road name I recognized as a route to the suburbs (New Hampshire Avenue), I followed it. Easier said than done. It’s not a straight road. And the traffic! Ugh.
I followed that route until I saw a sign for 193 heading east, which was the direction I was seeking. I recognized that road name, too, so I followed it for a while. Another mistake. More heavy traffic. When I got to US-1, a road I know runs north/south and passes relatively close to my house, I turned right. Yet another HUGE mistake. That right turn not only put me on US-1 south (the wrong direction), it put me into the heart of College Park.
The University of Maryland is based in College Park. And guess what yesterday was at UM? Graduation day. Crap. (That’s not the expletive I chose, I’m just keeping things clean here.)
I should have known it was graduation day there because a close friend of the family actually graduated from UM yesterday.
Jaime Gibbons (the graduate) and her sister, Nadya Spice.
Anyway… traffic CRAWLED through College Park. It was awful. I was so happy to see signs for the Capitol Beltway. But then, of course, the Capitol Beltway was stop and go, too. I got back onto 193, heading east again, to get to the BW Parkway. Traffic was stopped on that, too. So I just stayed on 193.
By that point, I’d spent most of my day in the car. I still wanted to get OUTSIDE. So I headed for the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge. The last time I’d gone there was in January. I am still kicking myself for not having that zoom lens with me, but I got some neat shots anyway.
A toad! How appropriate.The first time I have EVER actually seen a duck coming out of one of these boxes here or at any of my other many visits to wildlife refuges all over the country.A Blue Grosbeak; first time sighting for me.Lily pads and other aquatic plants.
It was a LONG day. It wasn’t nearly as relaxing or refreshing as I’d hoped it would be, but you know what they say… even a bad day off is better than a great day at work.
