Next Stop Sopchoppy

It becomes rather painful to me, that eleven days from today, I shall be a 57year old child. Last evening I took this photograph of myself from Sopchoppy, our now gone house in the background, taken when but two years of age, and submerged it in the geode nearest the front door. I have several of these scattered about the yard, taken from my dad's place. This one rested in the old place off the back porch under the tall spigot. I remember many a honeybee gathering around the rim drinking. I now make effort to keep it full of water.
For you see, it is the fountain of memory. A portal as well. Many a day I have bent as the bee and drank from the depths. And soon, before me rises the old photographs from Sopchoppy and Monticello and Kentucky. And I am for the time quenched, and I am not the aging 57 year old child, stooping painfully low and peering into the geode.

Night Watch Watering Crew

This photograph was taken last evening toward midnight. It was taken with the Canon S95 I recently purchased and continue to learn, testing the limits(and mine), seeing what it can do(and cannot). Any camera, when we know its boundaries, is capable of producing good photographs. And that is a subject long on opinion, of what constitutes a good photograph. Many of the photographs of mine that move me(me I said,not you), are the ones not so technically sharp, in focus and (beautiful). They quite often are the ones taken off the cuff(aka,while riding in the car), those where I am carefully composing(and suddenly a bird flys through), the unexpected, the mistakes(like snapping while carrying at my side accidently).
That does not keep me though from continuing to thoughtfully and slowly seek to compose and get everything in proper focus. That is difficult enough. But it does help when every so often, the unexpected intrudes and makes you look like you really know what you are doing. So, if you are reading this(guardian Angel), Thanks.

Night Visions

The night was on total darkness with the moon having done its monthly job of illumination. It was nearing midnight and Leno was quite uninteresting. The Facebook family had all gone to bed, leaving only the perennial posters to take over the scroll. The rain from the day had moved out, leaving a cool fifty and dropping, with mist night. I took the S95 Canon to the pool deck, set it on the baby high chair with its little jobo gorilla pod and pointed it practically vertical toward the pines and the little dipper beyond. Another 15 second exposure, the limit of the S95, aperture at 2.0, ISO 800. Off camera flash popping to light the pines. This is the same vantage point used for the snowmen exposure. I thought perhaps I would spot them somewhere up there.

Enter Black Hole Geode World

Migration of the Magnificent

by john clare

Once when the Northeastern winds sent off course the South bound
Magnificent Frigate
We enjoyed the time under the remote cypress hammock.
She told of how on calmer currents past she had glanced
upon me below
Continuing onward through the night to the great Southern Archipelago.
She said that had she known of such a hospitable friend
Here is where the migration that night would have ended.
But that was long ago when the winds blew fierce off shore and never since.
The seasons merge and come the first frost of winter
I paddle out to the remote cypress hammock
In hopes perhaps in the night
The Frigatebird recalled our friendly past.
But she never returns and I turn to paddle against the wind so slow.
Somewhere in a harsher clime I pray
My migrating friend finds her Southern Archipelago.

Promised Spring

This morning taking Meme Clara to her house in town, we passed the field, which today, saw the return of the turkey flock. Something told me before we loaded in the rain, take the camera bag along. No, I did not listen. I only carried the S95 with only a slight telephoto. Sure enough, I stopped on my return back home, only to find the S95 unable to get close enough. Lesson's constantly unlearned. Take the camera's along always! Today we needed the seldom used D5000 and it sat home.

Lord Micco Aura

Kingdom of Carrion

by john clare

Lord Micco Aura sat upon the highest limb of the largest bald cypress, his court of lesser Cathartes aura and Caragyps atratus upon the lower branches, in order of rank, quietly awaiting orders. Lately, the Kingdom of Carrion had fallen upon the lean years, affecting the entire realm. Even the Double-crested Cormorant down to the secretive Bittern felt the blight, daily supplicating the heavens with his upturned bill.
And to add further to the collected misery, from the Northern Slave River rapid regions, the White Pelican had arrived to compete for the depleting pooled fish, herding collectively the imprisoned schools of shad and brim, taking upwards of four pounds apiece daily. Lord Micco Aura quietly observed all this below from his bleached white throne and brooded deeply.
Even to the South and North, in the realm of the human habitation, their trails offered a decreasing supply of kill as the metal skinned ones plied their straight paths at a more cautious pace.
So into this graying sky of winter Lord Micco Aura gave the call to soar, to search again the rising thermals for the sweet aroma of decay. In circling funnels they resembled a gentle tornado coming, the black and turkey vulture, interspersed with the solitary Bald Eagle and occasionally passing Sand hill Crane, chiding Lord Micco Aura that it looked as if his Kingdom was falling, that soon, the lowest Anhinga would sit upon the white-bleached throne.
This further disturbed the Micco of the once grand Kingdom of Carrion, as the thought of his offspring taking the lesser branches under the realm of the worm-infested Anhinga and his ally, the Cormorant, was a future too bleak for even the blackest Vulture.
For the days of death he yearned, the days when throughout the vast land, the dying was regular, the decay bountiful. Plenty of putrid flesh for all to find in an ordered fashion. No need for the current frenzied, uncivil tearing of the flesh that reduced the once stately Vulture to the lowest levels of Nature.
Today the lone scent from a discarded wild boar, his hocks cut from him, was spotted along a dirt man trail. As Vultures of a new order, they no longer waited for Lord Micco Aura to make the ceremonial first slit of the soft underbelly. The covering of the swine was sudden and complete. It was each Vulture for himself.
In the end, as they perched and preened in the surrounding pines, wings outstretched to dry the blood and kill the bacteria, they realized each in silent thought, they had become what they never dreamed. Mere scavengers, mad at the scent of death, of decay, never satisfied, never enough, always in search of the smell of carrion, ranging further and further from the home they once gathered to.
Individual loners, wandering in ever decreasing soaring patterns, alone in a dispersed Kingdom once abounding, but now yielding only
a frail life clung onto tightly.

Another One's Shunned

How we so easily shun the ones we just yesterday loved. When we leave our familiar pews and part, its as if we were never of one accord in the Lord. And how can you now say that we are gone, that you are being so wonderfully blessed? How can that be? Were we not worshiping the same God that wonderfully blessed? And you are full of blessing? And we are not? And you do not want fellowship with us? Our families?
Years shall transpire and we will think of you. We shall not get over you, your family. Our hearts shall always ache. We cannot go on as if nothing came of us, that we parted. We cannot get a grasp upon your wonderful blessing. We must go to the same God we say we once worshiped together and seek an answer.

Rocky gets a bath

JT got his bath and haircut last week. Today, with the weather warming, though still windy, Rocky got his bath. He loathes a bath, yet does not hesitate to jump in the pool, go figure. I tried to towel dry and blow dry as best I could, but still he remained damp, his ears full of cruddy wax. Good ole Rocky lets Nathaniel crawl all over him, never giving complaint. He tries to act the young dog, but mostly these days lies on the couch in the TV room sleeping. He has been a good golden.

Lady Bug

Oh lady bug, do not hide in yonder hole
For you see, though it may entice
To seek the cool relief below
Please consider and think twice.

In that dark, cool hole
You will soon find it not to your desire
But if anyhow you go
Know, you have entered to furnace fire.

JT waiting for Mamma

Experimenting with the S95 Canon point and shoot. Tonight I used the manual mode to expose the sunset, setting the speed at 125 and adjusting the aperture up and down to get the proper lighting. The ISO is set on 80 and not auto. The flash, which usually washes out the foreground, is adjusted down to minus two and even a piece of typing paper placed over the flash. Just before I hit the shutter, I told JT, Mamma's home! He perked up. When she comes, he likes to pretend he is chasing cats, though he likes them. He is only doing it because he thinks I want him to.