Everything is Alive

Everything Grows

At Home on the Farm

Home Sweet Home

Can you believe that I'd never actually seen a bird in a nest before? Well, not that I can remember anyway. When I got out to my truck after work today, I looked up, and there is this bird, just sitting still and quiet, in a nest. Here she is. I bet she's sitting on her eggs.

Saki

This has got to be the coolest dog I've ever known. Saki is just a mut, but he is intelligent, aware and full of personality.

One of a Kind

I looked out my window today and noticed a spot of bright pink color. It's a pretty good size too, and I figured it must've been some piece of ...junk... that blew into my yard with the weekend's storms. I looked again and again, thinking it's not garbage, but what could it be since it was quite the distance from the ground? Finally, curiosity won. I pulled on some boots to wade through all the water out there and grabbed my camera. I found this one, solitary, large pink flower!  If you look closely at it, you'll see that the little pink flowers have long, pink, tubular shoots that bloom out only at the end. Very, very strange. And unique.

Odin had been following me closely while I scoped out the various plant life in his pasture. When I headed back to the house, I heard his thundering hooves. He was loping to catch up with me, silly horse! When I turned back around, I looked down and spotted this tiny plant. Again, only one!

From That to This

The gray, murkey clouds are still here today, but for a few moments this morning, the sun escaped through long enough to produce this rainbow. It always amazes me when it rains while the sun is shining. Will the sun shine, or will it rain? Usually polar opposites, it's a bit disorienting to have both.

Stormy Sunday in Arkansas

From the comfort and safety of my bedroom window, I took these photos this evening. It has been windy and raining all day, and the evening was no different. The storm clouds were dark and menacing, and always in motion. These are facing east, the direction the storms have been coming from all day, during a break in the downpour. Here in north central Arkansas, it never just rains, it pours!

Back at the Ranch

Ranch Pets

 

Small Town Downtown

 

In the Wild

It's about time for these flowers to bloom again. This photo was a nice surprise to find in my archives from last year. I had taken this photo from the open window of my truck, stopping when I saw them along the side of the road.

Playing in the Fountain

This is one of my favorite photos. I love how the camera caught the drips from the fountain and the girl's expression. She had a lot of fun getting soaked.

Summer is Beginning

College is done for the semester, quite empty for the summer break. Instead of students hauling around backpacks heading for class, Pee Wee and T-ball teams take their place. It's the beginning of the season, so attention spans drift often. It's easier to pile on top of someone's dad, then laugh like crazy when everyone falls off (top photo).

The stately Student Center may be void of students, but they are replaced by attendees of a Chamber of Commerce awards banquet in one of the large meeting rooms. But, the campus store is closed for the summer, leaving manequins and racks of clothes on guard for themselves (bottom photo).

From the Rain, Wildflowers

These tiny wildflowers gave me plenty of opportunities to work around a shallow depth of field and white blowout. Humbling. Out of 85 photos, I got a few that came out as I had hoped.

Clover! One I can actually identify! But, I've never seen a clover flower close up, and its intricacies are amazing.

I have no idea what this is. At first, I thought a persimmon, but isn't that a tree? You can tell how close this is by the visible hairs on the big leaf. That ball sure looks alien to me.

Speaking of alien! Whatever these things are, they have been around for quite awhile. I first noticed them back in the middle of winter. Hardy, strange looking things, aren't they?

The Reality is in the Reflection

I imagine that when I took this photo, I felt that there wasn't enough going on in it to be interesting. Today, it's that simplicity that drew me into it, hook, line and sinker.

A Different Perspective

When I saw this photo in my archives, it hit me just how much capturing a moment in time adds dimension to life. Imagine what it would be like to stand over 6 feet tall, yet spend the majority of your time with your eyes a foot from the ground with a 360 degree view of everything at that level.