Sylvia's Simple Shots

 

I visited the conservatory this week.  It was pretty busy and one of the pavilions was not available so that cut my visit short.   Despite the closure of the feature pyramid, the others provided some color and flowers.  I am grateful that I can visit any time with my annual pass. There will be another visit soon!

The Canada Geese are back! 

It is wonderful to hear their honking in the river valley.  Pairs a vying for prime real estate to make their nests and have their young.

The are such iconic birds for Canada.  It is amazing that they can raise chick with being so far from water.  Water is down in the ponds this year and things are so dry.

Many times this means the top of apartment buildings and I am not sure how the little ones get down but life moves on.

Gorgeous blue sky!

I upgraded my internet service this week.  I had been living with a very old plan as far as speed and data limit.

With the Roku TV the temptation is to watch more internet content so I had to move with the times and get with the service that would move me into a new era.

I was offered a much better plan for very little more than what I was paying.  The price I was paying was too much for the service I was getting.  That is what happens when we get stuck in the old ways.

This should see me into getting more fitness content.

Sugar and Salt by Susan Wiggs is the book I finished this week.

Margot Salton has always dreamed of owning her own restaurant.  When she finds a space in San Francisco who is offering a shared commercial kitchen with the bakery next door it seems to be a good opportunity.  Ida Sugar along with her son Jerome owns the bakery next door. Margot and Ida hit it off right from the start.

Margot has learned cooking from her mother and the barbecue business from her mentor who took her under his wing when she needed a strong support.

When her past from Texas comes a calling she has to deal with it.  She is not sure that Jerome will still be around when he finds out her troubles.

The book has a good ending and it was a great read.

I have been enjoying this PBS British series on ROKU.

The practice is James Heriot's legendary practice now led by Peter and Julian.

They treat all animals from house hold pets, exotic pets, livestock like cattle, goats, sheep, and lamas.

There is always heart warming stories of these precious animals that are very important to their owners.

They are supported by a large team of other vets, vet nurses and admin support staff.  It is one big family.

I am enjoying it very much.   Nice hour of great content.

The hares in the river valley are brown!

The mornings are still very cool this week but things are looking up weather wise.

This guy was munching on the new green grass that is emerging from the dried bit on the forest floor.

These are quite skittish but I managed a decent shot.

I am so looking forward to spring and more light, more warmth.

Spring is here!

Sylvia's Simple Shots

The weather did warm up somewhat and I took a walk in the river valley.  It was afternoon during the golden hour which is about 3:00 pm these days. 

The sun was setting and putting it's warm glow on all things.  Here, I captured dried grasses which will stay all winter against the snow drifts in the river valley.

I dropped books off at the small free library in the park to keep the clutter down to the minimum.  It is a lesson well learned and it is becoming easier just to let the books go and keep the stories.

Vegetable Frittata is a new dish for me.  My sister has made them for sure. 

Sauteed veggies - onion, garlic, celery, red pepper, and mushrooms in a cast iron frypan. Love that dish. I have placed a silicone wrapper on the handle so I was not sure I could put that in the oven so I transfered to this stoneware baking dish.

Cover that with a good strong cheddar cheese.

Then a mixture of eggs and cream with herbs.

Into the oven for about 10-20 minutes until the eggs are done.  A few minutes under the broiler to brown the top.

It is yummy and I have made it again this week.

I always enjoy a visit with Kinsey Millhone. D is for DeadBeat by Sue Grafton.  These are early in the alphabet series so her landlord Henry Pitts does not feature much in this novel. He does in later books.

The job was easy - find the fifteen year old kid and deliver a $25,000 cheque,  John Daggett is trying to make amends for some of his past misdeeds.  He drinks too much and it has not served him well.

He is now a dead body and a few people are not sad to hear the news.

Some folks think they are entitled to some of that big cheque and create turbulence in Kinsey's search for the boy.

Having a dead client puts a few wrinkles in the investigation and when the retainer cheque is no good that is a big disappointment.

Kinsey manages to sort it all out.  Another great book.

I saw this Snowshoe Hare on my walk in the river valley.  I think this my first time seeing one.  I am used to the larger white-tailed jackrabbit hare which has yellow eyes but still very big back feet.

It has changed color and with it's shorter ears and dark eyes I knew it was different.  An internet search solved the mystery.

Again, that golden hour sun was shining but the hare would not accommodate my desire to have it be in the warm glow.

It scampered off after I got a few shots of it.

Glad to see it!

I bought these Bailey's crystal mugs when I was shopping for One of a Kind Essential Oil Diffuser containers a while back.  They turned out to be much too big to fill so I decided to use them for hot chocolate.

They are wonderfully heavy and feel really great in the hand. 

I do like a bit of chocolate and having hot chocolate is less calories than a piece of chocolate bar and one is enough.

I make it very milky. 

The mug is about the 8 oz so not overly large for a bit of a treat.

I am always up for a Christmas story any time of the year. Christmas Homecoming is a collection of 3 stories.  A Place to Call Home by Diane Noble, The Heart of a Stranger by Pamela Griffin and Christmas Legacy by Kathleen Fuller.

I love Irish stories and this one is set in late 1800s when Rory O'Kelly finds himself headed to America. Olivia Endicott-Jones is doing charity work in Massachusetts taking care of orphans some of which are of Irish immigrants.  They meet when Rory is tasked with stealing the Irish children so they can be raised in the right culture.

Susannah Pruitt and Justin Rossiter meet again many years after they had spent time together as children. He comes to her rescue and she recognizes him but he not her.  Can she get past the idea that he may have killed her father?  What is the truth?

Josephine Patterson rides into town to hear the reading of her grandmother's will.  She expects to inherit it all which will go a long way to helping her pay off debts incurred when she was married to her now dead husband. There is a wrinkle because grandmother has left one half to Josephine and the other half to a man unknown to Josephine. She needs to get along with this fellow just long enough to get his half.  Not that simple.  It works out in the end.

Sylvia's Simple Shots

After three days of ridiculous and constant wind we got a skiff of snow over night.  Others in the province did quite a bit of the white stuff.

The temperature this morning was -11C which is very cold for this time of year so the snow could have been much worse. 

Despite that, the hares are getting brown so we will get through this.  I was very glad to see this big guy in the back yard this morning.

I finished this book - The Waymaker by Ann Voskamp this week.  I believe I have read all her books and I own quite a few.

This is her latest released recently.

The lesson in the book is that we must maintain our connection to God - Jesus as He is the Waymaker.  He knows what we need and he knows what is next for us.

I bought the book because I am having to practice patience for the time being.  I keep the house tidy at all times and await calls for viewings with the hope of the right offer.

Mom & Dad have both experienced health crisis and that requires trust that the best for them will come to pass.  

As a planner, living with uncertainty is very difficult but I guess that is the lesson to relax and trust that was is right will come.

I replaced my TV recently.  I have had the old one for nearly 10 years I think and I bought it second hand.

It was not working well for quite a while and I thought it was just the antenna but it was the TV.

There was a sale in March offering a generous discount so I just made the decision to move forward. 

I love that I can put my music on a USB stick and play it in the living room - just like that.

I have not been able to connect it to WIFI yet so I will need help with that.

The DVD player is packed so that will have wait as well.  Very happy so far!

The challenge on Flickr Macro Mondays this week was - Bulb.  The electric kind not the garden kind.

This is one of the shots I took for the challenge.   You can check out my Photostream (SMDPics) to see the image I submitted.   There was a good variety of images to see.

I bought myself a new Basil plant last week as well as the other I purchased last April was getting gangling and not very pretty.   I am very happy to say that I now have 5 plants growing in my place.  My windows face east and north.  I have given up on African Violets for now.

The Aspargus fern I bought last year is doing well.

The Dracena I got from aunt fall of 2020 continues to grow.

The Greek Oregano that my sister gave me is a bit stretched out but I take leaves it about once a week to keep it in check.

The spider plant my niece gave me last year has been moved to the north window and is making babies for the second time which I take it is quite happy there.

The Devil's Ivy has been moved further from the east window not sure how happy it is.  Just for a little while longer, I say.

I am sharing with Angie who hosts Mosaic Monday #173 and Mersad who hosts Through My Lens #332. 

Have a great week!

Sylvia's Simple Shots

I captured this shot of the summer hare this morning.   I came loping across the grass into the shrubbery and I caught the movement in the corner of my eye.

It was on high alert but stood still for a bit and I managed several shots.

Love this one because the eye is great, the tree on the right is out of focus but frames it well.  

The photo has a cohesive color scheme in the warm grays and browns.

I finished this book - Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood on the weekend. I found it interesting though disturbing in some ways.  It chronicles the life of a painter artist Elaine Risley who is in Toronto for a retrospective of her work.  

Her early childhood was spent in northern Ontario traveling from place for her father's work as an entomologist.  They settle in Toronto when he gets a more stable job.  Her memories are not good.  Being the odd teen in a group of girls was hard. Clothes, hair, school politics, friendships and boys were all avenues she had to negotiate with rough patches at times.

It was a different kind of read filled with insecurity, lots of questions, angst, and disconnection.  I suppose it is part of adolescence and young womanhood which shapes the woman she became. 

I have been investigating the Asian food aisle at the grocery store for a while.   

I was searching for what I call glass noodles.  I was introduced to these at a potluck in high school where a dish contained them. The contributor was a school teacher of Asian heritage who came to teach at our school for a couple of years.   Loved the food. 

After, several purchases that were disappointments, I found them on my last grocery shopping trip.

I thought they were rice noodles but no so.  They are made with bean starch.

I cooked up a wonderful shrimp stir fry and these were the perfect accompaniment!

 These will be on my regular shopping list.

 

I have been doing some artistic photography work.  I was getting some pieces to enter an art competition.  I will blog the entries in a couple of weeks.

This piece was created with a process called Bottled Light.  I have blogged about it in this post. 

I loved the thread of green going across the composition and some of the complementary colors.

I love the jewel tone colors in this composition. The object I had the light go through was a blown glass ball.

I used another technique called In Camera Motion where you move the camera with a long shutter speed to allow the capture of the patterns of movement.

The lights and darks are captured during the movement. 

This is a piece of dark fabric with bling on the surface in spiral patterns.  By shining the light onto it, the bling reflects the light and produces light areas.  You can see hint of the spirals in the bottom third of the art.

I called this piece The Waves. I really like the patterns I created with my movement.

 It was great fun to be inside as it rained most of Saturday but the earth is grateful and putting out all kinds of green.

The challenge for Flickr Macro Monday is object with Zed in it's name.  I think this challenge will produce a lot of variety of subject matter today.  You can check out my Flickr Photostream (SMDPics) to see the shot I submitted.  On the left is the bezel on my cell phone.

I am sharing with Angie who hosts Mosaic Monday #130 and Mersad who hosts Through My Lens #288 .

I hope you have a great week and Be Safe Be Kind.

Share Your Cup #194

I found this Buddha Board at the thrift store and for a few bucks I brought it home.  I have admired them many times in stores but the price was too high to bring one home.
The Buddha Board concept is to paint something on the board with water and the brush. As the water dries it slowly disappears.  It's a Zen type practice to live in the moment. 

The photo on the right are Ibis metal structures in a front yard on my walk this week. 




Here's a door knob again on one of my walks this week.  A great blue door with plate behind the knob with an Asian feel.











This hare was sunning it's self next to a cement wall near a construction site, hence the bright blue fencing in the photo.  He did not move so I was able to get a great shot of him eyeing me closely.

The berry bushes are in bloom.  I'm not sure what type of bush this is but the flowers were many and wonderful to see.  There seems to be an Asian theme going on there.

This is fabric I bought at the Fabric Frenzy recently which will become a navy table cloth with a sunflower table runner.  I'll put pictures up of the finished project in a future post.

The sale was organized by local grandmothers to support grandmothers in Africa.  You can read more about their mission here.

Sharing at Art and Sand hosted by Carol.