Sylvia's Simple Shots

The Sunflowers in the neighborhood and community garden are getting really nice.

They are my favorite flower and I have to wait all summer for them to produce gorgeous flowers.

I see that I captured a bee in this shot as well. Wonderful!

I found out one of the mazes in the area have opened their cut your own sunflower area. For a $ a bloom you can bring some home.  What a great idea!  The season is almost over and they will be letting them go or cutting them down themselves.  People enjoy them, the farm gets bit more cash and there is less to manage! Win Win.

I tried a new recipe this week which is Lemon Vinaigrette which is super delicious.   

Here I have put it on my carrot salad and my fried basa fillets.

A terrific wholesome story which I finished this week.  An Irish Country Girl by Patrick Taylor.  A story of how Maureen O'Hanlan became Kinky Kincaid.  

Kinky is the housekeeper for a group of medical doctors in the north of Ireland.  She has been there for 40 years but this is the story of how she came to be Ballybucklebo.

A bit of fairy stories and having the eyesight to see what may come to pass.  Ambition to be a teacher, willingness to stick with her plan despite a man saying she could not work after marriage, and a desire to travel the world.  

She is open to love with the "right" man. With older brothers there a few guys in the running.  

I guess I love Ireland after reading all the Maeve Binchy books. 

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

I visited a new wetlands area on Telford Lake this week.  Someone on my Instagram @smdpics100 had been and I was inspired to go as well. 

I found this juvenile American Robin singing to her hearts content. I have been fascinated with their interesting coloring.  I have never notice this before but I have seen many this year.

I have to confess that I have done a switcheroo on the sky.  The original was very plain and quite uninteresting. On the same day I had captured the sky with incoming plane as this lake is close to the airport.  I removed the plain sky and added this bit of cloud.

Love it!

The Flickr Macro Monday challenge this week was "glass".  There so many options to stay within the 3" rules that I was overwhelmed with choice. Glass is not always the easiest to photograph with reflections, etc.

I chose shots of my Kaleidoscope for the mosaic because it was a little too large for the challenge but I love it!

There are 2 copper encased wheels top left and bottom right to produce a wide array of images through the eye piece which is the top right photo. One of the images I captured through the eye piece of yellows and blues angles.

You can check out my Flickr Photostream SMDPics to see the image I submitted for the challenge.

This image was glass head straight pins.  I have quite a few and thought this will be easy.  Turns out I have plastic balls at the end of most of my straight pins. Five is all I found that were actual glass.  The wonders of making things for cheaper. 

I am sharing with Mersad at Through My Lens #254

  

Mosaic Monday - Brass Kaleidoscope

I found a brass and copper kaleidoscope at the thrift store yesterday!  I was over the moon because it was under $5 with the weekly discount.  There were one of the wheels had pieces missing, it was filthy and the pin was bent but that was okay. 

I brought it home and carefully gave the metal it's first polish in years.  It will need more but a little at a time will do the job.
I pulled out my container of glass gems and searched until I was able to replace the 5 missing pieces. 

I carefully used a Q-tip to clean all the glass pieces on the wheels.

The cylinder which holds the mirrors is brass. 
The eye piece, the wheel fitting and the legs are copper and have an incised pattern on them.  The bead edge of the wheels is also copper. 

The wheels contain a variety of glass.  Glass gems, stained glass, iridescent glass, colored glass and textured glass.  The shapes are irregular which enhances the shapes of the final images produced.

It is over 9" inches long including the wheels and front pin.

I need to find it a stand to support the brass cylinder.

It is a perfect retirement gift for me.  I love it!

Sharing with Mosaic Monday #99 hosted by Maggie at Normandy Life.