Sylvia's Simple Shots

The Siberian Squill are in bloom in the neighborhood.

Several front yards have these tiny beauties.

Beautiful blue color hanging on this delicate stem very close to the ground.

I have not see the white ones this year. 

I squeezed getting my taxes down to the last day.  It really did not take as long as I anticipated.  

Now, that I have retired there a very few pieces to collect and plug into the calculations.

I did manage to get to the bank to pay the bit I owed.

It's been a good week for photography.  I have visited several of my regular water spaces to see what I could find for birds and flowers.

Here's are a few shots from Beaumaris Lake.

The Ruddy Duck with it's bright blue bill.

The Golden Eye which in the sun shimmered its green head.

The Red Wing Blackbird which is a staple of many wet places.

The Common Grackle was showing off its blue head and yellow eye.

The St. Albert Botanic Park was starting show color.  The Pasque flowers are always early bloomers.  The pink flowers are apple blossoms and the small purple flower was very close to the ground.

It's that time of year.  The waterfowl have arrived and trying to sort out a place for a nest and raising the next generation.  

The American Avocet is always a treat to see. We are on the northern edge of their breeding area.

The Beaver was very curious to see what I was up to and then went on it's happy way.

The Canada Geese were defending territories and there was much posturing, chasing and honking going on.

The Lesser Yellowlegs were scoping the area for food.

The Northern Shoveler duck was there showing off his bright head.

Sylvia's Simple Shots

We had a farewell lunch with our quilting group for our leader who is moving.

She brought a few magazines discovered during her decluttering process. 

I brought these home as they are small projects and working with small pieces of fabric which I thought would be interesting.

I have not really had time this week to look at them.

The air is smoky because of the wildfires burning in our province.

The air quality is not great but I really enjoy my walks outside so I have been going anyway.

People are being evacuated and our trees are burning to the ground by the hectares.

The spring perennial flowers are starting to bring some much need color to the gardens in my area.

Siberian Squill, Red Tulip and Bleeding Hearts.

We had a good day for Mom's funeral and the internment of both my Mom and Dad. There had been a lot of planning and things went well.  The day was gorgeous shirt sleeve weather.

I walked behind the hearse with my twin sister and her husband as it brought them to the cemetery.  Mom passed in January and Dad 1 year to the day of the funeral. They were both cremated so we chose what would have been their 69th wedding anniversary for this event.

The graveside service was lovely.  We were lucky enough to get permission from the owner of our home which they moved from in 2017 to gather some soil from Mom's wonderful garden so we could cover their urns with the soil she so loving took care of for 50 years.  

Their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren participated along with life long friends and family.

I was able to catch up with high school friends who were the ladies who prepared the funeral lunch.

We were so blessed to have them as parents for so long.

Sylvia's Simple Shots

The spring flowers are starting to show up.

This is the Siberian Squill.  It is a beautiful blue color, quite small, close to the ground and perennial.  I have several places in my neighbourhood where it grows.

I was very happy to see it because yesterday morning again I woke to snowflakes in the air. Really!

These will open up into bell shaped blooms.

One of the first projects I took on when the sewing machine came back working well was the mending of my wheat bag.

I have owned this wheat bag forever.  I paid a lot of money when I bought it but it has paid off.  

The cotton outside cover has been sewn back together several times.  The inside sack that holds the wheat has had several repairs.  

As you can see the kernels of wheat were falling out and I was finding them all over the place.

Next time I will have to make a completely new bag and inside sack.   I will put fabric on the list for that project.   I am amazed this cotton is still hanging in.

This is the book I finished this week.  A Grace Disguised - how the soul grows through loss by Jerry Sittser.

It describes a very tragic event in this man's life and how he chose to live is life after losing 3 members of his family.

The good, the bad and the ugly are covered in this book.  How God works in our lives to help us survive the very difficult challenges we face.  How we can grow through them and how life can have bright spots again but never be the same.

This book provided encouragement to me to be patient in this time, be consistent, and hang in there.  

Stay positive and wait.

I am collecting some new Big Sky photos again.

We can have some wonderful blue skies here with amazing cloud formations.

It's a matter of not taking them for granted and looking up every time I am outside.

And taking the pics that are worthy of capture.

Flickr Macro Mondays challenge this week was Battery.   Of course, they come in every size, color and description.

Here I have placed 2 D batteries aligned in front of each other.  I like that they had this blue plastic layer around the edges.

I lit them with a flashlight from above.

My highlights are not blown out and the shape repetition works well along with the black background.

You can check out my Photostream by follwoing this link (SMDPics).

Have a great week!