Features I'd like on my next camera

This little guy (also known as a bold jumping spider or a daring jumping spider-really, that's his name) followed me into the house... and then I had to carry him right back out. Once he was outside again, I followed him around with my camera. He was very animated with his attempts to intimidate me. Lots of gestures, a few staredowns, and some jumping around. Oh, he was full of outrage.

"Lady, you keep getting in my face, I'm going to jump.  And then you just watch it because when I jump up and down again it could be really, really high. Don't you be messing with me."

Well, of course I did. This little tough guy was too funny to ignore. I wish I had a camera that was better at close-up focusing because this guy was a fasssst mover. 

A raccoon appeared at the coontina over the weekend but I don't think he was Freddie (something about his facial markings). But this raccoon was sooooooooo skinny, maybe he was Freddie, just an unrecognizable Freddie. I gave this raccoon that may or may not have been Freddie two plates of cat food and then he was good to go. His tail was sooooo skinny, it looked like it belonged to a stray cat. Raccoons store fat reserves in their tails so this guy definitely was starving with a tail like that. Poor thing. But regarding cameras, I wish I had one that could take better photos of something moving around so fast in the dark.

However, I can always count on getting  a nice clear shot of a turtle on a spring day.

They're not going anywhere too fast when it's a tiny bit cool out there. But a feature I'd like on my next camera would have something that would make a turtle come out of their shell and perhaps even have a pleasant expression on his or her face. It's hard to get an expression when the only thing a turtle will show you from their face is their nostrils! 

And if I could get a pleasant expression feature on that next camera, I'd like to try it out on Violet. Even better, make that a fake smile feature. If you can have a get rid of red-eye feature on a camera, why not a get rid of scowl-face too?

Tiarella

These flowers are sooooo cute. Their name is even fun to say. Tiarella, tiarella, tiaRELLLLLLLLLLLLLa.

If flowers could channel stop motion animation characters, this one would say what Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer said when he got kissed by Clarice.

Pinkness (or magenta-ness?)

The bridal wreath spirea is in bloom and so at this time of year, every year, the inside of my house looks like a funeral parlor. The big vases are out and you will find them full of cascading white spirea on just about every flat surface in the house. The spirea is bright white but everything has a feeling of warm pink because of the light bouncing off the walls.

In the dining room, I started a sewing/crocheting project and of course, I can't do any craft project without some assistance from Violet.

Now this might seem odd to you, but I do value that. Why? Because when you're working on something, anything, I swear all the little tools involved get up on their little hind legs and if you don't keep an eye on them, they run off as soon as they can. 

I remember one time trying to put a large birdcage together and I just knew as soon as I looked away, the screwdrivers, the screws, the hammer...absolutely everything would take off to some other room or level of the house....and I would not find them for days, if ever. Those things like to play hide and seek. I don't. I got so fed up with things taking off while putting that birdcage together, I got out a roll of masking tape and as soon as I was finished with a screwdriver or a hammer or whatever, I would tape it to the floor so it could not run off. Oh yeah, laugh at me. If you had a pen in your hand five minutes ago, where do you think it is now? Not where you think.

So I very much appreciate Violet keeping everything where it should be. And I hadn't realized it but there is a definite pink feel to the fabric I was working with too.

Outdoors the columbine was starting to bloom.

This is a hybridized columbine from two varieties I started from seed years and years ago. One of the parents was a Magpie columbine. The Magpie flowers were white and a very dark chocolate. The leaves were lily pad-like and had a blue cast to them. Really, really pretty. In the same area as the Magpies, were the Biedermeier columbine. They were a murky red violet, a murky light pink and white. They were compact and only grew about a foot tall but they had a crazy amount of flowers.

Columbine hybridize rather freely so years after growing these two varieties, the hybrids started to appear. What resulted for many years was a columbine with a flower that looked like the Biedermeiers but the new plant was two feet tall, not one foot and the leaves were the bluish lily pad shapes of the Magpies. I'm not a real fan of the murky red violet colored columbine but this particular plant was very strong and grew easily in a difficult place for years.

However, I'm not too impressed with the hybrid columbine of this year. The burgundy is mottled and although the plants look robust, they just do not have the presence of the columbine from the past. 

Indoors I was disappointed with the rug I was making. The colors were bugging me. I liked the yellow center, I liked the grey, I was getting used to the red...spent a long time getting used to the red, but for some reason any other color I added was just not working for me. I kept ripping out colors and putting new ones in, especially that mottled red.

Then I figured it out. It really wasn't the color combination that was bothering me. It was the not quite recognizing that the colors I was working with were very close to the colors of the new columbine. The color on the flower, I didn't like...the same color on my walls and the new rug, I loved...well, until that columbine got into my head. Good grief. The perception and thoughts of a color can be so mystifying.

Okay, time to move on and finish up the rug now that I know what's going on in my head. And Violet's got other colors secured under her just in case I want to put off figuring out my real opinion about the color known as red....murky mottled burgundy if I find it on a flower outdoors.

Whiteness

The lilies of the valley are blooming...

...and telling each other secrets.

Violet listens in...

But Violet and her Robert Lansing eyebrows find those flowers kind of boring.

But not this little digger bee and his Robert Lansing eyebrows...

...who also has something in common with this...

...the fluffiness and lightness of dandelions who pretty soon will be airborne too. 

Lots and lots of whiteness in the garden....and also lots and lots of wetness.

All this rain is making things look very clean and it also makes it easy to dig up those darn dandelions. Hopefully this weekend I'll have them all removed from the backyard. Dandelions, when they go to seed, are the dustbunnies of the outdoors. As soon as they're "vacuumed"  up and done away with, everything looks so much better. But you know, and I hate to admit this, individually and up close, they're kind of pretty...