Futile frugality
My need for clearer pictures is starting to outweigh my rabid frugality.
This isn't my planned topic. I set out this morning to do a bit of cheery stuff, like writing about waking up early and enjoying the peace and quiet in the house; our dogs happy in the downstairs dog beds, the smell of freshly perking coffee.
Until I saw that most of my images of dogs and coffee were blurred AF despite a clean lens.
I won't be a Debbie Downer about it. I see the perks. For one, the piles of dog fur (which come mostly from the Demon Dog) aren't as visible. That's about it. One perk.
I was an avid photographer before the move to Toronto. I loved it. I especially loved snapping shots of insects. Live ones. In a real environment. Not the dead ones people order in the mail and then pose on flowers.
I'll stop poking fun of people that do that. In truth, I'd do it if I had the money to back then.
Looking back on it now, I realize that we created the environment for most of those visiting critters. Yes, our large mimosa tree drew in the humming birds. But we allowed the spiders to build webs, and planted things that drew in their prey while pollinating our veg.
THE SPIDER'S MEALI love my yards most in the early hours of the morning and at twilight. Wildlife is most active during these times, a beautifully orchestrated symphony of insects, birds and plant life.
This morning, I had hope to digitally capture the humming birds that had (finally!) returned to feed off of the memosa blooms. I wasn't very successful and occupied myself by photographing a few stills of my budding tomatoes and pepper flowers.
A sudden, violent movement caught my eye. A spider had snared a small beetle in her web. It had alighted as I was zooming in on a particularly graceful grouping of young tomatoes and the spider, lurking somewhere under the porch railing, burst onto her web with dazzling speed, snaring the befuddled insect and poisoning him.
It was a fabulous display but I wasn't able to calibrate my camera to catch the entire dance. I had to settle with a few shots of her struggling with the dying insect before her feast. -BEMUSED MUSE 7 JUL 2011
Sometimes that photogenic nature had once been tame, such as Onyx.
My obsidian antagonist, my nemesis of spring, he who eats $150 worth of plants in a single go, the Black Rabbit of Cuchulainn has taken up residency on my front porch.
Many moons ago the Black Rabbit of Cuchulainn was a sweet little pet bunny named Onyx. He had a sweet little hutch and a sweet little girl who fed him carrots and doted on him. “There’s more to life than this, as surely as I’m a black rabbit in a hutch, which I am,” said the rabbit. He escaped and become the neighborhood rabbit. -BEMUSED MUSE 22 JAN 2009
I also captured daily life with our dogs.
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| There are some days when you are just too exhausted to do anything. We crash and burn like an Italian Greyhound coming down from a milkbone high. |
Putting all this Memory Lane stuff aside, I really need to get back into photography. Yes, have a quality camera on a smartphone is handy, but nothing does justice like a camera capable of large landscapes and macro photography.
And it's time to put more effort into shaping our current home into something lovely. ♡