Now that's a tongue!

I take a lot of pictures of butterflies and birds (and, OK, really lots of things - when I spent 10 days in Yellowstone & Grand Teton National parks last year with friends, I came home with about 650 pictures or something. And that doesn't count the ones I deleted before coming home. But I digress.)

Yesterday, Dawn and I were in the back yard with Zachary and a butterfly fluttered by and Dawn said I should get my camera. We wound up walking down the block with Zachary, and I got a chance to take a bunch of pictures of a couple of these butterflies at a neighbor's garden.I had the camera in auto-drive mode and took a lot of pictures, including several in a row at this point in which you can see the butterfly is feeding and then rolling its tongue back up...

Somewhere Over Berkeley

Way up high, we were treated to a double rainbow (and I don't mean the ice cream) just before dusk Saturday... It was really cool, especially after the very odd rain. And then the sun started to set and the sky turned red but the rainbow was still there.

7 Years

Dear Rachel,

We've been celebrating your birthday lately. Reasonable, as your birthday is this week. Seven whole years. I can hardly believe it's gone so fast.

Don made this cake, a Ren de Saba (Queen of Sheba), for your family dinner party tonight. You had some trouble waiting to know what was for dessert, and it probably wasn't fair of us to make you wait for the coffee to brew. Carol suggested that we could follow the French method and have coffee after dessert, which lead to much discussion of their attempts to wait out the French waiters in order to have coffee with dessert. It never worked.

You loved the cake and you got such a great expression on your face when Mommy brought it out. I love the pictures I got; they're great and captured your wonderful smile, except that I also got reflections of the candle flames that mess them up. I am going to see if I can figure out how to get rid of them. Maybe I'll ask Uncle Max to tackle it; he has the patience for that, unlike yours truly.

Tomorrow is the big party at Trapeze Arts, where I'm not sure whether you (jumping, flying, playing & learning) or I (watching & photographing) will have more fun. I know you'll have a wonderful time, and I can't wait.

I love you,
Daddy

How 'bout that?

Well, they haven't taken it out (I'd have noticed that!) but after blogging about our street-tree earlier today, I noticed that they finally came by and trimmed it. Our neighbor actually saw them doing it, either Wednesday or Thursday, but I only noticed tonight. This is a new picture of it. They did a good job, and it looks a lot better. Perhaps it will perk up a bit, but most of the leaves look pretty droopy and not really the right color.

The Lookout

Although I want the City to take it out, I will be sorry to see our (dying) street-tree go for one reason: this hummingbird loves to hang out in it. I wish I'd gotten this shot at f/10 instead of f/6.3. I could have sacrificed a bunch of shutter speed (this is 1/320) since it was just sitting there, and then the beak would have been in focus as well. I have another from a few minutes later in much better focus...

Not quite there...

This did not come out quite the way I had in mind... Maybe the rose is more overblown than I remembered, but I really wanted the bit of purple that's right up against the bottom of the rose to be fully in focus and the other two both out of focus. Of course, I could also have used a lensbaby.

Evening Glory?

Rachel and I went on a walk around the block one evening and took this at a neighbor's house. I meant for the flower on the right to be slightly more out of focus, but the flower on the left & the droplets on it look better in this one.

Soon To Be an Ex-Tree

This is a branch of the camphor tree in front of our house. Although it is in our sidewalk strip, it technically belongs to, and is the responsibility of, the City. I have been trying to get them to remove it for a few years - the sooner they take it out, the sooner they'll put a new one in; the sooner they put a new one in, the sooner it will start adding (beauty & shade) to the neighborhood. Although the tree as a whole has more leaves than dead branches, it is not doing well and the leaves it has are not very green. As in this picture, the leaves are yellow-green or red or falling off.