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Archive for July, 2015

The Dogs perspective July 29^th 2015

My perspective:

                Two days earlier…Ouch! Son-of –a–bucket that hurt! You bit me! Stupid hornet. Die! I stomp you to death! My knee is swelling up. It burns. Ouch. Ice, Benadryl, ibuprofen…red, puffy, swollen, achy, knee for a day and a half all because of one hornet sting in the garage.

Today…

The Dogs Perspective:

BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

My perspective:

Storm, knock it off! We’ll go out as soon as I get the groceries put away.

The Dogs Perspective:

BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

Translation: Stupid human! Don’t you get it? HELP! I’m in trouble here. There’s a squadron of yellow and black stingy things attacking me! Help! Help me please! NOW!!

My perspective:

Storm, knock it off! Just a minute baby.

The Dogs Perspective:

BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

Translation: Now mommy, now! Please help me. They’re hurting me. If dogs could cry I would be bawling my head off. Help me mommy, help me….please…

My perspective:

What is it baby? Oh, my goodness! Come here baby, let’s get you out of there. I can’t believe it there’s a hornet’s nest in your doggie door. Poor baby. Come here honey dog. I don’t see any parts of you that are swelling.

Calling the vet…”Yes, I am not sure if she was stung or not there was just a swarm following her.”

Veterinary technician replies, “Just give her some Benadryl and watch her tongue and lips for swelling.”

I look at Storm, saying, “Poor baby, Mommy’s sorry she didn’t come sooner. I’ll make them pay.” I add as I go to the shop to get the hornet spray.

The Dogs Perspective:

“You’d better be sorry. I was being eaten alive out there and you were yelling at me to be quiet. I know I bark at everything but this time it was really serious. I promise I won’t bark again until it’s important or until a leaf blows by, or there is a squirrel…Thanks for the little pieces of chicken by the way. They were good, but a little crunchier than usual are you sure they were just chicken?

July 18, 2015 The Dogs Perspective

My Perspective:

Ahhh…Saturday morning, the family is all home we are sitting around enjoying our coffee and talking about our plans for the day. A nice quiet family morning the way Saturdays should be. Besides it’s already hot and humid and no one is excited to head outside for the day. Amongst the chatter however I hear a strange sound. It sounds like well…a beak pecking my sliding glass door.

Perplexed, because my deck is quite high, I look at my son and say, “Did you hear that?”

“I did.” He responds in an equally perplexed manor.

So, I put my coffee down, and head to the door, at the same time my husband says, “Did you see that?”

“See what?” I ask. Now unsure if I should proceed without grabbing my camera.

“One of the baby chickens is on the deck.” He responds with surprise.

“We need to get them off now!” I demand, “I will not have them pooping all over my deck!”

And with that, the four of head out to get little chickens off of our deck, dodging little piles of chicken poop along the way. You would think four grown adults would be able to wrangle six half grown chickens off the deck with no problem. I mean we are smarter, Right?

Chickens flapping, feather flying, people laughing, dogs barking and 20 minutes later we finally are got them all off the deck.  Whose idea were chickens anyway? Don’t even get me started.

The Chickens Perspective:

We still can’t believe it! This place is so big and we get to go anywhere we want! It’s scary out there though. Just look at those big black chickens. They sound like us, walk like us, but if we get too close they peck at us and don’t even get us started on those four legged, furry black things. Then there are they giant funny looking things they have neither feathers or fur, they bring us good things to eat, but they steal the eggs that our older friends lay. We are curious about them, but we don’t think we like them either.

     We are a collective, we go everywhere together and we like to explore. Each day we are getting a little farther from our home, but we always make sure it is in site and within an easy run if we need to get there in a hurry. The old ladies we live with like to go under the big flat coop in the sky.

We think we will go and see what is up there. It’s got to be good, it’s so big. There is only one problem, we have to go past the big furry things. They always make a funny sounds at us, but maybe if we are very very quiet they won’t even know we are there.

***

                Wow! Look at the view! There is so much to see from up here. Nothing to eat or drink but the view. Amazing. We better leave a trail so we can find our way back. So everybody poop a little. I wonder what this big shiny thing is. It makes funny sounds when I hit it with my beak. I’m gonna do that again. That is so cool. Wait a minute. The funny looking giants are in there. They are coming this way. Run! Hide! They’re coming. They’re making funny noises. Flapping their big arms, they’re chasing us, right at the big black furry things and they’re making their funny clucking noises now. Run! Hide! Scatter! Stay together! We don’t know what to do! Poop! When in doubt poop!

The Dogs Perspective:

                Bark, bark, whine, whine, run back and forth. Don’t you people get it?  Let us out! We can help. This game looks like so much fun. We want to play chase the chickens too. We are bird dogs after all. Please oh please!

Let us at ‘em. Let us at ‘em. Come on please…

We have four legs we can run faster than you bipeds.  Please oh please.

You people never let us have any fun! We can’t wait until we are 18 and can move out. Hu-ruff- …

My Perspective:

Just another quiet Saturday morning.. I need more coffee.

2015 is a special year to me and my husband as we are celebrating 25 years of marriage! I still can’t believe it is possible because the time has just flown by. I am pretty sure the next 25 years will go just as fast. To celebrate our many years together we decided to take a little drive, 3800 miles and five states and five national parks later we arrived back home.

Once I arrived home I began working on pictures right away. As a photographer, that can be a daunting task considering everything can be a subject, who am I kidding everything is a subject. I am also one of those people who suffers from, “I may never be back to this spot again” and “this (insert:  scene, object, whatever, here) will never look this way again so I had better capture it now” philosophy. I will have to give my husband credit he is extremely patient with me and never seemed to tire of waiting for me while I took “just one more shot.”

I did make sure my husband was armed with his own camera for our adventure, the man has a good eye and I could tell he enjoys capturing his own moments. I finally got him to upload all his photos so I could look at his pictures.  I mean seriously, I relived the whole vacation the same day we arrived home and here he is, almost a full month later, hoarding his photos on his camera. He does that with new clothes also. He’ll get a new outfit for father’s day, birthday, etc. and it will sit in his closet for a while, me I get a new outfit and I am wearing it the next day. Oh, well I digress.

I did notice a theme in his photos though, and I have to laugh.  What is that theme you might wonder? Well, it’s me taking photos. Yep, looks like all I did on vacation was take pictures

.

It definitely was a big part of our trip.  We also spent a lot of time hiking, horseback riding, looking for wildlife and of course exploring. This trip will go down in my memory as one of my favorites as it was something we have been talking about since we were married.

We have taken a few tropical vacations and I have loved them very much, however there is just something to be said about the beauty and wonder that is offered in the United States and within driving distance. I am astonished to think how it must have been for the early settlers to cross our nation. It is so vast and just plain big. They must have wondered if they would ever make it to their desired destinations. I think about how slowly they would have traveled and how that compares to us driving 80 through the Great Plains. I am already planning our next adventure to visit other states that we haven’t seen and I think a great goal will be to see all of our beautiful states by time we hit our 50^th wedding anniversary. So keep your bag packed and tires on the car honey, we have a lot more driving to do.

To view more images from our adventure visit:www.FotonicImages.com

So my husband wants chickens. After over twenty years of toiling over my organic garden, buying products from local farmers or from other quality sources, and while my husband has supported me in all this, I am not sure he had truly bought into my “Let’s be healthier, let’s know where our food comes from lifestyle.” That is until he said, “Let’s get our own chickens. It will be great, they will give us fresh eggs, and they will keep all the bugs out of the garden and yard. You’ll see.”

With some hesitation and several questions like, “What will I have to do? I’m not cleaning up after them! And “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I agreed and the process of choosing our little flock began.  The process started at the local library. I think I checked out every chicken book they had. Google even gave us some advice. We specifically looked for chickens that would be good for beginners. We decided on Black Australorps.

Decision made I contacted the local co-op to see about ordering chickens. “Of course we can order chickens for you, however if you order a specialty breed you need to order a batch of twenty-five.” The nice lady on the phone says.

“Twenty-five,” I blurt thinking what on earth we will do with twenty-five chickens. That’s about twenty-five eggs a day! “I’ll have to call you back.” quickly hanging up the phone.

I punch in my husbands speed dial, “Do you know we can only get this kind of chick in batches of twenty-five?” in my best ‘what are you thinking man?’ tone.

“Twenty-five!” he responds and I can hear him thinking, what the heck are we going to do with twenty-five chickens. “Well, we will have to come up with a new plan.”

“I agree,” relieved that I just dodged twenty-five chicken sized bullets.

He promptly followed it up with, “We’ll just have to find another place to order them from.”

Oh, yippee was all I could think to myself….

Of course you know this story will be continued  :)

The Dog’s Perspective: July 10th 2015

Hello, my name is Indy and I am in charge of this week’s Dog’s Perspective. I am in charge because my humans brought me home on the Fourth of July ten years ago and named me Independence. Since this is our country’s birthday month, and my name is Independence my mommy thought well, it was appropriate. They do that a lot, give their furry children names associated with events around the day we are brought into the pack. Take my sister Storm for example, she was adopted during a blizzard, if you can believe that. If only my humans knew how fitting her name would be they might have picked something else like, sparkles, peace or school’s cancelled. But no, they named her Storm and she has been living up to her name ever since. Let me tell you about our annual pilgrimage out to the lake for the Fourth of July so you can understand what I mean.
It started the moment Mommy backed the car out of the garage and Daddy put in the doggie gate in. Yes, my parents keep us in the back, they get the cushy seats and we have to sit on the hard plastic liner in the far back. I suppose I should be happy we get air conditioning, but they don’t understand Storm always crosses the line and touches me. I mean seriously, does this dog not understand that everyone gets a space in the car. There is no touching or crossing the line, just look out the window and enjoy the ride.
Oh, sorry, I need to get back to the story. Storm, now realizing we get to go too, starts bouncing. I mean this dog is vibrating in place, jumping and getting into Mommy and Daddy’s way while they are loading up the car. Me, I just grab my ball and lay on the porch and wait until they tell me it’s time to go, but not Storm. She’s jumping into the car, on the seats which makes Mommy yell, she tripped Daddy while he was carrying a big box of food and he almost fell because he couldn’t see her. Does she not realize that we can get going faster if she stays out of the way? She’s two now you would think she knows better.
After what seems like hours we finally get to the lake. I am so ready to be out of the car and into the water. The cool water feels so good on my old bones. I can’t wait to just chill on shore. I jump out of the car and start heading towards the lake when BAM! I’m hit from behind, it’s Storm. She is so excited to be out of the car she is running circles around me and trying to get me to play with her. I just want to cool off and sit in the lake. Mommy and Daddy are busy unloading the car so they don’t even see how she is behaving and I just know if I reprimand her, I’m gonna be the one who gets yelled at not her. Life is so unfair sometimes. Maybe just one little growl and a few bared teeth will settle her down…I’d better not, they are sure to hear, besides they will be down soon enough to throw the ball for a while. That will surely wear her out.

***

The ball is not wearing her out! It sure is wearing me out though. But I must not show weakness, I must keep going. So, I yell, “Bark, bark, bark, bark.” Translation, “throw me the ball.” Stupid humans just yell at me, “NO BARKING!” But they throw the ball anyway. I know who’s really in charge here.

This goes on for three days. I love the lake. Our boy sleeps with us out on the porch, all the little kids come and they don’t know how to hang on to their food, so we eat like humans. I love the things they call hot dogs, though I am really glad they aren’t covered in fur. Humans, how do they think of these names? The only downside to the Fourth of July is the loud sparkly things that fly in the air. Storm doesn’t seem to notice them but I hate them. They really scare me. My parents pet me and tell me its ok, but it really doesn’t help. I will be sad to go home, but I know we will be able to come back in a couple of weeks, it’s going to take me that long to recover from this trip. Happy Fourth of July everyone!

On the third day of our glorious adventure up North, we did not get up early enough for sunrise. We were up in Grand Marais the night before which put us three hours away from home, then we stayed up late waiting in hopes of seeing Northern Lights. No such luck this trip. But the weather was great and we were ready to hit the trail, waterfalls and wild flowers look out we are on our way!
We headed back up the coast from Duluth towards Two Harbors, spending a great deal of time in Tettegouche State Park, I was fortunate enough to catch a rainbow at the waterfall there. It was a nice hike to get to the falls and there were a lot of people enjoying the sunshine, some were even brave enough to wade in the river. Water was a little too cold for me.
From Tettegouche we headed to Temperance River State park, where I donated a filter to the river. I have to say I like the effect and versatility my new VU Filter system offers, but I am not fond of the holder itself. The holder is supposed to allow up to three square filters and one circular filter that screws into the holder itself. There are three channels that hold each filter in and there are four little screws that tighten or loosen so that you can easily slide the filters in or out or position to meet the sky line when using a graduated filter. The filter that I lost was my 100×150 graduated 3 stop Neutral Density Soft edge filter. It slid right out of the bottom of the filter holder, crashing on several rock ledges and eventually landing in the river a hundred feet or so below us. The sound it made echoing in the canon was amazing to say the least. My bargain trip just became expensive.
After leaving Temperance we went in search of a good place to catch the sunset. Unfortunately the sky became overcast and the sun dipped down fast, so we ended our days adventure at Grandma’s in Duluth. I enjoyed their wild rice soup and their raspberry salad, though I would recommend putting some actual raspberries in the salad versus just raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Back to the cabin, because tomorrow we are going to be up for sunrise.

To view more photos from this trip please visit:http://fotonicimagesllc.zenfolio.com/p2537120

2015 June North Shore trip Day 2

After a long day of driving and photography, we drove to my father-in-laws cabin, which would be our home base for the next couple of nights. We arrived late after waiting for sunset in Ashland, WI. The sunset was pretty, but not the spectacular spectacle of light we were hoping for.

While we were up early, we took time for coffee, drying out the tent and a little conversation with our lovely hosts. We planned our day’s adventure and decided we would hunt for lady slippers and waterfalls. It was a glorious morning on the screen porch listening to the birds chirp, soaking up the warmth of the sun and looking over the gardens.

Upon leaving the cabin our first stop was the Superior lighthouse and then up the Scenic Drive towards Two Harbors landing us in Grand Marais for sunset and a wonderful meal at My Sister’s Place. At My Sister’s Place, we had absolutely great service and they offered Gluten Free selections which I was thrilled with. My friend Kim enjoyed one of their microbrews, which she stated was one of the best beers she’d ever had. This will definitely be a return spot and I can’t wait to take my husband.

We did a lot of hiking that day and we managed to find a waterfall or two and some pink lady slippers that were on their last leg. But I have to say the highlight of this trip was making it to Grand Marais.http://fotonicimagesllc.zenfolio.com/p2537120/h4d3d2f9e#h4d3d2f9e

The flowers of the North Shore maybe short lived but they offer a spectacular display of beauty while they are in bloom. This past week I had the pleasure of visiting the shores of Lake Superior in the quest to find some of these beautiful gems along with some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. While I never found the elusive “Showy” Lady Slipper I did manage to find some nice pink ones, though they were at the end of their life cycle.

Another beautiful flower that I found was the western columbine and these cute little orange flowers known as Hieracium or hawkweeds.  These little orange flowers were everywhere and were often covered in these cute little orange months.

Our trip started out with a visit to Madeline Island, we had hopes of capturing a nice sunset and sunrise, though all we managed to get was wet. Yep, it rained before out visit and during the night. We still managed to drive the whole island, explore La Pointe and have a nice dinner at the Pub at the Inn.

In the morning we packed up the wet tent while enjoying our coffee. I payed extra for the electric set up so that I could use my electric tea pot instead of the camp stove and headed to the ferry. Of course we had to stop and take a few photos on the way out. The ferry ride is a short jaunt, about 20-25 minutes, and before we knew it we were back in Bayfield, WI. We enjoyed a quick breakfast and Gruenke’s. Gruenke’s is a cute little restaurant that is filled with nostalgia and quirky memorabilia, giving a diner lots to look at while you wait for your food.

After breakfast we headed up the coast towards Ashland, WI. This trip took us all day because we took many side roads to explore the country. We also enjoyed a nice hike up to Houghton Falls, which unfortunately had dried up, but if you are a fan of hobbits and elves this is surely where they live. Most importantly though we stopped to photograph Lupines. Lupines bloom over a two month period and come in a variety of colors, though we seemed to find them mostly in blue and pink. Some were so tall that a person could easily get lost in a field of them. They were truly a delight.

Arriving in Ashland we, dined at the Deep Water Grill, where I enjoyed melt in your mouth beef medallions and picked up a growler of Nut Brown Ale for my husband. The North Shore has quite a few microbreweries and while I myself am not a beer drinker I find that my husband likes the variety of microbrews that are offered on the Shores of Lake Superior, besides when they are empty I smile at him and say, “awe shucks, they’re empty, I had better go refill them for you.” He laughs because he knows I am ready to grab my camera and head Up North on a moments notice.Lupines