Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#25-26)

It being a rainy day, I'm having difficulty finding wildlife around the yard. I don't blame them. Who wouldn't want to be snug in their bed on a day like this? Even the flowers are tucked in.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I found these megafauna behind the house. Aren't they cute?

Picture #25: Megafauna #1


Picture #26: Megafauna #2

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#24)

One of the most beautiful leaves in nature is the fern. From immature fiddlehead to unfurled leaf, the fern is an incredible shape that's influenced so many. The Fibonacci Spiral, for example.

Picture #24: Fern

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me."
— Henri Matisse

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#23)

Having gotten home really late from work, I thought I wouldn't have time for a photo today. Then it hit me. I love my Moon Lamps — could a night photo work? Not at first, that's for sure. The problem was the shutter was open so long that any movement put the photo severely out of focus. I finally turned off the flash and got this more than acceptable shot. It reminds me of those bioluminescent fish that glow in the depths. I like the idea of creating your own light.

Photo #23: Sun-operated Moon Lamps

Tuesday Tooth Report

Yesterday I had my regular 4-month check-up at the Dentist. While I've got my braces on they want to see me every 4 months instead of once a year. The visit went very well. They were pleased with how clean I'm getting my teeth. They used a high-pressure spray that contained water, air and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to clean out the brackets. Apparently plaque collects on those, too!

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#18-22)

Today I'm covering the season's wild flowers. Believe it or not, there are quite a few wild flowers on this little urban lot. At this very moment there are five in bloom.

Picture #18: Purple flower with distinctly patterned green leaf. The next flower is almost identical in shape to this one. Its green leaves are similar, too.


Picture #19: White flower that grows with the purple flower above. Both are shade-loving. They are two of the very few things that grow in the back yard.


Picture #20: Forget-me-not flowers.


Picture #21: Strawberry flower. These small plants grow in both the front and back yard. Their tiny fruit only ripen in the front yard. Seriously! The ones at the back remain white for the whole season. Both taste excellent though.


Picture #22: Last but not least, the Dandelion. I think this is a wonderful flower even though it's not a popular opinion to have. Look at how cool it is up close.

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#8-17)

I'm calling this episode "Family Robins". I hope this pair of Robins don't consider themselves marooned on my lot but they've definitely chose an unlikely place to roost. Now to find out what's in that nest...

Picture #9: Approaching the garage.


Picture #10: Knock-knock. Anybody home?


Picture #11: She looks like she's ready to jet.


Picture #12: Camera went off accidentally as I duck to miss her beeline escape.


Picture #13: Mrs. Robin has made it to the power wire to call hubby.


Picture #14: Hubby arrives in an instant. He cleverly keeps 4 feet from me in an attempt to distract me from the nest.

As I take a step toward him, he moves another 4 feet to keep me coming in his direction. But I'm on a mission so back to the nest I go.

Picture #15: Not quite high enough. On tippy-toes and arm outstretched as high as it will go...


Picture #16: Two pink babies plus one blue egg! They're definitely "in a family way". (I purposely turned the flash off so that I wouldn't bother the chicks if there were any.)


Picture #17: Nothing but blue skies for these proud parents. This little island welcomes them open-hearted.

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#2-7)

Today's installment focuses on the theme "home". This tiny yard provides a variety of habitats for so many things; some obvious, some surprising.

Picture #2: The garage blocks the setting sun and causes a horseshoe-shaped patch of light every evening in the back yard. The reduced light welcomes only hardy, shade-loving plants and insects.


Picture #3: ...shade-loving insects like this mosquito whose double reflection is a direct comment on their local population. Here he's seen knocking at my door, waiting to be invited in for dinner on me.


Picture #4: Spidey is willing to answer the door (or dinner) bell any time.


Picture #5: Inside the garage is a Robin's nest.


Picture #6: Making a mad dash to the crab apple tree, Robin Parent #1 tries to lure me away from the garage.


Picture #7: Robin Parent #2 also attempts to draw me in another direction. So I take the hint and head in the direction of home, camera in hand, with plans to find a ladder tomorrow to see what's in that nest...

Yard — a word worth a 1000 pictures (#1)

I love my yard.

In fact, I love my yard so much that I think it's worth a 1000 pictures. So, I've decided to photograph it daily and share it with you on this blog. If all goes well, this might result in the world's largest documentation of a yard!

What started all this? The installation of a compost bin yesterday.

In keeping with my It's Easy Being Green Challenge, I decided to start a compost pile to reduce the amount of "wet" garbage that goes to the curb every week. After installing it, I raked up some rotting leaves that had mixed in with a few piles of doggie-doo. Underneath the leaves were huge earthworms as thick as my baby finger and, unstretched, the length of my hand from wrist to the tip of my middle finger. I couldn't believe my eyes! All day today I couldn't stop thinking about those amazing creatures and why I didn't grab my camera. 

And then it hit me. Next time, I will grab my camera. In fact, I should grab my camera daily and seek out new life. Boldly go where I haven't been before.  

And why not? There are few things that make me happier than my yard. My back yard is wonderfully shaded with a thick maple tree. And, my front yard currently displays a blossoming crab apple tree, a little garden and potted flowers and herbs staggered up my front steps. It's not only home to me but home to a myriad of life from squirrels to skunks! Thankfully, right now there is only the sweet smell of tiny purple flowers that happily grow in the permashade at the back.

So, here goes. 1000 pictures start with 1.

Picture #1: The impressive, thick trunk of my beautiful Maple tree.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real."
— Lucian Freud

Tuesday Tooth Report

My bite is really off this week. So off that it's causing me to 'worry' my teeth with my tongue. Now I have a tongue ache. I know exactly what's causing it but I can't seem to stop! It's like when you're a kid and you've got a wiggly tooth — you just can't stop fiddling with it.

Cool octopus looks like it has thin silk sheets between its tentacles

Check the octopus video at YouTube.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

When I'm not fidgeting with infinity, I'm just fidgeting."
— Brett Whiteley

Tuesday Tooth Report

That was an amazing trip to the Orthodontist.

The whole event took the talents of three people. First they took my wires off to give them complete access to everything. Then they had all kinds of filing going on: drill-bit-style, disc-style, plastic tape with very fine tooth and a thin steel sheet that simply vibrates. Surprisingly, there was no pain. The result was horizontal and vertical edging to make my teeth look like they've never been worn!

Then they repositioned one bracket to raise my bottom-left eye tooth a tiny bit. Once that was glued in place, they put my wires back on but this time put a new, thicker wire around the bottom jaw to really pull on that eye tooth. And lastly, they inserted two new hooks for elastics to go around my molars to refine my bite at the back of my mouth.

That's 4 kinds of filing, 3 people hovering, 2 new hooks and 1 new wire. Wow.

And, bonus, since the wires were off, I got to do a real flossing!

Google Goats help keep company 'Green'

In Google's continuous effort to be 'green', they've introduced goats to replace lawnmowers at their various facilities.

I'd rather my mower's motor sound like "baaaa" any day!

TechCrunch full article

IEBGreen Challenge: Clothes Dryer Balls

Mark said..."My wife and I use our clothesline constantly in the summer too, but this winter we bought a pair of dryer balls to replace the dozens of sheets we'd normally go through. We ordered them through Nellie's All-Natural. They're inexpensive and last for years, and drying times are reduced as well. Perfect!"

Thanks so much for the suggestion, Mark. And, congratulations on saving the world from so many dryer sheets! At three loads per week x 52 weeks in the year x 50 years (don't worry, I'm not assigning an expiry date to you), that's a savings of 7,800 sheets from just one household!

Keep the suggestions rolling in. Everything you contribute helps others go Green.

To learn more about the Challenge, view my original It's Easy Being Green article. And, to see what things I'm adding to my list regularly, check out the "Green things done to date" in the right-hand column.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even."
— Claude Monet

Tuesday Tooth Report

I'm doubling-up on the elastics these days. I want my teeth to have moved as much as possible before my appointment next week. They'll be shaving down some of the odd-angled edges so I want my teeth to be as aligned as possible.

Visiting Artist at Cape Jourimain's Eco-Arts Festival

Last Fall I was fortunate to be selected as a Visiting Artist at the Eco-Arts Festival at Cape Jourimain Nature Centre. The Centre is located in a 675-hectare National Wildlife Area at the base of the Confederation Bridge in New Brunswick and celebrates the link between natural and human environments. So it’s no surprise that they hold an annual festival that marries art and nature.

Beached
On arrival, the Artists were encouraged to walk the trails and select a location for their “studio”. Like a fish caught in an eddy, I was continually drawn back to the beach. I envisioned numerous artworks all based on the use of the naturally-occurring wrack line of dried eelgrass. As the tide continually reshapes the shore, my intention was to continually reshape the eelgrass during the course of the festival. A rake would be my paintbrush, the seaweed would be my paint, and the beach would be my canvas.

My first artwork was this 18-foot long fish which I entitled Beached. As part of the natural process, animals get beached with the tide. This fish suffered the same fate but at the hands of the artist.

On day two, I breathed life back into that fish and adapted it for a second artwork: a fish that is sneaking up and about to swallow me! I was looking for a way to redefine the wrack line. The natural line of the eelgrass became the waterline of the Northumberland straight. With me swimming along the waterline, half above water and half below, the fish comes up behind me for a chomp.

To photograph the artwork, I needed to get to high ground. The Centre built an Observation Tower for just such viewing.

Peye in the Sky Idea
The Observation Tower’s vantage point gave me a pie (or eye) in the sky idea.

Could these artworks be visible from the satellites used by Google Earth or Google Maps? Their big eye in the sky is a technology whose omnipresence is being exploited for marketing purposes the world over. So, I attempted to write CapeJourimain.ca large enough to be captured by Google Earth. This URL not only names the land but identifies it as Canadian (.ca) and lets people know where to go to find out more information about it. I put a bird, an eel and a snail around the web address to indicate that it's an area rich with wildlife spanning earth, air and water habitats.

The last time the area was photographed by Google seems to have been in 2006 so I was hoping that Cape Jourimain was due for another shoot! I made sure that the web address was above the high tide mark so that it would remain on the beach for a while. I tracked Google Earth for the 3 weeks that the URL survived the elements but it never showed up. If Google did photograph it, it hasn’t appeared on their web site yet.

The web address ended up being about 96 feet long and 12 feet tall. To give you an idea of size, I've included a photo with people in it.


Everyone’s an Art Critic
One of the most interesting things that happened was when a group of shore birds flocked to my upturned seaweed — it must be a source of food for them. By bizarre coincidence, they seemed to prefer the “drawing” of the bird to pick at. I’ve worried about critics tearing apart my art but never birds!

The Challenges of an Outdoor Studio
Producing the works had its challenges. Creating something so large (for example, the largest letters in CapeJourimain.ca were 8 feet by 12 feet) introduced the problem of perspective. Viewing it from high above and from different angles stretched and warped it. I had to run back and forth to the platform of the beach's stairs between forming each letter to see what tweaking it needed. The letter that was furthest away ended up being extremely warped from the beach but looked perfect from the tower.

Photographing the work was interesting, too. I photographed it from the tower but to get a closer view of it, I ended up borrowing a huge ladder from the facility. Not only was it difficult to find sure footing in loose sand but the wind took the ladder out several times in the attempt! After several tries and with the help of fellow artists and the festival coordinator, I got the shot that I was hoping for.

And then there was the shear physical aspect of it. For example, using a rake all day is nothing like using a paint brush all day. I quickly learned that gloves, rubber boots and a strong garden rake were essential and that flipping seaweed to air-dry overnight meant much lighter work the next day. My arms got a workout that weekend!

A Thoroughly Enjoyable Experience
The Cape Jourimain staff were super. Their leadership and assistance was wonderful and the food was amazing; much of it organic, all of it local.

Working all morning and all afternoon in our own "environment", then breaking for coffee or lunch to bring the artists and staff together allowed us to talk about the day's accomplishments and the impact that working outside had on our approach to art-making. This wall-less studio takes down many barriers; the fear of people seeing my work mid-production was a big one for me.

During the festival, visitors were really engaged. We talked about the act of creating art since most visitors were finding the artists part way through the creation of an artwork rather than with finished works. It was more like a studio tour than a gallery tour... the world's largest and most freeing studio! A few asked me if my communication on the beach was a sort of S.O.S. By the end of the weekend, I'd perfected an answer "Yes, a form of communication but the exact opposite of an S.O.S. in that I DON'T want to be found!"

• My CJNC Eco-Arts Visiting Artist profile page