Sunsets and Other Stories

It's mid-December.  I haven't downloaded any photos since July, so emptying the card on the digital camera is sure to provide a lot of surprises.  I finally hit 10,000 photos with our trusty Canon.  I better get busy and try to redeem myself by posting a few of them.

Without further ado:

The sun is so pretty in the morning.  A bit of fog, bright blue skies, and corn in the field this year.  It was a good summer.

Obviously, I take a lot of sunset photos.  Sometimes, we have people over and the sun puts on a show.  We usher our guests to the living room window and make them watch the sun go down.  Maybe we're not normal.

Clearly, we are not normal.   Now that we've cleared that up, I look at this photo and remember trying to capture the luminosity and how the golden light bathed the air.  I failed.

The day-glo effect evaded me here, too.  Maybe it is time for some photography lessons.  Or maybe, 10,000 photographs later, I should read the manual?

We had a lady-bug invasion this fall.  Unbelievable.  We have a few days in fall where they typically congregate, but this year, we had a bumper crop of them, and for weeks on end.  It's months later and we still have them all over the inside of the house.  You just need to turn on a lamp, and they appear as if by magic.

Nothing strikes fear in my heart like a hole in the house.  (You don't say?)  Here, we changed out a kitchen window.  The three kitchen windows and sliding glass door all date from the early 90's.   These are the only windows that haven't been changed in the 12 years we've been in this renovation purgatory.  One down, three to go.  Eric was only confident changing out one at a time, and one was all he had time for this summer.  Observe the beam directly above this window.  We weren't sure if it was held in place by fear, a common feature in so many things we've found over the years.  We removed some drywall, found a metal plate that supports the transverse I-beam and decided it was good enough.

We've learned a bit about what is ideal in our climate over the past few years in this house, so we custom-ordered a triple-pane, argon-filled window.  While I'm not happy with the argon, (it's a question of when, and not if, it will fail), I do admit the triple glazing should be standard.  All our other windows are double-pane argon-filled, and while they're acceptable, if we were to do this again, we'd go triple pane all the way.

 Oh look!  Pretty clouds that match the tree line!

 More pretty clouds!

Oh!  I could write a saga about this young bat and how it caused me to lose two nights' sleep.  I'm not prone to fits of flailing and screaming, but this tiny thing nearly did me in.  Only AFTER the fact did we learn that our friend Isa used to volunteer at a bat rehab centre and handles these little beasts like you and I handle kitties and puppies.  I tried my best to capture it in a Tupperware container, and successfully caught it, only to close the lid on those TINY LITTLE hooks they have on the tips of their wings.  The little bat squealed (I didn't know they could do that) and flailed, and I screamed like a little girl and let it loose again.  Of course the designated bat-relocator (that would be Eric) was traveling, so I had to deal with this little bat on my own.   Every plan I had failed, and while I managed to get the bat out of the house, he was back within 10 minutes.  Of course, all of my hysteria was regaled to Eric long-distance who confidently stated that he would "handle" things upon his return.  When Eric finally came home, he donned his overalls with aplomb, a hefty pair of leather gloves with trepidation, and got up on a step ladder to within inches of it.  Then he matter-of-factly stated that he, (and I quote), "Don't have as much courage as I thought I had".   Defeated, he stepped down from the ladder and called a neighbour.  Thus the little bat was caught in a sheet and relocated to a forest about a mile away.  Insert bat mobile joke here.

Phew.  We're back on track again.  Another gorgeous evening.  Wispy cirrus clouds and lots of contrails.

 We had a lot of rainfall, but no torrential downpours, save for this occasion.

I think this one's my favorite.  Savouring the end of another glorious day in paradise.  It never gets old.

And here we are, months later, with memories of summer fading as the snow and cold sets in again for another round of winter.  So far, so good.  A fair amount of snow but with bearable temperatures.

Eric is still plugging away on the drywall upstairs.  My knitting needles are humming as I try to stay ahead of the avalanche of wool I've managed to procure this past year.  (Let's just say I went ballistic in the yarn-hoarding department).

Hopefully, within a few weeks, I will regale you with more tales from the farm, more accomplishments in the knitting department, and a few pet photos to round things out.