Who's scruffy looking?

I swear, the next time I have both breakfast and dinner with Mom and Dad I'm going to make them put the shock collar on me and give me a zap after every 25 photos or so...

Lacking that kind of deterrent, however, I once again ended up taking a truckload of pictures during my time up at the house; it took me about 2 hours to whittle it down to a somewhat manageable number. However, there's still quite a few posted here for your perusal, so without further ado...

Thanks to the morning sun hitting Mom's echinacea plants just right, it almost appears as if this Goldfinch is located in a more tropical clime than Vermont:



This Goldfinch makes for a nice contrast with the purple flower; Mom told me the name of said flower, but that was more than 12 hours ago...



A Redpoll getting a drink:



I think this is a young sparrow of some sort:



Many of the songbirds we normally see around are currently going through the molting process. As a result, when they do turn up they're often a bit scruffy around the edges, to say the least:



A female Cardinal just hanging around:



This Canada Warbler flitted around the porch for several minutes this morning, leading me to get a little cranky when my camera's autofocus had trouble catching up with its movements. Add to that the fact that while the porch was in the shade the foliage around it was well-lit by the morning sun, and you get some tricky photographic conditions. This was one of the better shots in the bunch, and even then I had to use Photoshop to lighten it up a bit:



Later in the day, it came back to avail itself of the waterfall:



This morning I tried to capture some more hummingbird battles, as the spot of choice was the feeder hanging right in front of the sliding glass door. But, again, the morning lighting meant that most of my images featured dark, blurry, sorta bird-shaped blobs in the air around the feeder. However, I decided these two silhouetted shots were still kind of interesting:





Later in the day, sitting outside and with the light in my favor, I got much better results:





I'm not quite sure what that is on this female's beak; what I do know is this shot provides a pretty good look at the bird's tongue poking out of her beak:





Another bird looking a bit ragged around the edges:



Over the course of the late afternoon/early evening, the water fountain on my parents' porch was apparently the place to be if you were a Chickadee. This one stopped to get a drink directly from the source:



I liked this one because of the bead of water you can see in the bird's beak:



While I'm always a fan of splashes, I actually picked this shot for another reason: if you look at its left claw, you can see it that it's emerging from the water but hasn't quite yet broken the surface tension:



Dipping its head under the water:



Taking a quick peek around:



Another foray into the water—I liked that its head was sideways in this shot:



Such fluffy cuteness:



And to wrap things up, our Kaylee shots. To start us off, Kaylee and Dad enjoying their relaxing Sunday morning:



Dad's checking his bird book; I suspect Kaylee's wishing he would stop moving around so she can sleep:



Seriously, how could I resist this pose?



At long last—the chair is all hers:



Finally, I really liked the pattern of light and shadows on Kaylee's head as she gazed out the window:

Stormin' Norman

Today Arlington was a hotbed of activity, thanks to an annual event known as Norman's Attic. Although the name is a reference to artist Norman Rockwell, it's really a combination craft fair and town-wide tag sale and has become quite the draw over the years. The craft fair part takes place along Arlington's main street, aka Route 7A, with stalls set up on both sides of the road; while you're there, you can even pick up a map to the various tag sales taking place all around town. This year the weather could not have been more perfect: sunny but not too hot, blue skies, and virtually no humidity. So I decided I'd wander around for a bit and combine checking out what kind of stuff was for sale with taking some different sorts of photos for my daily post.

To start things off, a couple of looks at folks browsing the stalls; there were probably as many people in town today than we see the other 364 days of the year combined:





Making new friends... maybe:



This dog opted to watch the two dogs pictured above interact from a respectable distance:



Another dog enjoying the shade while its human works:



A few shots I took as I strolled along:







The folks who run VTKnife had a tent set up this year, and as I checked out their offerings—which included everything from penknives to machetes to a few samurai swords—one display in particular caught my eye:



And in case you're wondering if that label actually says what you think it says:



The owner told me he was surprised that more guys don't get nervous when their girlfriends or wives make purchases from that particular tray...

Speaking of things I couldn't resist photographing, check out the name of this particular business:



Yup, once upon a time you could buy fire extinguisher material in a cardboard tube:



You gotta love multi-tasking: by working her spinning wheel at her stall, this lady catches people's attention, shows off the wool she's selling, and makes even more yarn to sell all at the same time. Genius:



Since several of the craft fair stalls are set up right in front of St. James Church, the folks who run and attend the church set up their event tent and start cranking out the food. So I thought I'd close with a look at the line of people waiting to get some lunch just a few minutes past noon, as I thought it was pretty darn impressive.

My bubbles

Earlier today Mom called to see if I wanted to stop by after work this evening. She and Dad had invited Melissa and the boys, Jared, Nathan, and Kyle, over for dinner, as my cousin Mike is out of town for the weekend—my folks figured she could use a bit of a breather from having to watch all three of them by herself.

By the time I arrived at the house Mom was already busy making bubbles, much to the amusement of the kids. Naturally, I shared in their fascination and delight, and immediately pulled out my camera and started clicking away.

I chose this photo to kick things off because I really liked how the bubble looked against Mom's flower garden:



In this shot you can still see the outline of a bubble that had just popped, as well as the resultant spray of liquid; that's Melissa walking by in the background:



A couple of shots of Kyle, who obviously got a big kick out of watching and chasing the bubbles:





Thought this was an interesting shape:



The late afternoon sun provided the golden hue to this bubble:



Kyle and Jared watching the bubbles go by:



Again, I just thought this was pretty cool:



As Mom created an impressively long strand of bubbles, Dad managed to grab Nathan just before he got his hands on the tray containing the soapy liquid she was using:



Don't you just hate it when the bubble pops right in your face?



Finally, our usual closing shots of Kaylee:

NOT another epic photo post

After much deliberate and thoughtful consideration (total elapsed decision-making time: 30 seconds), I decided that I was:

1. feeling a bit of photo fatigue and
2. not really wanting to be writing yet another blog post after 10 p.m.

So, today's post will be short and (hopefully) sweet.

All of four of these photos were taken next to my apartment after I got home from work. It rained here for a little while today, and I once again focused my attention on the rainwater clinging to the undersides of various leaves.

Believe it or not, this is one of the same tiger lilies from a couple of weeks ago—obviously, it's now a bit past its prime. I have to admit, I didn't even notice the spider silk on it until I zoomed in:



Because the sun was out by the time I was taking these, I find the green is much more vibrant than in the previous set of flower/raindrop photos:







And that does it from me. Yes, really.