Month: March 2011

Simon visits the Manotick Village Butcher

Have I mentioned before how much I love the Manotick Village Butcher? Um, maybe a few times, no? I love going in there. I never go when I’m in a hurry, because I’ve learned to leave time for chatting, and I rarely leave without a smile on my face. And that’s not even getting into how amazingly scrumptious my hamburgers are now with high-quality, local, sustainably-raised beef.

So when Simon had to do a school project on people who work in the neighbourhood, we asked if they’d be interested in being “interviewed” by a Grade 1 student. And they said yes! So last Saturday afternoon, Simon and I went to visit the butcher. Here, in more or less Simon’s own words transcribed, is what a butcher does.

Simon and the Butcher

What does a butcher do?

He cuts meat. Meat comes from animals like cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys.

The butcher doesn’t cook the meat.

The butcher makes steak, sausages, bacon, ribs and hamburger.

What does tools does he use?

The butcher uses different sizes of knives, some big, some small and some medium size. They are really sharp, so you don’t play around with them. He uses gloves that are made out of chains to protect his hands. He also uses a big saw that can cut right through bones. The saw turns a big piece of meat into small pieces that people buy to take home and cook.

He also used a machine called a grinder. He puts chunks of meat and it turns it meat that looks like spaghetti. He puts it all together to make hamburger meat.

The butcher works in a cold room that froze my nose. He has to wash his hands a lot.

The butcher makes sausages by stuffing meat and spices into pig intestines.

Different parts of the animal are used to make different kinds of meat.

I’ve gotta say, the butcher men were pretty nice to let me see all those cool things!

Simon and the Butcher 2

Thanks, James and Blair, for making Simon’s day!

Now comes the real challenge — did I mention that the presentation is supposed to be in French? Yikes! Okay: boucher, viande, vache, dinde, and erm… google translate, here I come!

Suggestions for photo opportunities in Vancouver?

I‘m very excited! On Monday, I’ll be hopping on a plane and heading for the left coast to speak at this social media in government conference. What fun, eh? This is similar to the conferences I’ve spoken at here in Ottawa last June and September, and I got a really great reception (and reviews!) both previous times.

This is my abstract:

Social Media Is Not One-Size-Fits-All: How To Choose The Right Tools For Your Audience, Your Message, And Your Organization’s Goals

Many government departments and agencies are considering launching their own YouTube channel or Facebook fan page. But how do you choose which tools are the right ones for your organization?

The Army News team in the Department of National Defence has posted nearly 2,000 videos to YouTube over the last three years and those videos have been viewed more than 1.6 million times. Their channel is currently ranked within the top 75 YouTube channels for Canadian news and reporting. They’re also using Twitter, iTunes, Flickr and Facebook to share information and engage Army stakeholders.

Social media is not one-size-fits-all. Not every tool is appropriate for every situation. In this session, you will learn how to choose the right tools for your audience, your message and your organization’s goals. You’ll also review some common issues to consider when using social media tools in a government environment, including:

* Tweeting in both official languages
* Managing comments – and responding when necessary
* Giving your organization an authentic “voice” and personality through social media
* Developing content that is relevant, interesting and timely
* Matching your policies to your tools
* Analyzing your audience and evaluating your tools to ensure they’re working for you and not the other way around

Danielle Donders, Web Manager, Army Multimedia

I love the topic and I love the interaction during the seminars. I’m so looking forward to it!

Of course, the other thing I’m looking forward to is the ginourmous photo opportunity that is Vancouver. I’ve been before, twice on the way to Victoria and one other time on business — but there was no down time for exploring.

Any suggestions on treks I may want to take with my camera? I’m staying right downtown on Burrard, not far from Robson Square. I don’t think I’ll bother with a car as I only really have the one day free and a couple of evenings, and it seems like there’s plenty of interesting stuff nearby. Granville Island is to the west and Gastown is to the east of where I’ll be staying; any thoughts on which one might be a better destination? I definitely want to check out the waterfront. Also not far away is Stanley Park, but a 15 km hike to cram them all in might be a little bit too much to cram in, especially since the current forecast is calling for — surprise! — rain on Monday. Any indoor suggestions are welcome, too!

All in all, I think just about anywhere you can point your camera in Vancouver, you’re going to come away with a good shot or two!

The real challenge is how I’ll manage with no laptop to process the pix as I go, as Beloved thinks his pesky work is more important than my obsessive photo habits. I know, the nerve, eh? Especially when I’m so considerately leaving all three boys here with him to keep him company!

Green. Yellow. Red.

No, not a stoplight. No, those are the colours of the three crayons that were in the pocket of his winter coat. When I washed it. And dried it. Along with his only pair of ski pants, and both of his brothers’ only winter coats. And ski pants.

I can tell you now with the voice of experience: three crayons? Can make one hell of an unholy mess.

I spent the first 15 minutes frantically googling “crayon melted in dryer.” A lot of the sites, including the official Crayola stain-removal site, advocated the use of WD-40. Seriously? Oil? In my not-yet-six-month-old dryer? Um, no.

I spent the rest of the first hour hanging half way out of the dryer, scrubbing the snot (well, wax) out of the interior drum with one of those plastic pot scrubber jobbies and then wiping it clean with an old towel. Run on hot for 10 minutes to get everything melty, and repeat. Oh and by the way? When it’s hot enough to melt the wax, the dryer is not so much a comfortable place to hang out.

The next hour I spent trying to get the baked-on wax off of the lint trap. Seeing the effectiveness of heat in the wax-removal process, I briefly debated nuking the lint trap to loosen up the worst of the wax, but I couldn’t be sure that the screen was not either metal or meltable. And having just finished lunch I wasn’t particularly hungry for sautéed lint trap anyway.

sacrificial lint trap

In a flash of brilliance, I boiled a kettle and poured the boiling water in small doses onto the lint trap to loosen the wax. This worked really well except for the part where the lint trap is porous and I poroused boiling water all over my hand, resulting in the first (but not last) official burn of the day.

About ninety minutes into the project, I had stopped envisioning ways to exact revenge on both the boy who thinks winter-coat-pockets are an ideal place to store crayons and the boy who played in the mud in his ski pants and inspired me to wash everyone’s snow suits in the first place. In fact, I’d hit a zen kind of headspace where the mindlessness of the work — pick at crayon embedded in crease with fingernail, run under hot water, pick again, scrub with corner of old facecloth, repeat, repeat, repeat — allowed me to write some really excellent blog posts in my head. Oh, but this blog post is not one of them. Nope, I forgot all of those clever, witty and endearing ones when a squirrel ran past the window.

(Joke: How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb? LET’S GO RIDE OUR BIKES!!! Bwhahaha, it’s funny cuz it’s ME!)

Interestingly, apparently our lint trap is the only one in existence with 375 sides. I say this because that’s exactly how many times I sighed in satisfaction at finally liberating the lint trap from its waxy pox, only to turn it over and find a fresh patch of baked-on crayon scat.

Two kettles of water later, the lint trap was now the cleanest ever known to man and I was intimately familiar with each crack and crevice. Why they make lint traps with so many wax-friendly crevices is beyond me, by the way. When I’m Queen of the Universe the very first thing I’m going to do is de-crevice all the lint traps, so help me god.

Now more than two hours into Operation I-Hate-Crayola, I set up the ironing board and proceeded to iron an entire roll of paper towels. I can now assure you we have the crispest, flattest paper towels in town. Because nothing says “productive use of a precious Sunday afternoon” like ironing paper towels. In fact, all the time spent ironing those paper towels gave me plenty of time to think about the things that I could be achieving, like cleaning the house. Or reading a book. Or earning a graduate degree in quantum physics. Or having a root canal. I’d’ve been happy doing just about anything, in fact, defined as several hours of not ironing paper towels.

Oh yeah, and the iron? Second official burn of the day.

Now, to give credit where credit is due, I was tickled at how effective the ironing-the-paper-towel trick turned out to be. Melted crayon magically disengages from snowsuit and adheres to paper towel when you press a hot iron to it. Well, yellow crayon completely disengages itself from snowsuit fabric. Green comes most of the way out. And red? Well, red doesn’t really seem to bond with the paper towel at all. In fact, they seem kind of adversarial. I’m thinking maybe red crayon and paper towel used to go out, and then when paper towel started wanting different things, red crayon took the breakup really hard and left all sorts of drunken, late-night messages on paper towel’s answering machine, because really? They didn’t hang out together at all.

And yes, you bet your ass I did in fact go through all the crayon boxes in the house (yes, we have a few) and picked out all the red crayons and threw them in the trash as a preemptive strike. Cuz you know there’s going to be a next time.

Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending. After one hour of scrubbing the dryer drum, one hour of dewaxing the lint trap, two hours ironing paper towels and snow-suits and one 75 minute sanitary wash, all three snowsuits are virtually crayon-free. Close enough for end-of-season, anyway.

My fingernails, on the other hand, are a green, yellow and red write-off…

Pussywillow post script

I mentioned yesterday that I had one last 365 photo from last week to blog about. It’s got not one but two backstories attached to it, though, so I figured it needed a post of its own.

My mom knows I love pussywillows, and she buys them for me just about every spring. I don’t know why I started liking them so much, but now I love them because my mom gives them to me. 🙂

So a few days ago, she brought me a giant bundle of pussywillows, but these ones had something I’d never seen before. Green bits! And roots! See?

pussywillows

They’re easily the most lovely pussywillows yet. I was so intrigued by the sprouting bits and the roots, that I decided I was going to plant them in the yard. I mean, the only thing better than being gifted with pussywillows each year is picking yer own, right? And so I started reading about it, and it turns out they’re dead easy to grow, but I’ll never be able to plant these ones.

You see, pussywillows are in fact a part of the willow family, and willow trees and septic beds do not get along. Willows love water, and their invasive roots get into the pipes of a septic bed and gum it up. And frankly, I do *not* want to antagonize the septic system!

I’m thinking maybe I can plant them in a container or something and keep their roots bound in a pot. Any ideas?

Anyway, as I said, this photo has not one but two backstories to tell. When I posted it on Flickr, I got what is a rare and delightful treat: a complete stranger made a constructive comment with a helpful suggestion on how to improve the image.

Kate said:

Your Mom is a treasure! This is a stunning shot and creatively cropped. I too am on a septic bed and these darling bushes love water and are best planted somewhere else for sure. I would like to make a suggestion..if you don’t mind..and if you do I will apologize in advance… If this was my shot I would clone out the fuzzy flower on the far right as it seems distracting to my eye. The branch on the right offers simplicity to the shot which seems a bit lost because of the flower. Its all subjective so I hope you don’t mind my saying this. This is a shot I would hang of my wall.

And damn if I didn’t totally agree with her. I couldn’t even look at the image without that darn bushy willow flower dragging my eye down, practically flaunting its annoying presence, so much so that I couldn’t see how I’d not noticed it before.

As facile as I’ve become with some aspects of Photoshop, though, cloning things out was not in my repertoire. Fortunately, I’m married to someone who teaches Photoshop for a living — how convenient is that? — and I finally managed to coerce him into teaching me how to properly use the clone stamp and patch tools.

And voilà — pussywillows redux:

91:365 Pussywillows

She’s right, isn’t she? It’s so much cleaner without that extra fuzzy green puff in the bottom right corner. I know, if you look closely, you can see remnants of the clone stamping — but the kids were all “feed us dinner” on me, and seemed to think that eating was more important than me finessing my pussywillows, so that’ll have to do for now.

So the good news is, my mom IS awesome and I love that she gives these to me. The bad news is, I can’t plant them in the yard after all. The good news is, I learned a new trick or two.

That’s a lot of mileage out of a couple of pussywillow branches!

Project 365: Portraits and paints and post-scripts

I‘ve noticed two huge differences between my first 365 project and this one.

The first is that I’m taking less pictures of places and things, and more pictures of people. I think this is partly situational; when I was working near the Market, a daily walk at lunchtime gave me endless photographic inspiration. But more than that, I think it’s a comfort thing. I like taking pictures of people more now because I’m better at it.

The second difference I’ve noticed in this iteration of my 365 project is that I’m a LOT less anxious about it. I was poking through my 365 archive and had to laugh at the sheer amount of angst I was feeling about the project at this point the first time around. The new camera certainly helps me feel inspired about picture-taking, as does the Mothership Photography thing, but mostly I’m just not finding it as difficult as I did the first time around.

And now, with a complete lack of segue or even the mildest hint of a transitional paragraph, here’s the how the world looked through the viewfinder this week.

We’ve been patiently waiting for the weather to turn mild so we can enjoy walking into the village more often. We finally made it out for a wander with Beloved’s visiting family last weekend. We wandered about Manotick, from the Mill to the Gingerbread Shop to the Toy Shop to GT Boutique and back. It’s going to be delightful in the summer, as it was still a little, um, brisk, to be out in the cold March wind.

86:365 River boys

See? Cold. And this was one of the warmer days of the week — at least it got above freezing when the sun came up this day.

87:365 Frosty

Another frosty walk brought me to this carriage house on Long Island, not too far from our place. I’m curious about the history of this place. I think it belongs to one of the original houses on the island, which was scrubby farmland for the most part until development started in the 1950s and 1960s.

89:365 Carriage house

This one is from the other end of the Rideau River. I was at a course for a couple of days this week in the Old City Hall building on Sussex, and went out on my lunch break to snap a few pictures. I liked this lattice fence on the bridge to Maple Island — such a gorgeous area. It was already a monochromatic kind of picture because of the white fence and snow and dark branches, so I pushed it all the way into B&W to emphasize the shapes and tones and depth of the layers.

92:365 Fence

From monochromatic to technicolour — I can never resist pictures of little fingers at work. (I know, I know, I cut his nails about 10 minutes after I took this one!)

90:365 Painting

This is one of my favourites for the week. This is Beloved’s dad, drawing ducks at Lucas’s request. He’s just as kind and warm and sweet as he seems in this picture!

88:365 Lucas and Pipi

This post is getting rather rambly, and I’ve got one more picture that begs for a post and some excessive rambling of its own. Stand by for the pussywillow post-script!

Fisher-Price photo shoot sneak peek

We finally received a preview of the photo shoot with Fisher-Price in Toronto a couple weeks back. Wanna sneak peek?

These are a couple of the group shots:

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736CF

Lucas is squeezing me in a hug, not snoozing!

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736D5

In this one, he’s actually got one hand on each side of my head and is squashing my cheeks. This is what a toddler looks like at the very end of his attention span. My smile, not coincidentally, seems to be looking a little forced at this point, too!

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736C9

Fun, eh? I have to admit, I was nervous about seeing them, but I love how they turned out. Getting eight moms and half a million kids (or did it just seem that way?) all looking in the right direction at the right time is a challenge I hope I’ll never face in my photographic career!! 😉 I’ll get a CD next week with a few more shots, and I’ll share them and more details about the program as I receive them.

Happy Friday!

On tweeting the fine line between promoting and bragging

There was a social event a month or two back. To be honest, I’ve completely forgotten what it was for, but it was one of those “invite a lot of local bloggers and tweeters out for a night” type of things. Someone asked me if I was going, and it was the first I’d heard of it, but then over the next hour I saw tweet after tweet after tweet about it, and it seemed like just about everyone in my social media circle was on their way.

I have to tell you, it was a little too reminiscent of high school. My first reaction was a visceral, albeit short-lived, pang of rejection. “Everyone else got invited and I didn’t?” I didn’t even particularly want to go to whatever it was, but I sure as hell wanted to have been invited.

On the other end of the spectrum, I do get invited to some wicked cool events, like the Marksover and the Fisher-Price playpanel. I feel an obligation whenever I get invited to one of these events to talk about it, to tweet about it, to photograph it and to blog about it. I’m no fool, I know that I have been invited less for my outstanding array of knock-knock jokes for all occasions and more for my influence in social media circles.

And of course, there’s the annual run-up to big conferences like BlogHer, which I have never seriously considered attending. Even though I don’t particularly want to go, it’s a little bit painful to watch my friends tweet about getting their tickets, heading to the airport, meeting new friends and, last year especially, getting boatloads of swag. I wouldn’t mind not going if I weren’t hearing in real time how much fun everyone was having without me.

I was thinking about all this when I read a couple of recent articles online. One was a NYT article called On Twitter, ‘What a Party!’ Brings an Envious ‘Enough, Already!’ It’s about people’s reactions to tweets from the recent SXSW festival in Austin, Texas:

Twitter users are tiring of it: the sharp pang of envy that comes when someone they are following on the social networking site is clearly having a better time than they are — right now.

Recent tweets from attendees at elite conferences like TED and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have prompted bitter ripostes, accusing the authors of showing off rather than sharing. (From @davewiner: “can’t breathe their air, don’t want their tweets.”) Even those tweeting from warm weather spots have felt the jealous wrath — or “jealz,” in Twitter shorthand— of followers stuck in frosty climes. (@Courtni_ROSE: “I get it already!!!!”)

And this week, as thousands of the nation’s Twitterati gathered at the annual South by Southwest technology and music festival in Austin, Tex., their exhaustive, real-time accounts of barbecue, beta tests and Jake Gyllenhaal sightings have prompted a backlash by those not in attendance.

And then this week, there was more backlash against a recent Disney Social Media Moms conference where the majority of tweets seemed to be about the swag participants were getting on an already deeply discounted trip to Disney. The article notes:

Now that the conference is over, it’s clear that what stung SXSW also stung the #DisneySMMoms conference — that is: the high prevalence of Tweets about goodie bags and private parties contributed to a culture of exclusivity at the expense of information sharing.

It’s a fine line, isn’t it? If someone is providing me with something, be it a product or a service or an experience, I feel obliged to acknowledge that online. I get it, that’s part of the deal. But when does promotion end and bragging begin? How do you write / tweet about your excellent experience without alienating the very people who made you someone worth inviting?

This is a tricky one, and I feel like I have to step carefully through the minefield every time it comes up. I love sharing our experiences with you, but I don’t want to brag. I want to offer unbiased opinions and express my gratitude without alienating my friends who didn’t get the same treatment. I think the answer lies more in tweeting about the conference or event itself — the information you gleaned, the lessons worth sharing — and less about the awesome *stuff* you got.

I’m kinda all over the place here, aren’t I? And no time to go back and edit it into coherence either, so over to you bloggy peeps. What say ye? As tweeter, have you ever been self-conscious about tweeting your swag? As a reader, have you ever rolled your eyes at the good fortune of the chosen few? Should we be striving for inclusivity and if so, how do we do it?

Happy dance for BBQ season!

Dear Ottawa friends,

I’m so very sorry. That very rude awakening you had today, where winter totally barged right back in after allowing spring to take a toe-hold, and we got a nasty dump of two fresh inches of snow after 98% of the old snow had melted away?

Totally my fault. Sorry about that.

I got a little too excited about spring this week. I bought a new BBQ. And a picnic table. And oops, I might have gone right ’round the bend and also picked up an adorable (and totally affordable) little bistro set from Ikea that will be absolutely smashing for morning coffee on the porch.

Oops. Sorry. After a whole winter of restlessly anticipating the outdoor season, I kinda forgot that the first taste of spring is not the one that stays.

Speaking of tastes of spring, though, before it got all snowy and slushy and January again, I danced and pirouetted my way through the grocery store on the weekend. Whereas I usually find meal planning to be an onerous task, I was practically skipping through the aisles as I loaded up my cart this week. Why the gleeful shopping?

It’s BBQ season, baby! *cue the heralds of chorusing angels*

Our old barbeque did not survive the transition to the new house last October. I’d already replaced the burner once and it was starting to rust through again. The grills were looking sketchy, and the move knocked the handle off. I usually barbeque well into November or December each year, and with the early end to the season I was drooling with desire for our outdoor grilled faves by the end of January.

As the snow piled high and then receded, I scrolled through pages of reviews of various barbeque configurations online, dreaming of hamburgers and grilled chicken fajitas and steak-and-veggie skewers. I think it was shortly after Christmas that I set up CanadianTire.ca’s sale alert feature on a few of the most promising models, hoping to score a good deal on one. With the milder weather this month, I was just starting to think about scrapping the sale alert and going ahead and buying one when I got the e-mail: the barbeque you’ve been watching is going on sale this week. Yay!

And that’s how I ended up with a dreamy smile on my face, dancing through the aisles of the grocery store, greeting seasonal favourites I hadn’t seen in six months like old friends. Hello hamburger buns, how I’ve missed you! Oh darling tzatziki and feta couscous salad, you’re looking delicious today! And ribs, sweet and succulent ribs, I’ve been salivating over the idea of you for months!

175:365 BBQ night

I’ve been in a terrible food rut the last little while. I’ve got maybe ten or a dozen meals that I’ve been cycling through, and while they’re good, I’m sick to death of them. Pasta and salad, chicken fingers and veggies, Tiki Masala shrimp with naan and rice, chili, tacos, meatloaf — all plenty yummy, but gah, I’m so bored with them.

Given the chance, I’ll grill dinner five nights out of seven, so the return to BBQ season is a drastic difference for us. Do you find that your grocery shopping habits change with the season?

As for me, I’ll be standing on the back patio tonight with my scarf and mitts and winter boots, grilling up some chicken breasts. It’s spring, dammit, and you can’t make me go back to winter food!

Project 365: Oh my, but I do love this new camera!

So I am head-over-heels in *love* with my new camera!

For those of you who missed it last week, I finally upgraded my trusty and well-loved Nikon D40 last week. Way back when we bought it in 2007, we waffled over the upgrade to a D80, but it seemed like more camera than I would ever need. And quite frankly, it was the right choice at that time.

Over the years, though, I started to run into a few limitations on the D40. It wouldn’t auto-focus my favourite lens, for one thing. It has a very limited ISO range for another. And not that I use flash a lot, but I was intrigued by the idea of using my pop-up flash to trigger my hot-shoe flash remotely — something the D40 could not do but the 90 could.

It was about half way through my first 365 project in 2009 that I started to actively covet the D90. I couldn’t justify the expense, though, when the D40 was doing 80% of the job I needed from it. Over the last six months, though, it has become increasingly apparent that the D40 is getting a little, um, tired. North of 30,000 shutter clicks, and I’m not sure it’s registering saturated reds and yellows anymore, and the autofocus is getting noticeably soft.

I proposed that I reinvest some of my blog and photography money into a new camera, and Beloved agreed it was time. And then I started looking around and discovered this awesome new camera that I’d been hearing about since it was released by Nikon last autumn, the D7000.

And I wanted one. Badly! In what I thought was a brilliant plan, I used Beloved’s own tactic of mentioning the idea of investing in a D7000 over a D90 every time there was a lull in the conversation for three days.

“Hi sweetie, how was your day? So, did you think about the D7000 yet?”

“Can you pass me the ketchup, please? And did you read that DP Reviews l link I sent you about the D7000?

“Wake up, you’re late for work! And hey, did you know Ken Rockwell calls the D7000 the best digital camera EVER?”

Yeah, it’s totally annoying. And it totally works. That’s how he got his laptop, and BluRay player, and flat-screen TV. He’d been annoying the snot out of me about the iPad, and so we made an unholy deal where I could get the D7000 if he could get an iPad 3 when they come out in September. Oy, what a family!

Do you speak camera? The D7000 has a 16MP sensor, while the D40 has a 6MP sensor. The D7000 has 39 focus points where the D40 has 3. And where the D40 has an ISO range of 200 to 800 (it actually goes to 3200 but I have yet to get a decent picture above 800 even using Lightroom’s noise reduction features) the D7000 has a dizzying 100 to 25,600 range. Be still my low-light-loving heart!!

It is, in short, the most! amazing! camera! ever!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, though, so all the technical specs in the world don’t matter until you take that camera for a test drive. And here’s what that beauty can do.

This is Tristan enjoying a hot chocolate on our annual pilgrimage to the Log Farm sugar shack.

81:365 Log farm (1 of 6)

And Simon, also at the Log Farm.

Log farm (2 of 6)

Here’s my tree-climbing, rope-swinging adventure boy in crisp and lovely detail.

80:365 Adventure boy

Even the best camera can’t compensate when you choose a depth of field too shallow to keep your ensemble in focus, but a good camera only goes so far! 😉 Still, I’m happy with this capture of the boys and their cousins, who spent most of March Break with us.

83:365 Lunchtime

At the other end of the generational spectrum, we also had a visit from Beloved’s family this weekend. Ron is a fisherman par excellence, and Dee cooked us up what seemed like about 10 lbs of fresh whitefish. Don’t you just love houseguests who arrive with arms laden with delicious food and take over your kitchen to cook it?

85:365 Grandparents

I love love love this next picture. I love the luminosity of it, the warmth in the pose and the background, and the sheer joy of it. All the kids love “Uncle Beloved” because they know he’s just a bigger version of them, totally a kid at heart.

82:365 Ticklefest

The weather has been mild and melty, and the Rideau River is cresting this weekend. Last weekend, the water was rushing at Watson’s Mill even with the sluice gates fully opened.

79:365 Watson's Mill and the spring melt

And to my delight, the geese have returned from their winter sojourn. It must really be spring now! Funny, I have always noticed the geese on their fall migration, but only in living so close to the river have I noticed them on their spring return.

84:365 Signs of spring

(This is a crazy-deep crop of an image I took with my camera braced on my car, standing in the road about 50m from the river. The segment you see here is probably less than 1/5 of the original capture — and I’m thrilled with the amount of detail!)

As you can see, it was a ridiculously busy week, but a perfect one to take the new camera for a test drive!