Pizza

Photograph taken on Wednesday, March 05, 2014 by Henry
Sausage Pizza

Sausage Pizza

There isn’t a lot that can or should be said about this picture. It’s two-thirds of a sausage pizza from Papa John’s, one of five pizzas that we bought for WHAT, our youth gathering this evening (yes, we stole the name because we like it). I took a few pictures of the youth themselves but none of them are very good and, contrary to popular belief and with very notable exceptions, I don’t like to post unflattering photographs of people. Much better to post an unflattering photograph of a pizza.

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Evening Sky

Photograph taken on Tuesday, March 04, 2014 by Henry
Evening Sky

Evening Sky

There was very little traffic on the roads today, mostly because everything was canceled. That was despite the fact that the roads were all basically clear and dry. There was a little ice and snow left on our neighborhood street but the plows never made it here. Even so, I had no trouble and once I got a block from our house, onto the larger neighborhood street, it was totally clear. The sky cleared up and it was mostly sunny this afternoon. This picture was taken just a little before sunset.

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Snow, Again

Photograph taken on Monday, March 03, 2014 by Henry
Snow, Again

Snow, Again

School for today was canceled before we went to bed last night, so we didn’t set our alarms for this morning. Of course, that means I woke up about three minutes before my alarm would have gone off and couldn’t get back to sleep. The snow had only accumulated to a depth of about two inches when I got up but it started snowing a bit more heavily after that and by midday we had six or seven inches on the ground. Since I can, I worked from home. I did go out to shovel the driveway and clear off the cars but otherwise enjoying the snow from the comfort of my castle.

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Geranium Leaves

Photograph taken on Sunday, March 02, 2014 by Henry
Geranium Leaves

Geranium Leaves

Technically, these are Pelargonium, not Geranium leaves, but they are so commonly called Geranium that it’s hard to break the habit. Pelargonium species and cultivars are not cold hardy, like the true geraniums and are grown as house plants and in pots here where it gets too cold to grow them outdoors year round. Geraniums (including pelargoniums) often make me think of an old Pogo comic strip, where the Howland Owl and Churchy LaFemme tried to cross a branch from a yew tree with a geranium to get uranium (Yew-Ranium) so they could make a bomb. Classic.

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Sunset Through The Trees

Photograph taken on Saturday, March 01, 2014 by Henry
Sunset Through The Trees

Sunset Through The Trees

It wasn’t much of a sunset in terms of lighting up the sky, but right down on the horizon, which I could sort of see between the houses behind ours, the sky had a fair amount of color. With my long lens, I took a few pictures of it through the trees and I like the way it turned out. The rest of the sky was a uniform and not particularly pretty color.

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Bombay Bistro

Photograph taken on Friday, February 28, 2014 by Henry
Bombay Bistro

Bombay Bistro

Have you ever eaten at Bombay Bistro? If not, and if you’re in the area, I highly recommend it. I’m not qualified to say whether or not the food is authentic for any particular part of the Indian sub-continent. What I am qualified to say is that it’s really good. The Chicken Tikka Makhani is one of our favorites and I don’t we’d ever consider not including that in an order. We like to try new things and this time we had Saag Ghost, which is “lamb cooked with mildly spiced spinach.” I’m a fan of cooked spinach and liked this one quite well. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it’s hard to go wrong. It isn’t a big place, but that’s part of its charm. Anyway, if you haven’t eaten there, you should.

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Foxes

Photograph taken on Thursday, February 27, 2014 by Henry
Foxes

Foxes

Yesterday it was snowing and there was about an inch of new snow on the ground. We looked out the back window and saw two foxes playing in the back yard. I was going to post one of those pictures for yesterday but before getting it posted, today happened. Yesterday the pictures were taken through two panes of glass in an upstairs window with a 100mm lens. Today I had time to go down stairs, switch to the 75-300mm zoom lens, and take the picture through one pane of glass.

These two foxes are living in the area, obviously, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I’m looking forward to a rabbit free (or at least greatly diminished) spring and summer. That is unless some busybody decides that foxes aren’t safe to have around. Look, I understand that these are wile animals and not pets (or Narnians). But they aren’t going to attack and we aren’t raising chickens. They run away when I even just start to open the back door. Our neighbors have small kids but they also have a dog. The foxes aren’t going to hang around when he’s in the yard. Anyway, for now, I’m enjoying the foxes, long may they prosper. They may look like they are fighting in this picture, but they are playing.

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Elizabeth

Photograph taken on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by Henry
Elizabeth

Elizabeth

There are always people that you wish you’d run into more often and this little girl and her family are in that category. I’ve been taking pictures of her and her brothers since they were tiny but the chances I get are way too far apart for my taste. We always say we should get together more often and we really mean it, but it doesn’t work out, somehow. I’m convinced life gets squeezed out by all the stuff we fill our life with and here I use the word “stuff” where a stronger word my do better.

Anyway, Elizabeth is about 14 months older than the last time I took her picture, I think. As you can see, she’s missing a few teeth but her smile is just as genuine as ever. Her brothers were around, as well, and I tried a few times to get pictures of her younger brother but he wasn’t having any of it.

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Snow

Photograph taken on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 by Henry
Snow on Spruce Tree

Snow on Spruce Tree

It snowed fairly heavily much of the day today, although not much accumulated on the ground, at least not on the pavement. It was very pretty and gave me something to look at out the window. This is the spruce tree outside my office with snow starting to cover the branches. In addition to the return of the snow, the temperature has dropped again to well below freezing during the night and only a little above as the high for the day.

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Colors

Photograph taken on Monday, February 24, 2014 by Henry
Colors

Colors

Dorothy was cleaning some dried paint off of her palette and thought it would make a good subject for some pictures. This is my favorite of those I took. I was using flash but bouncing it off the wall and ceiling so there wouldn’t be so many bright reflections, which worked pretty well.

I like the swirling blues the best but the yellow/orange in the middle adds a bit of a kick.

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Buddleia Skeleton

Photograph taken on Sunday, February 23, 2014 by Henry
Buddleia Skeleton

Buddleia Skeleton

The snow is receding in our yard. It’s less than half covered and I thought of posting a picture of the grass showing through the snow. I was out back taking pictures and looked again at these flower heads from on the buddleia that is growing through a crack in our patio. Of course they aren’t fragrant like they are when they are fresh and have bluish purple flowers, which are so attractive to the butterflies, but I think that even as skeletons they are quite beautiful.

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A Walk In The Park

Photograph taken on Saturday, February 22, 2014 by Henry
Ducks On Lake Frank

Ducks On Lake Frank

Submerged Sycamore Leaf

Submerged Sycamore Leaf

What a beautiful day it was. The sky was mostly a clear blue, it wasn’t too cold, and it was a great day for a walk in the park. Everything is still very wet because the snow is melting and the ground is saturated, so we decided we’d take the paved route to Lake Frank and from there down to the Rock Creek Trail (or at least a spur of it). Well, that was a good idea but the paved route still had ice and snow on it for most of the way, so it wasn’t the easiest walking we could have chosen, but it was nice to get away from traffic and into the woods.

The lake is quite high, as you might expect with the snow melting and the rain we had. As you can see in the first picture, this little arm of the lake is up into the trees where there usually is just a little stream flowing. There is also still a layer of ice on the lake. These two ducks found some open water where it’s still possible for them to swim around a bit.

The second picture is of a sycamore leaf with water flowing over it. The water is so clear and makes the leaf look so clean and bright. I just love the texture of the water and of the leaf and the picture makes me happy.

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Fiona

Photograph taken on Friday, February 21, 2014 by Henry
Fiona

Fiona

She appeared here on October 3, 2013 at about age four weeks. She’s really grown a lot and happened to come to work today with her mom. I heard a knock on my door and was happy to have this face waiting for me (and Kasia’s, of course) when I opened my door. The picture from October doesn’t really have a good smile but now she’s getting the hang of it.

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Snow Drops

Photograph taken on Thursday, February 20, 2014 by Henry
Snow Drops (Galanthus nivalis)

Snow Drops (Galanthus nivalis)

I know a lot of people are tired of this winter. I’m actually not, particularly, although all the school days missed and even more so the late openings are a royal pain. I certainly won’t miss those if we don’t have any more this year. It’s become quite lovely the last few days and today Cathy and I met outside my building at work and we walked around it a few times. It was really nice out and although there is still a significant amount of snow on the ground, it’s starting to melt very noticeably. I thought to look in the edge of the woods behind the building, because I knew there are some snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) that bloom there pretty early each spring. Look what I found! They aren’t quite in full bloom yet, but they are certainly coming up and it won’t be long. Spring is definitely on her way.

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Calvin and Henry

Photograph taken on Wednesday, February 19, 2014 by Henry
Calvin

Calvin

I was over at Henry and Calvin’s house this evening. I suppose it’s really Greta and Andy’s house, but when you have kids as cute as these two, you are going to have to learn that it’s their house that people come to. Actually, I wasn’t there to be with the kids. That was a wonderful bonus and of course I took the time to take pictures of both of them.

Calvin, being still fairly young, isn’t as adept as his big brother in making facial expressions on command but he did smile a few times for me and I think this picture captures it pretty well. He’s getting over a cold and I think his head was stuffed up, which didn’t help him much, but he’s basically a happy boy.

Henry

Henry

It’s been a while since I’ve seen them and I was quite impressed with how much talking Henry is doing and how understandable he is. Once or twice during the evening he’d say something and we’d all look at each other as if to say, “do you have any idea what he just said?” Mostly, though, he’s quite understandable and starting to communicate clearly. He still has his wonderful smile and is getting better at smiling when asked.

Great kids, good food, healthy discussion. All the makings of an enjoyable evening.

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Blue Glass

Photograph taken on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 by Henry
Blue Glass

Blue Glass

I was looking around for things to photograph this evening, like I sometimes do when I haven’t been outside at all or if I have something going on right after work and don’t get much opportunity to take pictures. This is a close up of a portion of a blue glass vase that’s in our dining room. I like the abstract quality of the picture. One nice thing about pictures like this for my blog is that I could take a picture of this vase again in two months and it would probably a completely different image and it might not even be obvious that it was the same subject.

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Maymont Park

Photograph taken on Monday, February 17, 2014 by Henry
Maymont Mansion

Maymont Mansion

Japanese Garden

Japanese Garden

Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus)

Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus)

Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)

Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

I thought I’d post a second set of picture for today in addition to those I posted from downtown Richmond. After we walked around a little downtown, we drove out to Maymont. From Wikipedia:

Maymont is a 100 acre Victorian estate and public park in Richmond, Virginia. It contains Maymont Mansion, now a historic house museum, an arboretum, formal gardens, a carriage collection, native wildlife exhibits, a nature center, and Children’s Farm.

In 1893, Major James H. Dooley, a wealthy Richmond lawyer and philanthropist, and his wife, Sallie, completed their elaborate Gilded Age estate on a site high above the James River. According to their wishes, after their deaths Maymont was left to the people of Richmond. Over the next 75 years, additional attractions were added.

The first picture here is the mansion, up on the bluff overlooking the James River (as mentioned in Wikipedia). It really is beautifully situated and it’s a remarkably nice park. Many of the attractions are closed on Mondays, so we were not able to go into the mansion, for instance, but the grounds are open daily and that was enough for us.

We started by walking down past most of the animal exhibits to the Japanese garden. While this can’t be the best time of year to see the garden, we really enjoyed it and would recommend it highly. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you visit in the summer, when it is quite hot, getting from the Japanese garden back to the parking area is going to be a lot more tiring. There is a tram that runs, which would take care of that, but again, not on Mondays.

The other three pictures are of birds (obviously). The first two are in aviaries, the third was a wild mallard on one of the ponds in the Japanese garden. I also enjoyed the collection of trees on the property, including quite a few very large Lebanon cedars (Cedrus libani) and some pretty impressive bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). My favorite two tress, however, were a golden Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Tetragona Aurea’) and a very large incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens). I have three of the later planted along the fence in my back yard and it was nice to see such a big version of what they can become.

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Richmond Of The Past

Photograph taken on Monday, February 17, 2014 by Henry
Richmond Dairy Co.

Richmond Dairy Co.

We spent a little while this morning in downtown Richmond. Yesterday, as we were driving through town on the way to the James River, Cathy noticed a building down a side street that looked like it had a milk bottle on the corner. Not an actual glass bottle, of course, but the building was built to look like there was a giant milk bottle at each corner. Last night I did a little searching on Google maps and found it, so I’d know where to go today. This morning we went back and found it.

It turns out to have been the Richmond Dairy Company at one time and there are milk bottles on all four corners. This bottle, on the south corner, is the only one that it labeled and it’s the largest of the three (I’m not sure if there ever was one on the fourth corner, but I assume so). The building has been converted to apartments and added on to, which explains the missing fourth bottle. I’m glad they had the sense to keep the other three milk bottles, though.

Steamer Co. No 5 (Now Gallery 5)

Steamer Co. No. 5 (Now Gallery 5)

Jefferson Saloon, Jos. Carnicelli, Prop

Jefferson Saloon, Jos. Carnicelli, Prop

We walked around a few blocks and I took a few more pictures. On the left is Gallery 5, formerly Steamer Co. No. 5. On the right is a ghost sign for the Jefferson Saloon, purveyors of whiskey, wine, liquor, and cigars.

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SR-71 Blackbird

Photograph taken on Sunday, February 16, 2014 by Henry
SR-71 Blackbird

SR-71 Blackbird

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, we went to Richmond for the weekend. It was Dorothy who had things scheduled while Cathy and I were basically at liberty. Today we took a walk along the James river and saw a pair of bald eagles and also ran into someone we know, which is always surprising. We had a lovely lunch with the folks from Hillside and enjoyed getting to know them a little. When we left there, we went to Chimborazo Park, which has a nice view down onto the city. As we returned to our hotel near the airport, I spotted a black shape over to our right. It was this airplane, one of the hottest designs ever. Cathy was nice enough to let me pull into the parking lot of this small aviation museum and walk around a little. The SR-71 Blackbird is without a doubt the hottest hotrod to fly. It isn’t the fastest thing that’s ever been launched but among production aircraft propelled by jet engines, this two-seater is the king of the road, cruising at above mach 3 and flying up to about 80,000 feet (24,000 meters).

This image is a montage of six pictures that I took. It’s not perfectly stitched together but good enough, I think.

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Our Daily Bread

Photograph taken on Saturday, February 15, 2014 by Henry
James, Jonny, and Dorothy

James, Jonny, and Dorothy

We were down in Richmond for the long weekend, arriving at about 3:45 this afternoon. When we got there, we were warmly greeted by James and Jonny, who are interns at Hillside Missions. They showed us around the building, including their apartment and shared the loaf of bread they had just made. Shortly after this, we left Dorothy with James, Jonny, Becca, and Katy and headed off to our hotel.

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