The Goldfinches are back!

We put up the Goldfinch feeder a few days ago, and were delighted to see the pretty birds back. The feeder is attached to this other feeder temporarily, so it is time to get the garden hook out and put the feeder in it's proper place.

Signs of spring

Our first daffodil. I think this is also called narcissus.

The first tulips are about to bud. Hope they don't get eaten by the deer!

We had a lovely sunset tonight. This was taken from the lawn. Nice pano (click to see full size picture).

Deer enjoying a snack at dusk

We were coming home and Freda said "oh I saw deer grazing in this field up here," and as we got to the field we saw there was quite a crowd of deer in the field. It was a beautiful, but chilly, spring day but the deer seemed to enjoy it and didn't mind that we were so close to them. Good thing the dogs were at home, otherwise their barking would have sent the deer running for the bushes.

Although the lake was ice-free on April 4th, it snowed yesterday and today. When I let Tawny out to go potty, she laid down here frog-dog style (legs stuck out behind her). So I go to get the camera and of course she moved...

There was a rally for the support of the Tamil Tigers today in Ottawa. A large part of downtown was paralyzed because of their actions. The Tamil Tigers was declared a terrorist organization by the Canadian Government in 2006. The Tamil Tigers use child soldiers, have conducted ethnic cleanising of their own, and send suicide bombers on public transit buses. Hardly something I would support...

This is a bronze status of a native hunter. Pretty nice art to have outside a downtown facility.

Ice disappearing off the lake (Panos)

March 25th, 2009

Sorry for the missing picture information - I wanted to get both Tawny and Taz in the photo. The ice in the lake is still there, but is covered with pools of water.

March 30, 2009
The northern (more shallow) end of the lake has quite a bit of water showing.

April 2, 2009
The lake at the northern end of the lake is now gone. Freda found her mitten washed up on the shore. This is the mitten she lost when she fell through the ice last November 23rd.

More panos

March 22nd
Tawny is all wet in this photo. She was just laying down in the water that pooled in the area where the tire tracks are. It was about 4C so it must have been cold.


March 28th
We have had continued mild weather and today, for the first time, the lake ice looks blue instead of white. Defintely is no longer safe.

Some panos

March 13th
The lake is still solidy frozen.


March 15th
The lake is starting to get pools of water on the surface.


March 16th
The melt continues.

Pano Saturday

Pano Saturday March 7, 2009

I took this series of 12 photos (stitched to make this pano) this morning before we left to do our grocery shopping. This pano is taken from our driveway, looking towards the lake. If you look at the lower left branches of the tree in the center of the photo, you can see that there is a birds nest snuggled in the branches there that has taken all the nasty winds, snow, and freezing rain that winter could throw at it, and is still hanging in there. Amazing!

We put stones around the tree to hold back the dirt when we had the topsoil brought in afterwards for the lawn. That was filled up with snow and is now filled up with water too.

It was at least 9C today, not sure if it made it to 13C as predicted, but it was a nice almost spring day, with the dirty snow melting.


Pano Saturday March 7, 2009

I took this series of 27 photos (stitched into one pano) around 5pm today. The stitching software reports that the photo spans 113.1 degrees horizontally and 39.9 degrees vertically (I don't know how it figures that out!)

Compare these two pano photos and you can see a difference since the morning - there are larger areas of water on the ice on the lake and the snow on the lawn has receded somewhat. I took the red Christmas lights by the driveway down today, but the rebar I hammered into the ground by the driveway last November is still frozen in place.


This image is a zoomed in section of a photo I took today. I discovered that when I take a photo where the lens is zoomed out all the way, the photo seems to be almost all white! (I guess my camera is starting to be flaky. :(() To figure out what was going on, I enhanced the contrast before I zoomed in for this photo and you can see that the photo almost seems to just have every second "scan" line recorded. The photo seems to be a lot more greenish than it should, so I don't know if it means the red and blue sensors are hampered in some way, or if the green sensors are overwhelmed. It's very strange that this happens only when the lens is zoomed to the widest angle (shortest focal length).

Feeling spring in the air...

Pano - March 3rd, 2009

This pano picture was taken from our porch, and is composed of 18 separate photos. I am using different stitching software these days - will post on that later.

Llamas!

Not the Dolly Llama, or the Dalai Lama either...

There is a person near us who raises llamas for the wool, we think. On Sunday we went for a walk down their road and saw the llamas out enjoying the sunshine. Tawny and Taz wanted to bark of course.