It's About Time...

... or lack of that precious commodity these days. Little time to create blog posts, what with everything going on in this ready-to-slow-down life. Writing... yeah, lot's of lyrics suddenly dropping into my head. Not to mention melodies to go with them. Landing like a dragonfly on a wounded porterweed stalk...

It clearly takes more time to memorize a song these days than it used to. A real agitation sometimes -- but worth the effort. I've turned the process into a kind of meditation and it does bring a bit of peace... Then we have a weekend-long practice with the band to get ready for our appearance as the featured act at the Royal Palm Beach Folk and Acoustic Music Festival. Getting my guitar chops back into shape. Float like a....

...and in between I'll be heading into the studio to record some of the new stuff. Hopefully the energy will hold out. Have obligations to photography clients too, not to mention work (the activity that makes the rest of this all possible). We're into budget preparation season, and in this economy it makes a tough process that much more of a challenge. But when you do the right things for the right reasons, it's worth the aches and pains. Though right now my eyes pretty much look like this...
All of the images are from our backyard butterfly gardens, that are finally starting to become active. Dragonfly up top, gulf fritillary in the middle, and a fiery skipper third. All shot hand-held with a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro lens. Up close and personal. So we'll let you know how it goes.......... simple.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

With all of the rain that we had the week before last (more than twenty inches in five days), followed by nothing but warm, tropical sunshine this week, the gardens in the backyard are really starting to explode...

After a long, stressful day at work a sure way to relax and lower my blood pressure is to sit on the back porch with a glass of wine and enjoy the view... 

Or better yet, head out into the yard with a camera (Nikon D700) and some fast glass (today I used a Sigma 150 mm f/2.8 macro lens), and click off a couple of dozen shots of nature's handy work...

Those are Gerber daisies and pentas up top, periwinkle in the middle, and a Golden Globe bush immediately above. Not many butterflies yet this year, but Kay reported the first hummingbird in the lantana this afternoon. Happy Monday!

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect, originally uploaded by Paul-G.

Yet another fantastic north Florida spring weekend. No obligations to speak of, we planned to continue the hard work of recovering our back yard after the hard winter. Twenty-eight freezes is a lot of cold for semi-tropical flora to handle, and we lost much -- but are relishing the opportunity provided to replace the frost-vulnerable plants with more hardy north-Florida varieties. So Saturday was was "visit the nursery" day -- then more clean-up and planting, fertilizing, watering and patching. And Sunday was our day of "rest".

Some of our lantana have started to bloom, but not enough yet to attract the butterflies back to the yard -- so we set off to Alpine Groves Park -- a restored citrus farm on a bluff overlooking the east bank of the Saint Johns River. There I found the monarch in the photo above. I was moving in with my macro (close-up) lens for one last eye-to-eye shot when he bolted at the same instant that I depressed the shutter. I thought I'd lost him, but found this left behind in the camera. Fantastic luck! Then it was lunch (crab) at Six Mile Creek and back to the house for more yard work and a two mile walk as the sun headed west. Now a couple of chapters from the books I'm currently reading (Lincoln's Virtues, and Shakespear's Two Gentlemen of Verona). Weekends don't get much better than this... simple.