Fireflies

The first fireflies of the season were spotted lighting up our garlic and rhubarb bed last night. A barefooted Huxley (he says 'It's nearly summer, I need to get used to bare feet!') wandered off after them, yogurt popsicle in hand.

I can certainly understand why so many adventurers from past myths were spirited away by these sorts of mysterious lights - who can possibly resist their magic?!

 

...and sweet-smelling, eye-catching roses from a walk earlier in the week. Because there was no way I could have caught a firefly with my camera!

Snowshoe outing at Notchview

Where ever the trail peters out, the red blazes are what you keep an eye out for. The snowshoeing symbol helps out to, encouraging the lone trekker to go just a wee bit further down the trail. Or off the trail.

This week there were many more animal tracks than the previous week's trip. The birds are changing their songs to their springtime calls of enchantment.

Despite having a little point and shoot with me, I didn't get any pictures of the pair of ruffed grouse that surprised the hell out of me as I trudged past! And I was mighty close to the second one without realizing it, before it took off like a heavy chicken to a safer copse.

Collection: snow benches

Benches of Northampton in various states of snow cover. I could only get to one to sit on and even then I had to brush off the morning's fresh snow.

We didn't get as much snow as Boston this winter, but we've still had more than I've ever seen here (or anywhere).

This is how I perceived every New England winter, full of snow, always present with another storm on the way. I loved the weather and have my fingers crossed for next December-March.

The taste of spring to come

Magnolia blossoms, fuzzy and ripe to bloom... soon-ish. Patches of green grass under my boots. The taste of the saltbox under all that snow and ice.

A jaunt into town

A light snowfall this morning, falling ever so slowly but not enough to add more than a lacy layer to our snow collection.

 And a feather! Does this mean the birdies are returning?

Frigid February morning

Pear custard pie for one. For breakfast. I'm the only one in our family who enjoys it, so I shrunk it down to make just a couple of servings and it's all for me. A warm, creamy, fruit and egg meal sounds like the right way to start a cold day like today.  Jasper the cat feels the same way, but he didn't much care for the pear.

All of the beasts are indoors today, looking out through paisley patterned windows. Starting to think a little bitty bit about the springtime thaw. And growing things we can all eat and savor together.

Out and in again

A snowy day, but not one of those severely cold days that are a dime a dozen this winter. So, to the outdoors to ski and enjoy the new snowfall!

And back indoors again, to a cozy and sweet home. Where lollipops and soft blankets are waiting after much hill descending and climbing up again. After snacking on snow and winking at the winter sunshine.

So thankful for...

1. Putting the time to one side to finally learn some ins and outs of how my dslr works. I feel a lot more confident, but damn, I sure wish it didn't weigh so much!

2. February = Snow! And skiing everyday since it all started 13 days ago (save for last Saturday when I was feeling a bit over-burdened by 'stuff'): across the street from our house, in the forest and on the bike path behind work, at Notchview... there are precious few cross country skiing days here and with 45 degree weather for the rest of the week, it looks like today might be the last decent day of it. Unless March brings us more (but you can never count on it)!

3. Expanding my new recipes to try out some new ingredients and foods.

Eyes Open E-Course

Trying out an e-course on photography to shake off the rustiness that's settled in around my manual picture taking. My goal is to sustain my focus on re-learning photography, as well as gain new skills that the digital photography world has opened up in the last decade:

• Photo storage
• Photo editing in PhotoShop
• Backing up photos
• How to blog pictures effectively

New and Improved

For the new year I'd like to get some new skills and improve some I already have.

Round One: Photography!

I've signed up for a Photography E-Course that will hopefully keep me on track for the next six weeks, when our family and work lives are a little slower than most other times of the year. I'm hoping by then I'll have a more comfortable understanding of my dslr and can keep going with it on my own, experimenting and the practice becomes a habit for me.

Goals for further down the road: tending to my friendships, food photography, gardening, learning the keyboard...

Camera work: aperture

Today it's 'aperture'. I know the concept from my old 35mm and medium format days, but with these darned tootin' digital cameras, I'm just trying to figure out which buttons can get the effect I'm after.

So, a quiet house, the lads are out and a cup of coffee brewing. Here we go! By the way, this isn't meant as a tutorial for anyone but myself, I'm writing this down to remember and haven't actually tried it out yet!

1. Turn the camera on.
2. Turn the top left dial on the camera body to 'A'. This puts the camera in Aperture mode.
3. Turn Auto/Manual switch on the lens (A M) to the M. This puts the lens in manual mode.
4. On the front left of the camera body, turn the Auto Focus/Manual (AF M) button to M to tell the camera you're taking over manually.
5. Turn the notched dial under the On/Off switch left or right, depending on the aperture you want.
6. The smaller the aperture number next to the 'f', the more light the lens lets in and the camera only focuses on the subject on a particular plane (more depth of field). The higher the aperture number, the more light the lens lets in and the more of the framed image will be in focus (less depth of field).
7. Once that's all set up, point the camera towards your subject and use the zoom ring (turning that ring, shifts the numbers on the lens barrel) on the front of the lens barrel to get closer to your subject via the camera.
8. Then adjust the focus ring (the slimmer of the two rings) to put the subject in focus.
9. Press down on the Depth of Field preview button on the bottom right front of the camera. (P.S. Don't get this mixed up with the 'fn' button above the DoF button.

Some websites that helped me figure out all of this and more:
Wikipedia
Nikon D90 for Dummies and their Nikon D90 cheat sheet
Focusing Tips with Phil Steele

Goals to establish in 2014

General goals for 2014. Thought out though, seeing where I would like to be, how I would like myself, our home and our family shift to a better place.

1. Community:  Enhance friendships, more meals with others (including last minute invites when our home might not look 'perfectly' clean). Go camping with other families. Start a badminton group. Go to more live (music, theater) events. Get more involved with Biocitizen.

2. Creativity: Take a photography course and practice, practice, practice! Blog posts, especially 'Thankful For' that provide an outlet for my appreciations. More hand sewing and patching. Organizing photos (for once!). More family portraits. Get craft room in order.

3. Food/Nutrition: Trying new recipes (well that's never difficult) and new ingredients! Giving in to the kids' food choice, making more compromises and teaching them some basic cooking techniques. More greens and fruit. Get a small separate freezer for CSA extras.

4. Home: Spring lawn re-do and raised beds. Shelves throughout house. Basement Amazement! (Once and for all, clear out the basement and be rid of mold and mice.) Keep a monthly calendar of things we need to take care of (signing up for summer camps, birthdays, etc.). Put up better laundry lines outside and in the basement (for winter). Use MassSave to determine how our home can be more energy efficient: Signed up, waiting for a call to schedule an appointment. Taxes done by March 1!

5. Family: Put up a phone list so the kids can call family and friends when they want to: DONE! Keep working with Dash on temper flares. Work out the kids' extracurricular activities (try karate, in-home piano?) Work out if a Fulbright is possible in our future. Meet with orthodontist for boys' braces. Keep everyone reading: have a quiet time for all to sit together and read their own books.

6. Me: Keep away from old habits that I want to shift away from and develop new ones. Make and keep appointments: yoga, doctor, dds, chiropractor, physical therapist (find chiro & p.t.). Keep up meditation and reflection studies (read books, blog posts, journal writing). My last full year at my job! Keep being creative and don't lose hope!

e-course envy

My new-to-me Nikon D90 needs my love, time and understanding.

It's not the camera's fault that I haven't moved past the Auto dial. It's the intimidation I feel at all of the other buttons and dials and menus that are overwhelming compared to my little Canon point & shoot and my old 35mm Nikon.

So, fingers crossed for the bluebirdbaby giveaway. I think the e-course would be a great opportunity to move beyond the 'A'.

Baby steps!

So thankful for

Today is Wednesday and we're in week three of kid soccer and school. It's important to me to remember the more lovely moments of my days, the wonderful little details that make each day extra special.

Misty bike path

1. Watching steam rise off the fields this morning.  Mystical. Magical. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for it. Or it's just the fairies and gnomes taking a sauna this morning.
2. Oatmeal for everyone! Starting a morning with a chill, with a bowl of coconuted, blueberried, walnuted, mapled oatmeal.
3. Pilates class #2. The first one felt like a joke. This isn't a workout! I can't feel this! We barely moved! Foolish mortal, the next day your core felt used. Two days later your core wants to go on strike. On the other hand, you woke up without the stiff joints and hunched shoulders. This pilates thing is really working out well for me. And the classes are free at work, so: Bonus!
4. The joyous fun at our pizza dinner out last night. The boys chose to sit together on one side, so my love and I got to sit together too! We were given a table quickly and all of the food was consumed with smiles and laughter and sharing.  Everyone got their fare share of calamari, there was no hoarding this time. Although Dashiell did pick up one piece that had a leg attached to another so it looked like pieces from Barrel of Monkeys, but with deep fried seafood instead!
5. Listening to Dashiell's stories from his afternoon of wading in the Dead Branch Brook in Chesterfield to study the health of the river. Using Rapid Biotic Assessment, he and some friends scrubbed river rocks, gathered insects and learned how a river can be deemed healthy or unhealthy. Tea quickly followed to warm up afterwards. Both lads will take part next week in the Manhan River.

Hidden talent: Finder of Ravenel Stinkhorn Mushrooms

On my way to get an almond croissant this morning and I stopped in my tracks. The unmistakable smell of stinkhorn hit me. Up in the air went my nose. The smell was so strong, I thought I’d turn around and find a field of them staring back at me with their one, cycloptic eye. Not getting too close, realizing it might be a private residence and not a College owned building. Poking around the woodchipped landscape, I couldn’t find anything.

As I walked away, there it was. The smell again. And then I saw the midget stinkhorn. All by itself. What it lacked in height, it made up for in epic stink.

 

A most stunning fungus.

This is a talent I never thought I’d have. I mean, it never even occurred to me (having never heard of stinkhorn mushrooms until five years ago). But I’m adding this to my resume of what I can do really well: 

“I am a locator of Ravenel Stinkhorn mushrooms.”  There are not many people who can make this claim. 
My nine year old son also has this talent. Heather and Huxley: Stinkhorn Hunters.

PS: I would like to extend this talent out to “Locator of chantrelles and lion’s mane and morels”. But, one mushroom at a time.

Throwing out those rules

It's time to re-invent, to think differently, to throw all of those assumptions I've made along the way that have cemented into facts in my brain become hardened 'facts' in my consciousness. Because all of society is something of a facade.  Popular culture - popular to whom? - is a mess of what we think that person, magazine or group of people thinks.

On Wild, staring each other down. This dragonfly doesn't care what my hair looks like!

Luckily I don't know what all of those other people are thinking - I just think I know what they're thinking. I put ideas in their heads and conversations. What I'm really doing is revealing my own fears and insecurities. And, unfortunately, there are still more weighing on me than I wish were present.


Those concerns I have for myself

• what I look like
• how I greet others
• what I say
• how I wish to live my life
• so many things...

All of these, I assume reflects as negatively in other people's minds when I have doubt. Doubt that I don't fit in. Doubt that someone won't like me. Doubt that someone will miscontrue my intentions. But I have to feel less responsible for how I think others will think. Damn, this is getting way confusing, but it makes rational sense for me. But in an irrational, I may be slightly crazy, kind of way.

Because, if each person truly thought all of the ideas and judgments that each of I put in their heads, those heads would explode in a Terry Gilliam show of fireworks, splattering grey-matter-goo everywhere.

Now is the time to be more mindful.  (Well, some would say, years ago was the time, but 'there is a season' and my season is now.) As long as I can stick with the Kurt Von. adage 'You've got to be kind', then that's all I need concern myself with. I also have to be kind to myself and release these assumptions I've built up based on facts and ideas whose origins have faded away. Living in this moment, I need only be the way I'd like to be.

Riverwalking

We found a gentle stretch of river to explore and what a lovely Sunday afternoon was spent by all! No one fell (a few close calls though), no creatures (besides us, that is), plenty of birds (but none of them stopping to say 'hello').

Westfield River September 2013

 We'll be doing more of this sport until it gets too cold and starting up again next spring, when just enough warmth returns.

Lights of summer

One of the last weekends of summer and the swirling neon light sticks allowed me to have some fun with my new-ish camera. The lads were in a state of wonder, creating designs in light that can only be achieved with a low shutter speed.

Green in foreground, flashlight in back.

Two colors against the dusk of night.

Water parking

A cool, cool chance to escape the heat this summer, our local spray park.

Look Park August 2013

Rainbows included.

Detours

Not unlike our house remodeling project(s) at home, our local bike path is getting some work done and it's going to take some time. But thank goodness that the construction is being done in 'bits' - although during peak biking season - so there's only one small piece to detour around at a time before the work crew moves on to the next section.

Taken in August in 2012 and, you know, on a different part of the bike trail. But the SAME bike trail.

 The last two weeks it was section #1 and a short ride on the main road (yikes!) and a bit of riding through windy fields. Manageable, definitely manageable even when it was rain was splattering down on me. I was even surprised that the dreaded bit of road crossing I had to deal with, I ended up hitting at the perfect moment (and the bike gods were smiling on me, pleased that I hadn't let the detour derail me from my weekly bike plan).

This week it's section #2. Let's talk groundhogs. Goddamn those critters are cute. And slow. As I rounded a corner, at the top of a small hill, I surprised my little groundhog friend. (I say 'surprised', because s/he turned around and waddled back into the tall grass. But those little lads (lassies) always act so mellow, never in a hurry, I don't think anything could really surprise them). As s/he headed back to safety, I could see her/him rolling her/his eyes at having interrupted her/his morning breakfast chomp.

Further along, I biked past some farm work crews picking produce. They looked up, I waved and said 'Good morning' and they all smiled and said it back.

I'm hoping on the way back I'll come across some freshly picked blueberries for sale at the side of the road.  Good gravy, what a pleasant detour!