The weather is abso-stinkin-lutely (to quote my friend Crysta) gorgeous right now. The azaleas and dogwoods and wysteria are at their peak. And I have to send back the rental lens today so I went out yesterday to catch a little more spring with it. I’m sure Sonya was wondering what I was doing when I passed her twice in about 5 minutes. Last evening after work I headed out and found a dogwood tree with the Perfect blooms on it near Ken & Carmel’s house. And then I stopped in to say “howdy” and ended up taking some squash plants off of her hands. So I ran some over to my parents. And then dropped off some extras at Eric & Linda’s house and chatted with Eric and Micah for a bit. Then stopped by the church to sign up for bake sale items. Then on home at 7:45. Not bad for someone who had intended to be home all evening. 

This place in town has a yard that is about half a city block. They always have the most lovely yard in the spring.

“Pods” on a crepe myrtle tree

I thought I wasn’t going to get any tulip tree blooms this year (again) and then I discovered that my parents have a tree in their yard so I got them afterall!

Love the new green growth that is visible all around. I was amazed at how much greener it is here than in SC last weekend. There was almost a line somewhere around Wrens, GA where the growth difference was apparent.

Pretty little weeds near the lake

Flowers in the swamp at the lake. Don’t worry. There probably aren’t (m)any gators here.

My favorite dogwood shot.

Bridal bouquet (?)

More weeds.

 

And yes, I’ve done a few of these. No more spring pics ’till I get good and going with the wedding pics. Check my portrait blog in a few days and I will have some up for you to see.

 

Just a few spring pictures to share with you. For some reason, many of the dogwood blooms look rough and I haven’t had time to look for nice ones.

But, I asked Raymonds if I could shoot some flowers in their backyard and they gave me the go ahead. They also have a bird feeder that stays occupied.

 

A “painted” version:

 

Camellia:

 

And the ever present azaleas:

 

Christy, this is for you and anyone else interested in the Canon 85mm 1.2L lens.  (I’m renting it for a week.) It is a heavy lens (3.2 lbs). The weight alone is formiddable. So extremely different from the [edited to add] 50mm 1.8.

I got it today and had a few minutes over lunch to shoot a few outside. Since I have no victims in range these sample shots do not include humans. When you have the thing wide open at 1.2 you have to be very deliberate about your focus target.

Amazing bokeh, though.

In my kitchen, no lights except the overhead flourescent.

In the living room, just some window light.

Now I shall go lift weights to prepare myself for handling this thing on Saturday.

 

 

This past weekend we had our 2nd Annual Basketball Tournament to benefit our school. It was thankfully not as warm as last year but it was pretty close. 85 degrees in March. Nothing like a little spring weather. The birds are singing their hearts out, the dogwoods and azaleas are blooming, the bumble bees are bumbling, or whatever it is they do. Back to basketball, which this is really supposed to be about…

Wendy and Carmel helped with me organizing the food stand, a great help!! Thankfully I had my paperwork from last year available and we didn’t change the menu much. We added smoothies, which were a hit, and strawberry lemonade.

Here is our smoothie recipe, in case you need one.

Strawberry Smoothie

1/2 c. vanilla yogurt
1/3 c. milk
2 T. sugar
6 medium strawberries
6 ice cubes

Blenderize on high until totally smoothie.  1 – 12oz luscious serving. Of course you can use other fruits of your choice here.

We keeping going round and round about prices of the food. I’d love to hear some input from y’all about these prices. Here is a poster this year:

Most of the people attending are either people who have already contributed to the school and the players pay to play. What do you think? I already know the sandwiches are priced wrong. They were supposed to be 2.50 for the burgers (these are quality burgers) and 3 for the chicken (pure white meat).

And here are some scenes from the day.

Since Crysta apparently was sitting on pins and needles waiting to see pictures from that good weekend in SC, even though she didn’t leave a comment and say so, I got the fullness of the message when she was here in person this weekend. One of these days I will have to post why she isn’t here in person every day and is living in the land of cold, windy Indiana but that will be reserved for later.

Three weeks ago Ginny (who also doesn’t live here any more and will be included in the same epistle) called just to chat or something. She asked if we wanted to come help with her garage sale the following Saturday and I said, sure, we were planning to come that weekend and hadn’t let her know yet. So, unbeknownst to us, she got on the phone with Crysta and pled with her to fly down for the weekend too. Well, the tickets did get manageable and she flew down to SC on Friday afternoon. No wonder Gin was so disturbed that we couldn’t get there earlier Friday night. In fact, she called us off and on all week to make sure we were coming. But my sister the nurse had a wild day at work Friday so we didn’t get to Wes & Ginny’s place ‘til nearly 1 AM.

We were being given a tour of the house the next morning and the last room we saw was the guest room where said surprise guest was waiting for us.

We had a great weekend doing a little shopping, a bit of eating and a lot of gabbing. Oh, and some trash talking with Wes. We also got to see the church where Jamie will be getting married (Christy and I will be doing the photography) and were given a tour of Fairplay Wilderness Camp by Carol.

Cajun Firecracker Sticks – a delicious appetizer at Fatz Cafe.

Gin shows us what a fried egg looks like after being in the oven for 6 hours.

Crysta and Lois

Wes and Slater

The family that cooks together, stays together. Often families that don’t cook together, also stay together, which is good. I don’t think Wes is actually cooking.

Mason playing with his many little cars and trucks

Ginny has her own cooking show. Here she is making Penne Rigate. Or else she was making corn. I think it was corn.

Here someone from the studio audience is attacking her. She does not have a very good security system.

 
 Don’t ask!!!

Sunday afternoon game of Chutes and Ladders

The game goes bad.

 
Apparantly Wes does not like losing.

No, really, it’s all good. He’s just having a little fun tussling with his sons.

A little Sunday afternoon garage sitting.

Slater shows us the fine art of dribbling.

Sometimes if you make a face it helps.

Or stare at it in deep concentration.

In parting I shall leave you with a shot of the four of us.

Adios and tomorrow it’s the beach. It’s supposed to be a high of 85*. 

I was doing some other work on my computer tonight and I got the urge to do some editing again. So I dug into the archives to see what I could come up with. I played around with different effects.

 

Sharp?

or soft?

  

Yeah, I was into the sepia/chocolate thing.

 

I have a square brown frame with a square brown mat. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out what picture would look good as a square. I’m thinking this last one could work. What do y’all think?