photo Friday

A few pics from my cousin's wedding on Wednesday at Cave Spring Vineyard in Beamsville, Ontario. It was a gorgeous day.

photo Friday

I can't believe a week has gone by since I last posted. It's been that kind of week. There will be some catching up this weekend. In the meantime, a photo from a recent trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens.


Click to enlarge and spot something hiding amidst the blossoms.

photo Friday

Mama robin tending to her eggs in the maple tree in our front yard. Taken earlier this summer.

photo Friday

I spent last weekend with an awesome group of ladies at our annual Girl's Weekend at Elizabeth's cottage on Lake Erie. The weather was not fantastic but we sat outside as much as we could, often bundled up in sleeping bags and blankets. There was a storm brewing over the lake. Maybe even a tornado?

photo Friday

The addition of the music Tuesdays feature has really helped me keep up with the blog. I find that I am more motivated to get a post in before the next Tuesday rolls around, simply because I don't want this to be a blog of just music posts on Tuesdays. So I've decided to start a photo Friday feature in hopes that it will get me blogging even more. And I do take a lot of pictures that just end up sitting on my hard drive. Also, I'm over a year behind in updating my Flickr, so this might help with that problem as well.

Okay, enough talking. Here are few pics from our last trip to the cottage.

The black squirrel was scurrying up a tree with a mouthful of sunflower seeds we had thrown out for the animals.

We think this gorgeous heron nests on the property. He doesn't normally get this close. The picture is a bit fuzzy because it was taken through the glass of the front door.

Enjoy your summer weekend!

...you may dig wintertime but spring is my joy

We have two gorgeous old maple trees in our yard, one in the front and one in back. Just over a week ago, they were still in their leafless winter state. Then one morning after a rainstorm, we woke up to this.




Life is good.

if a picture paints a thousand words...

Just got home from a full day of work and an excellent massage. I'm sipping a cup of tea before bed and writing up a quick post. Well, writing may not be the best description. I'm too tired for words, so here are a few pictures I took this summer at the cottage.

We had a rainy spring and early summer at the cottage resulting in an more mushrooms than I have ever seen.

A spiderweb on a foggy morning.

Misty morning on the lake.

Family of loons.

A maple leaf that peaked too early.

Blue jay in a tree.

One of the odder fungi I came across.

The old heron that lives on the point.

i don't have to speak...

One of the reasons that we bought the house that we live in is because we have a creek running behind it. I love watching the creek cycle through its seasonal changes. Our weather has been totally wacky lately. We had a major dumping of snow a couple of weeks before Christmas, then it got really warm for a while and it started to melt, then it was really cold for a few days and everything iced over and now it's getting warm again. The forecast is saying that it will go up to 11 degrees celsius this week. In January, in Canada? Total insanity. Thanks global warming! (please note the sarcastic tone - I happen to totally love winter and miss having real winter.) As a result, the creek is going through this spring-like melty sort of thing. I went out and took some pictures today and some of them turned out pretty well. Here are a few. If you like, there are more on flickr.

some wild, wild life

Steve and I spent two weeks at the cottage this summer and they were heavenly. We had been up for a week in June and returned for the first week of August. The weather was perfect for the August trip and we spent most of our time doing a whole lot of nothing. It was the mental break we both needed.


I spent a lot of time working on my latest addiction, photography. Ever since I bought the new camera, I have been obsessed with taking pictures. I'm slowly learning how to use some of the cool features on my camera but most of my pictures are still pretty crappy. I think I'm currently averaging about 1 good photo for every 20 I take. But I am learning more as I go along. I have also discovered the joy of iPhoto. I've been spending a lot of time playing around with my photos, cropping, adjusting and just messing around with them to see what I could do. But I digress.


The tradition at the cottage is to put peanuts and sunflower seeds out on the front step every morning to feed the animals. It doesn't take them long to sniff out the grub, so I sat patiently with my coffee and camera and waited. After a day or two, they got used to having me around and weren't at all concerned that I was just a few feet away from them. I ended up with some excellent shots of the squirrels, chipmunks and various birds that would come to feed. The chipmunks were even running over my feet and eating out of my hand!


I still have quite a bit of editing to do, but these are a few photos I took during our last trip to Otty Lake. I'll put a bunch more on my Flickr stream soon. There are already some unedited ones up from the June trip.

wish I were a camera

Introducing my newest technological obsession!


I picked up my brand new Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ8 on Sunday. I've been itching for a new digital camera for a while. My old Canon Powershot has been excellent, but I craved more megapixels and greater zoom. This new camera is overwhelming! The amount of features and settings are blowing my mind!!!

Seriously, I've always been interested in photography. I would love to learn how to really take a picture. Maybe this new whizzy camera will be the first step...

I hope to take the camera on a serious test drive this coming weekend. Just a warning...