Author: alejna

sporting a feathery crown (friday foto finder: crane)

The African crowned cranes at my local zoo are remarkably photogenic. They were quite cooperative posing for me earlier this year, showing off their striking crowns of feathers.


Striking a pose.


Craning to look at me?


Bending over for a drink.


Showing off its height and wingspan.


Enjoying the mid-day sun. (This photo was taken a few years before the others, which were from earlier this year. I notice that this crane has darker neck feathers, and a smaller crown. I wonder whether this is a black crowned crane, and the photos above of a gray crowned crane.)

Friday’s friday foto finder challenge was to share a photo of a crane While my first interpretation of this polysemous word was of the bird, I was almost certain that I wouldn’t have any photos of this sort of crane in my archives. I knew, however, that I had loads of photos of construction cranes and shipping cargo cranes. But a bit of poking back through my old photos triggered some memories of a variety of cranes I had encountered.

To see what cranes others found, pay a visit to the fff blog.

seven years in

When I started this blog, 7 years ago today, I had no idea where it would take me. Over a thousand posts later, I find that this blog has served its original purpose well: as a record of my life and as a creative outlet. What I didn’t expect from starting this blog was that blogging would become an important part of my life. I didn’t know that blogging would be the means by which I would learn and grow and forge lasting and important friendships. So, happy birthday to this blog, and thank you to the friends and visitors who have made blogging a more fun and rewarding experience than I ever would have imagined!

Phoning it in

It’s been a long hectic day, and now we’re on the road. It doesn’t look like I’ll have time to post anything from my laptop before midnight. So, here I am, posting from my phone before it runs out of battery. From a parking lot.

But look! A cute picture!

a matter of perspective

It’s amazing how enormous things can seem tiny, and tiny things can become huge, all depending on your vantage point. Right now, I am marvelling at the enormous amount of inconvenience and discomfort that can be caused by a tiny speck of something that has lodged itself under one’s eyelid. On a related note, one takes for granted the enhanced depth perception that one has from the full use of two eyes, and one realizes that one has taken for granted the ability to pour a beverage into a glass without pouring large amounts of said beverage onto the table.

fading fall ferns

Here in the wooded parts of New England, there are plenty of ferns growing among the undergrowth. In the spring they poke up alien-looking shoots, which then unfurl and fan out into their more familiar fractal-like shapes. In summer, they typically appear in a range of greens, from bright chartreuse to deep forest green, and many a shade in between. In the fall, by mid-October, most of the green fades away, leaving a variety of other colors: reddish browns and soft yellows, along with the palest of minty greens.


This is a rather blurry photo I took last year, which doesn’t do justice to the colors, but gives a sense of the range.

This year, I was quite taken with some ferns that had faded almost completely to white, but without otherwise looking withered.

I loved the way the bright white shapes stood out against the dark fallen oak leaves.


This fern looks very feathery in white.


Zooming in, you can see how perfectly the fern kept its shape.

Find the fading fall ferns fascinating? Feel free to fill the fine form that follows.¹

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¹ And by that I mean “please leave a comment,” except with a lot more alliteration.²
² And by that, I meant that I used a lot more alliteration above. But if you wish to leave a comment with a lot more alliteration, please proceed!

joking by number

Today was 11/12/13, a fun date for those people who like to enjoy fun dates.¹ The date has compelled me to post something with a numerical theme, though not about those particular numbers.

A few months ago, we were telling jokes in the car on our way somewhere or other. I don’t recall who started telling jokes, but at one point the conversation went something like this:

John: Why 7 is afraid of 8?
Phoebe: Because 7 8 9!
Theo: Why is 3 afraid of 4?
Everyone else: Um, we don’t know. Why?
Theo: Because 4 is REALLY REALLY MEAN!

Can’t top that.

And just because, here are a few photos of numbers.


Some numbers written by Theo at age 3. Perhaps they are all facing the wrong way out of fear of the number 4.


Who knows what sinister plans the 4 has for the 5 here?


Two 4s, looking as menacing as you might expect.

¹Yes, I am one of those people: Cf. my many Pi Day posts, as well as posts for 12/12/12, 11/11/11, 10/10/10 etc. Hell, I even posted something on 7/8/9 that I’d completely forgotten about.

poppies

Since I seem to be on a run of posting old photos of flowers (and flowers from my in-laws’ house, at that), I figured this would be a good day to post these photos of poppies.¹ The top photo with the close-up of a poppy bud, with its fuzziness glowing in the sunlight, is one of my favorites. These photos were taken in May of 2011.

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¹I only learned of the symbolism of poppies for Remembrance Day in recent years. Poppies seem to have a very complicated and often controversial coexistence with humans.

flower, bee, ants

Here’s another flower I came across when hunting for a rose to post on Friday This bright pink flower is another from my in-laws’ house, this time from out in the yard. More interesting to me than the flower, though, was the activity that was going on inside it: a shiny green bee and a bunch of tiny ants were hanging out, collecting pollen, or nectar, or whatever goodies the flower had to offer. (Maybe it was really free beer and pizza. I’m not a botanist, though, so I can’t be sure.)

the bloom is off the rose (but the fruit is on)

After I posted yesterday’s relatively un-rosy photo of a dandelion, I realized that while I don’t have many photos of roses, I do have some photos that I quite like of rose hips. These berry-sized red fruits are packed with vitamin C and other valuable nutrients. They are also quite pretty. I came across these particular rose hips in September three years back, in Boston alongside a T stop at BU.¹

¹ FYI, the T is Boston’s subway (though it’s not always underground) and BU is Boston University.²
² And FYI is “for your information.” OYVMWS?³
³ OYVMWS is a meaningless string of capitalized consonants. At least as far as I know.