I played around a bit more with making ghost photos last night. I was having a lot of fun. Perhaps these reveal more about my methods. (I’ll explain myself soon. But for right now, I’m so tired I can barely form sentences and need to get to bed.)
Category: photos
falling down on the job
I’ve been sitting here working, denting my usual spot on the couch, starting to fall asleep, and thinking I should go to bed. Then I had that moment of panic when I realized that I hadn’t blogged today. Happily, it wasn’t even 11:00 yet when I noticed. So, here we are, with another lackluster post.
But here are some photos from after the tree work was done.
Last night, the guy who did the tree work told me that the big tree next to our house was over 100 feet tall, and was over a 100 years old. I hadn’t realized it was so old. (Or so tall, for that matter.) I’m really sad about it, and keep questioning myself about whether getting it cut down was the right thing to do. Obviously whoever built this house made an effort to keep the tree when the house was built, since our house is only about 30 years old. At the same time, I don’t see how we could have left it. It was too tall to maintain, and overhanging the house. We had to have people climb it in the past to cut back the limbs. We had multiple recommendations to have it removed, and there has been so much damage to the back of the house due to over-shading.
As you can see, it’s not like our yard is now totally bereft of trees. I just feel bad about the whole thing.
ghost of the pants
The pants phantasm…a pantasmic apparition.
Today marks the 4th anniversary of the start of my blog, and also a day that has personal significance for me and my pants. I feel like I should have something pithy, or at least witty, to say. I wanted to write something fun or silly or brilliant featuring pants. It’s been ages since I’ve put together a pants list. But instead of writing about pants, I wrote the word pants. In light. Which I have to say is actually fairly fun and silly. It is also luminous, which is at least a synonym of brilliant.¹
I have to keep chugging away at my research to at least maintain the illusion of progress, and there hasn’t been much time in my day or room in my head for blogging or pants. I’m being haunted by the spectre of an abstract submission deadline for a conference, which is looming only 2 weeks away. I had really hoped to have something ready to submit, but it’s looking less and less likely. But I want to keep my momentum, and hopefully I’ll be ready to submit something more substantial to another conference with a spring deadline. And there’s that tiny chance that I can still make the December 1st deadline. A little ghost of a chance.
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¹ I did not edit this photo at all, and I am quite pleased with myself for figuring out how to do this.
going after the low-hanging fruit
A few weeks back, Sue had a theme for our project 365 group of “idioms.” You’d think I’d be all over that one, but I totally missed the boat. When push came to shove, I came up empty-handed. Which is just a crying shame, since I think idioms are the bee’s knees.
A low-hanging apple, from September.
(It’s been challenging keeping up with the daily blogging and the daily photo-taking. I’ve been really pushing forward with my research, and still busy with other life obligations, so I find myself looking for quick-and-easy subjects. Apparently this includes a fair amount of fruit.)
a bunch of bananas
Actually, this is all one banana. It just appears in the photos a bunch of times.
(These were photos I took a couple of nights ago. I have yet to pick which one will be the one I’ll include in my project 365 set. Want to help me pick a banana?)
that’s my boy
Tree-hugger.
This photo was from early July. (Another from my digital hoard.) Theo spontaneously hugged a tree in our yard. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. (Not that this is an apple tree. I believe it’s an oak. So I guess the expression “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree” would fit better. It’s just not the version that I’m most familiar with.)
This particular tree is not one we had taken down, by the way. I have yet to really see what our yard looks like, as we returned home after dark.
can’t see the house for the trees
We can see the forest, all right. It’s right on top of us.
Below is our neighborhood, as seen from above. See the houses and driveways? Those are our neighbors. See the dark blotch right in the middle of the picture? That’s where our house is. Honestly, there’s a house in there.
Image from Google Maps.
When we bought our house, over 11 years ago, one of the selling points for me was the heavily wooded neighborhood, and the heavily wooded lot. I like trees. I wanted to live with trees. And the trees around our house are beautiful. We have towering oaks and maples, with a few other types that I could probably identify if I bothered to look them up in the tree field guide I bought so many years ago. (Or maybe I did look them up, and have now forgotten.) Our house is on a bit of an incline, and the trees continue down the hill behind the house. The result is that our upstairs windows look right out into the treetops. It’s a bit like living in a treehouse.
The trouble is, the trees keep growing. And some of them are really close to the house. This has become an issue over the last 3 or 4 years. The house just isn’t getting enough sun for things to dry out regularly. And when you live in a wooden house, this is a problem. We’ve had issues with rot and mold, and have had to replace doors and soffits. Our gutter fell off rather dramatically a couple of years ago. We’ve had to be vigilant treating our house for carpenter ants.
Tomorrow, someone is coming to take down some of the trees. I’m glad that we’ll finally be dealing with the issue, but I’ll be sad to see some of them go. (Actually, I’m not planning on watching–or hearing–them go. We’ll be getting out to avoid the noise and the stress.)
This oak tree is probably just over 4 feet away from our deck. It’s probably a good 50 feet tall now. (Yikes!)
Looking up at the oak tree from our deck (which is one floor above the ground).
The back of our house, again from the deck. I think that gutter is a good 25 feet above ground level. As you can see, the trees are taller than that.
once (once) upon a time(piece)
It’s 11/11 once more, and once again, I find myself wanting to mark the day with a bit of eleven-ness. A few years ago, I made an 11 list. (My list goes up to 11.¹¹) Last year, I got all creative with 11-related photos.
This year, it struck me (ouch!) that once is the word for eleven in Spanish. Which at once made me have associations with the English word once. (Once in a blue moon… once an X always an X…once bitten, twice shy.) Once that got started, it brought to mind the Once-ler, who was the one who did in all the truffula trees in The Lorax. Have I mentioned that we’re going to be having a bunch of big trees around our house taken down soon? I feel rather like the Once-ler. Except that I have no plans to make thneeds.
I also found myself wanting to take a picture of 11:11 again. This time I went all analog. (And now it’s time for me to get back to work.)
Once once on a timepiece.
¹¹ This joke never gets old for me.
Is it still a still life if there’s a hand in it?
I’ve been hard at work most of today, when not distracted by apples. (Or coughing. But that’s another story.) I was going to eat this shiny little red apple when I was overcome by a desire to take its picture. In the end, I instead ate a very tasty small russet apple, which was neither red nor shiny. (And now I’m thinking I should have taken its picture, too.)
Now I need to get back to my work.
collecting tokens 