Closer to Home

The following post will contain no travel photographs, that is unless you count Regina's house travel, and come to think of it, the interior is so exotic, you might just as well be in another world. :)

The other morning, Sue and I met for a ride, and while she was on our street, and because I know she loves gardening, when we met Regina walking Argyle, I asked if I might show Sue her back garden. Go right in, she replied. We did. Sue was loving it, marveling at the whole vibe. Eventually we remembered we were supposed to be riding, and left. But, what do you know, we ran into Cheryl on her bike and turned right back around and showed her the garden, during which time Regina returned and gave them a tour of the house. They were dutifully impressed. By now we were all feeling the time crunch, so a quick five miles and we head our separate ways. It's nice to have some riding buddies.

Wednesday night, while eating outdoors, the setting sun lit up the shed in such a lovely way I had to take a photograph.

This led to some reminiscing about our garden shed, entirely built by Mr. Peck, without so much as a drawing, if you can believe that. It must have been in his very early days working for Darden that he was given a project in Gainesville which required tearing down an existing restaurant. Hmm.....that got his mind creating; he used both the siding and the tin roof for the project. The windows came from an antique store, while the concrete floor is from a driveway which once ran in our front yard. When we moved into this house, Bill, David, and Jonathan were all still either in high school, or middle school. I can't remember why David wasn't involved in this project, maybe because he was such a wizard with our lawn care, but anyway, Bill and another neighborhood friend, worked alongside Bruce beating up the driveway, and carrying the chunks to the back yard. Bruce must have built a frame, filling it with the large pieces, and then mixing concrete to hold it all together. You have to see it in person to appreciate the cleverness of it all. It is here that we store all the lawn and pool equipment, as well as a few tools that won't fit into our small garage due to my keeping my inventory in there.

So, we reminisced about building the shed, which brought to mind a book I purchased for Bruce during our trip to England on his 50th birthday. Called "Men and Sheds", it came from a bookstore in Cambridge. He got it out, we marveled at the creativity of sheds, and were just plain happy to be alive. There you go.

Feeling slightly creative the other day, I discovered the monochrome setting on my Nikon. Why it is not called black and white is unclear to me, but I set to looking for things around the house to photograph.

The shell is from our lake, the starfish, a favor from Rich and Jenn's wedding, and the hunk of coral (?) is from Siesta Key. When you look around your home do you find your life history in what is displayed?

This flower, from a bunch purchased at Publix, is a lovely shade of lavendar, normally not a color I would purchase, however, the arrangement of the petals is so good, I bought it anyway.

More experimentation to come in this mode, although truth be told, people seem to like my colors, so it's probably won't go far.

I've had a few neat things happen of late. My sweet niece Laura hooked me up with her bosses who were looking for something new to decorate their office. Woo hoo! They bought a big canvas, unbeknownst to her, so when she arrived at work on Friday and saw it hanging in the lobby, she was most pleasantly surprised. Me too.

Furthermore, I've heard from my publishers about something cool. One of my images was sold for a hotel project (no other details, so don't ask), as well as to HomeGoods. Can you believe it? Me neither.

Back in the color mode, here's a creepy cowbird,

you know, those birds who drop their eggs in another bird's nest because they are too lazy to build their own? Despite those faults, the brown head and almost iridescent feathers is worth taking note of. According to my link it is not laziness, only an adaptation, but I'm standing by the above sentence. See how bad information gets passed along?

Traveling is good, however, had I stayed closer to home, I would not currently be looking for one of my watches, as well as an unfinished library book. How I could have left them elsewhere is beyond me. That book was super good too.