Weekly Photo Challenge: Texture (Grill Cover)

Here is the texture photo I was originally looking for as my contribution to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Texture. It is a photo of the inside of the cover of our old gas grill and comes complete with plenty of texture:).

Weekly Photo Challenge: Texture (Dry Grass)

This week’s Weekly Photo Challenge is Texture. I immediately thought of a couple of my photos, but when I started looking through my Lightroom Catalog I ran into this photo of dried grass, which shows quite a bit of texture.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Water (A Story in Many Pictures)

What a wonderful challenge idea Cee.

Here is my story of water – from droplet to ocean and back again. I hope you enjoy the rather lengthy journey.

The first stop is two drops of water that are held by bits of moss.

Raindrops on moss

While much of this water will sink back into the earth to replenish aquifers or run off to do duty elsewhere, some will evaporate. Evaporated these two water drops band together with millions of billions of others to form clouds that can be jaw-droppingly beautiful.

However, those same water drops can become nightmarishly dangerous if you are driving on a rural highway in the blinding rain.

Of course these water drop can also fall in the form of snow …

or may become ice and form gigantic glaciers or the most delicate of structures.

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The gathering of water is among the most common sights on earth given that more than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water.

Water readily forms puddles …

and ponds.

Left to its own devices  it will gather into cleansing wetlands.

Water is the great way station and play station for a myriad of wildlife from Canadian Geese

to bald eagles (here an immature bald eagle)

to Sandhill cranes.

When the drops of water do not sink into the ground, they gather together first into streams …

that lead to great lakes like Lake Michigan

and mighty rivers like the Columbia River

… all inexorably making their way to the oceans.

Here we see two surfers in the Pacific near Cannon  Beach in Oregon,

while the view of the Pacific in Monterey is much more peaceful.

It is in the oceans that the water, heated by the sun, drives the climate. Eventually that water freshened by evaporation raises itself again and ultimately gathers itself into the weather systems we watch for and when the rain falls we see in it our own renewal.

Photo Mining – Holiday Berries

It is a rainy, foggy and generally rather miserable day here in Maple Bluff.  I am continuing my photo mining expedition and thought I’d share this photo that I took around Labor Day (early September in the U.S.) in 2011 and then forgot about. It seemed appropriate for the holidays.

Photo Mining – Father-in-law’s Lily

My father-in-law is 90 years old but still keeps active. This lily is from one of his carefully tended flowerbeds. The photo was taken in mid-summer 2013.