Dragonflies are so beautiful!
I'm really pleased with the quality of photos from my phone. I upgraded to the Galaxy S4 and, while it has some quirks and toys I don't like or want, I've been really happy with it overall.
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Such a beauty!
My daughter spotted this beautiful dragonfly on the edge of the sidewalk earlier today. It allowed her to pick it up and hold it for quite a while.
Dragonflies are so beautiful!
I'm really pleased with the quality of photos from my phone. I upgraded to the Galaxy S4 and, while it has some quirks and toys I don't like or want, I've been really happy with it overall.
Dragonflies are so beautiful!
I'm really pleased with the quality of photos from my phone. I upgraded to the Galaxy S4 and, while it has some quirks and toys I don't like or want, I've been really happy with it overall.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Downtown Edmonton.
We live in a beautiful city.
There are hiking paths in the valley that my daughters hike every chance they get. For much of the time, you can't tell you're in a city, never mind downtown.
Beautiful.
Sent from Anna's phone
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Louise McKinney Park
I was able to take a whole bunch of photos in Louise McKinney Park in downtown Edmonton today, including some from the pedestrian bridge.
Considering how deep the valley is, it's amazing to see these areas covered in water.
You can see the complete set at my flickr account here. There are all straight from the camera, completely unedited (not even resized) photos taken with my old Canon S3. I chose that camera because it can also take video. I took several videos at different areas and put them together, opting to make several short video compilations, rather than one really long video.
One
Two
Three
Four
Considering how deep the valley is, it's amazing to see these areas covered in water.
You can see the complete set at my flickr account here. There are all straight from the camera, completely unedited (not even resized) photos taken with my old Canon S3. I chose that camera because it can also take video. I took several videos at different areas and put them together, opting to make several short video compilations, rather than one really long video.
One
Two
Three
Four
Riverdale
Parts of Riverdale are seeing some flooding. This is our view of Riverdale and the river from our balcony.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Photo walk
So my daughter conned convinced me to go on a photo walk with her yesterday. two and a half hours later, I was feeling pretty much dead. we did see a few nice things though :) Anna thought I should post one a day, but this gives me an excuse to go out more often :P
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Rainbow Sundogs
Meant to post this one a while ago. Taken on a cold, clear morning, Jan. 11. Sadly, I was unable to capture the bright rainbow colours in the sun dogs.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Berry Carnage
Not a very good image, I'm afraid, but I only had my camera phone handy. My older daughter and I were just heading out the door to walk to the library when the sky opened and hail began to fall!
We have a Mountain Ash tree in front of our unit, and the hail stripped quite a few of the ripening berries. We did end up walking to the library after the hail stopped (though it was still pouring) and, while the hail was quickly swept away by the downpoar, the sidewalks were littered with leaves and twigs. Sadly, we also passed a dead pigeon on the the street, killed by the hail.
Here's a video I took with my phone as well.
Another photo of the hail here, plus some of the flooding we saw while we were out and about.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Cold mornings...
(Philippe)
There was a four or five minute window where the light was hitting things just right, before the sun burned everything away...
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Road Trip 2011, part three
I've added a bunch of photos to my flickr set for this trip. While out, we stayed with my parents on the farm I grew up on. One of my brothers has his own place just up the road, a handy little walk away.
A lot of the farm shots have stories behind them, and will probably get posts of their own. Until then, here some others for you to enjoy.
This is one of several gardens my mother has. The vegetable garden has gotten smaller over the years, though it's still quite large. There are flower gardens, fruit trees and berry bushes as well. This little garden was mostly flowers when I was growing up on the farm. Now it's got more veggies in it - handy to have, closer to the house. With all the rain and cold in MB, the gardens when in a month late and the ground has often been too muddy to tend. It was just starting to dry up a bit during our visit.
There is a new addition near my parents' big garden - a couple of honey bee hives! My late uncle always kept bees, and he loved tending them. After my uncle died, one of his son in laws took over. Now my cousin in law runs Honeybee Meadows and he and his wife sell their honey as a nice little business. I made a point of picking up a big bucket of honey from them to bring home with me! :-) These are their hives, taking advantage of the many seasonal flowers my mother has, though from here, clover is all you can see. The row of trees behind the hives is mostly lilac, though there is a chokecherry tree in there as well (which my dad has used to make wine in the past). I'm sure there are others my mom has added over the years I don't know the names of! *L*
The ditch between my parents' place and my brother's was filled with flowers. Mostly Daisies and Wild Roses, but also Black Eyes Susans, creeping Buttercups, and many more I just don't know the names of.
During one of our walks back, however, we spotted this single Lady's Slipper that suddenly appeared. It wasn't blooming when we walked past the day before. It was hard to get a photo with the breeze, but I think this one worked out all right. We had found two more of a different type of Lady's Slipper in the spruce grove near my parents' house that I just wasn't able to get a good shot of.
It was a beautiful evening when we visited with my brother, so we sat outside to chat - thoroughly covered in bug spray, I might add. It was so nice to sit out there, surrounded by trees and flowers, several cats and the dog, enjoying each other's company. While there, we saw several deer passing through a clearing. They were a bit too fast for me, but I did manage to get a couple of shots.
Gotta love country living!
This is a neighbour's field we pass when driving from my parents' farm to town. When I was a kid, I loved bison, so I was pretty thrilled when people started to keep them. The babies you can just see over the tall grass are so adorable! They're such fascinating animals to look at.
Tasty, too.
A lot of the farm shots have stories behind them, and will probably get posts of their own. Until then, here some others for you to enjoy.
This is one of several gardens my mother has. The vegetable garden has gotten smaller over the years, though it's still quite large. There are flower gardens, fruit trees and berry bushes as well. This little garden was mostly flowers when I was growing up on the farm. Now it's got more veggies in it - handy to have, closer to the house. With all the rain and cold in MB, the gardens when in a month late and the ground has often been too muddy to tend. It was just starting to dry up a bit during our visit.
There is a new addition near my parents' big garden - a couple of honey bee hives! My late uncle always kept bees, and he loved tending them. After my uncle died, one of his son in laws took over. Now my cousin in law runs Honeybee Meadows and he and his wife sell their honey as a nice little business. I made a point of picking up a big bucket of honey from them to bring home with me! :-) These are their hives, taking advantage of the many seasonal flowers my mother has, though from here, clover is all you can see. The row of trees behind the hives is mostly lilac, though there is a chokecherry tree in there as well (which my dad has used to make wine in the past). I'm sure there are others my mom has added over the years I don't know the names of! *L*
The ditch between my parents' place and my brother's was filled with flowers. Mostly Daisies and Wild Roses, but also Black Eyes Susans, creeping Buttercups, and many more I just don't know the names of.
During one of our walks back, however, we spotted this single Lady's Slipper that suddenly appeared. It wasn't blooming when we walked past the day before. It was hard to get a photo with the breeze, but I think this one worked out all right. We had found two more of a different type of Lady's Slipper in the spruce grove near my parents' house that I just wasn't able to get a good shot of.
It was a beautiful evening when we visited with my brother, so we sat outside to chat - thoroughly covered in bug spray, I might add. It was so nice to sit out there, surrounded by trees and flowers, several cats and the dog, enjoying each other's company. While there, we saw several deer passing through a clearing. They were a bit too fast for me, but I did manage to get a couple of shots.
Gotta love country living!
This is a neighbour's field we pass when driving from my parents' farm to town. When I was a kid, I loved bison, so I was pretty thrilled when people started to keep them. The babies you can just see over the tall grass are so adorable! They're such fascinating animals to look at.
Tasty, too.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Road Trip 2011, part two
I've added a few shots to my flickr set of some of the areas we checked out while in Manitoba. Here are a couple of them.
This is taken from Fraserwood Park, in my home town. You see that building way in the background? When I was a kid, that was my first school. It was a two classroom school, though at the time I went, it was K-3 (it used to be K-6), all in one classroom. The other was used as a gym. Where I'm standing to take this photo was nothing but a marshy area. Now it's a park with a pond, public bathrooms, hand pump, areas large enough for RVs to park, with firepits available.
What you can't see from here is the house we used to live in. There's also a hockey rink and a sports club (which now owns the old school building) and a play structure, basketball court and baseball diamond. My kids were pretty young then, and spent many happy house exploring. One year, we gathered some frog spawn from one of the ditches and raised them in a makeshift tank. Out of the many eggs, only 5 froglets survived, and we released them in this pond.
Also released in this pond was a huge snapping turtle! I have no idea if it's still there. A friend called us up one day, asking for help. She'd seen something odd on the side of the highway, in an area surrounded by farmer's fields. It turned out to be a snapping turtle the size of a steering wheel! With no water in sight, and no idea where it came from, it was brought over to our place and we soon let it go in the pond. I must say, driving the car with that thing in a bin on the seat beside me - a bin it barely fit in! - was rather nerve wracking. Especially when the darn thing almost got out!
This is a Purple Martin tower by the marina in Gimli, Manitoba. They don't hang around long, but when they do, they eat a whole lot of mosquitoes, so a fair number of people build "apartment style" birdhouses to attract them. This tower is the largest such structure I've seen.
Click here to see more photos.
This is taken from Fraserwood Park, in my home town. You see that building way in the background? When I was a kid, that was my first school. It was a two classroom school, though at the time I went, it was K-3 (it used to be K-6), all in one classroom. The other was used as a gym. Where I'm standing to take this photo was nothing but a marshy area. Now it's a park with a pond, public bathrooms, hand pump, areas large enough for RVs to park, with firepits available.
What you can't see from here is the house we used to live in. There's also a hockey rink and a sports club (which now owns the old school building) and a play structure, basketball court and baseball diamond. My kids were pretty young then, and spent many happy house exploring. One year, we gathered some frog spawn from one of the ditches and raised them in a makeshift tank. Out of the many eggs, only 5 froglets survived, and we released them in this pond.
Also released in this pond was a huge snapping turtle! I have no idea if it's still there. A friend called us up one day, asking for help. She'd seen something odd on the side of the highway, in an area surrounded by farmer's fields. It turned out to be a snapping turtle the size of a steering wheel! With no water in sight, and no idea where it came from, it was brought over to our place and we soon let it go in the pond. I must say, driving the car with that thing in a bin on the seat beside me - a bin it barely fit in! - was rather nerve wracking. Especially when the darn thing almost got out!
This is a Purple Martin tower by the marina in Gimli, Manitoba. They don't hang around long, but when they do, they eat a whole lot of mosquitoes, so a fair number of people build "apartment style" birdhouses to attract them. This tower is the largest such structure I've seen.
Click here to see more photos.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Road Trip 2011, part one
As you may have noticed with some of my previous posts done through my phone, I've been on a road trip. My younger daughter and I drove from Edmonton to Manitoba, visiting various places in the Interlake, not too long ago. We also took oodles of photos. I brought along my old Canon S3, since it also has video capability. Little by little, I'll be adding some to a set on my flickr page and highlighting a few here.
The drive out was quite the adventure. We took the Yellowhead (Hwy 16) out of Edmonton, all the way through to the Trans Canada. We drove through and were surrounded by thunderstorms pretty much the entire Alberta leg of the trip.
When I saw this sun drenched field, with its old cabin, sillouted against a distant thunderstorm, I had to pull over and get a shot out the driver's side window. This particular shot was taken at maximum optical zoom (see my flickr set for a different version). We also found ourselve driving into a spectacular double rainbow. We knew we'd driven under it when it abruptly disappeared.
Our plan had been to find a rest stop and camp out for the night. We weren't in any hurry, so an early night would have been fine. Unfortunately, we discovered there are very few rest stops along the Yellowhead - at least in Manitoba! We ended up stopping at a rest area near Minnedosa in the wee hours of the morning. We broke out the foam mattresses and crashed for the night.
It wasn't until morning that I realized the parking spot I stopped in likely wasn't a parking spot at all! *L*
It was a gorgeous morning, so we had ourselves a breakfast picnic before hitting the road again. Quite a few others were taking advantage of the lovely morning, including a fisherman who set up at the river that's just behind the row of trees you see on the right.
View Larger Map
I don't know the name of the river we were beside. It sure is a squiggly one!
When we left, we saw one more rest area to the East of Minnedosa, and that was it. Not what we were expecting at all!
The drive out was quite the adventure. We took the Yellowhead (Hwy 16) out of Edmonton, all the way through to the Trans Canada. We drove through and were surrounded by thunderstorms pretty much the entire Alberta leg of the trip.
When I saw this sun drenched field, with its old cabin, sillouted against a distant thunderstorm, I had to pull over and get a shot out the driver's side window. This particular shot was taken at maximum optical zoom (see my flickr set for a different version). We also found ourselve driving into a spectacular double rainbow. We knew we'd driven under it when it abruptly disappeared.
Our plan had been to find a rest stop and camp out for the night. We weren't in any hurry, so an early night would have been fine. Unfortunately, we discovered there are very few rest stops along the Yellowhead - at least in Manitoba! We ended up stopping at a rest area near Minnedosa in the wee hours of the morning. We broke out the foam mattresses and crashed for the night.
It wasn't until morning that I realized the parking spot I stopped in likely wasn't a parking spot at all! *L*
It was a gorgeous morning, so we had ourselves a breakfast picnic before hitting the road again. Quite a few others were taking advantage of the lovely morning, including a fisherman who set up at the river that's just behind the row of trees you see on the right.
View Larger Map
I don't know the name of the river we were beside. It sure is a squiggly one!
When we left, we saw one more rest area to the East of Minnedosa, and that was it. Not what we were expecting at all!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Out for a walk.
Philippe and our older daughter went out for a walk this morning, and she got some photos she said I could post here.
We've had a lot of rain in the last few days - with more rain while they were walking. Edmonton is split by the fast-flowing North Saskatchewan River. The last few years have been quite dry and, other than spring run off, the river is typically rather low.
Not at the moment!
Here you can see some of the taller bushes barely visible above the water's surface. The river valley is enjoying the moisture, though, looking like a lush, green jungle.
While crossing the bridge the above photo was taken from, my daughter also found this.
A pigeon nest with two chicks. The mother was nearby, keeping an eye on things. They were quite surprised by the next being in such a relatively exposed area.
Gosh, baby pigeons look... alarming! *L*
We've had a lot of rain in the last few days - with more rain while they were walking. Edmonton is split by the fast-flowing North Saskatchewan River. The last few years have been quite dry and, other than spring run off, the river is typically rather low.
Not at the moment!
Here you can see some of the taller bushes barely visible above the water's surface. The river valley is enjoying the moisture, though, looking like a lush, green jungle.
While crossing the bridge the above photo was taken from, my daughter also found this.
A pigeon nest with two chicks. The mother was nearby, keeping an eye on things. They were quite surprised by the next being in such a relatively exposed area.
Gosh, baby pigeons look... alarming! *L*
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Spring!
We are finally seeing leaf buds. :-D It was a beautiful day for a walk, so I dug out the Canon S3 (smaller, lighter) and took a few shots. Click on the photo to go to my flickr page and see a few more.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Spring?
A few days ago, it was warm and sunny and I was getting my planters and soil out of their storage corner and into the sun to thaw out.
Now there's this.
What you can't see? The river, about half the houses and condos down there, and the big hill on the other side of the river.
What you can't see? The bright blue bridge over the river, more housing and the valley walls.
What you can't see? The 24km/h winds that have taken our temperatures of -3C to a windchill of -10C (actually, I'm pretty sure the winds are higher in our location) and causing the snow to start drifting in front of our balcony door.
Ah, spring in Canada!
My kids are actually looking forward to walking to my daughter's guitar lesson in this.
I guess it's a good thing I hadn't packed away all the winter gear yet.
Now there's this.
What you can't see? The river, about half the houses and condos down there, and the big hill on the other side of the river.
What you can't see? The bright blue bridge over the river, more housing and the valley walls.
What you can't see? The 24km/h winds that have taken our temperatures of -3C to a windchill of -10C (actually, I'm pretty sure the winds are higher in our location) and causing the snow to start drifting in front of our balcony door.
Ah, spring in Canada!
My kids are actually looking forward to walking to my daughter's guitar lesson in this.
I guess it's a good thing I hadn't packed away all the winter gear yet.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
November Sky
The joys of having a husband that's a morning person. He gets shots like this while I get to sleep. ;-)
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Fall Colours
Anna: Some views of the beautiful fall colours, taken on our balcony.
(Click on the image to go to my flickr site and see more shots.)
After living for 3 years with a view of a back lane, parking lots and high density housing, I'm really appreciating the valley views we have now!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Gone Batty
Gone Batty
Originally uploaded by amkb
Anna: The Little Brown Bat is still hanging out above our door. It looks like it's chosen that spot to hibernate. I tried to get some different angles, but it's so close to the corner, I can't really get the camera in there.
It's so cute! While I was taking pictures, I could see it's furry little sides moving as it breathed. I just want to scoop it up!
I'm not sure this is a good location for it to hibernate, though. It's well sheltered from the weather, but not the temperature. I'm a little concerned it will freeze. Will have to look for some information about that, and see if there's something we can do to protect it.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Itty Bitty Batty
Itty Bitty Batty
Originally uploaded by amkb
Anna: As a friend of my daughter's was knocking on our door, he noticed this little smudge of fur above the doorway. As soon as he realized it was a bat, we immediately grabbed the camera! The gap it tucked itself into is about 3-4 inches wide. As I write this, it's still there. This tiny, adorable ball of fluff. It's all I can do not to try and pet it, or scoop it into my hands.
I love bats.
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