ABC Wednesday: T is for traffic

Wall to wall traffic, Beijing

Air traffic, Alberta

Two-way animal traffic, winter, Alberta

Horse-drawn traffic, The Netherlands

Family traffic, The Netherlands

Bicycle traffic, Beijing

Mediterranean beach traffic, spring, south of France

Power and sail traffic, Mediterranean, south of France

Pedestrian traffic, Shanghai

Posted for the letter T in Mrs. Nesbitt's alphabetical meme
ABC Wednesday

For Real Toads: my husband's photos

Several days ago, Kerry asked us if she might use some of my husband's photos as prompts for the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Dick was very flattered and soon we were both exhausted after going through our many travel photos as well as the pictures he takes when walking our dog Lindy. Much to our surprise, Kerry snaffled a photo from my blog to add to the mix: one of my husband (in which I missed his head) walking a very happy Lindy in the snow.

to resist the Mongol hordes

they built a wall with many a stair

dynasties from Qin to Ming

fortified the very air

a hole in the jungle

looks out to sea

and I look out there, too,

to see

hoar frost, hard frost,

would you kill a tree?

not an easy thing to do

on the lone prair-ie

oh, deer, where can our mamas be?

Lindy so long at us stares

© Photos by Richard Schear in China, Hawaii, and Canada

Winged Sky Watch should have been a cloud watch

Photos by Kay Davies

One day this past winter, my husband called to me from his home office: "We have a treeful of birds!" He grabbed his camera to shoot through his office window but, as I was on my way out to lunch, I just took my camera out with me.

I carefully eased my way through the snow, slush, ice, and water, toward my car, until the birds saw me and some of them flew away.

I stopped, lifted my camera...and couldn't see a thing, either through the display or through the electronic viewfinder, because the sun was in the south and I was shooting toward the southeast. So I stood in one spot and pointed my camera in the general direction of the ornamental crabapple tree, then clicked nine or ten times, moving the zoom a little here and there.

I had no idea what, if anything, my camera had captured.

After lunch, I came home and uploaded the photos to my computer. Several shots of the tree contained no birds at all, and the rest contained only a few, but I had expected something like that. What I hadn't expected was the sky, which changed color from blue to turquoise to washed-out white, in a short few minutes' time.

That's our roof on the right and the other roof belongs to our neighbors. Obviously, clouds were moving across the sky, but I didn't see any of them until I looked at the photos later. I think my camera must be the skywatcher around here, while I'm just a tripod of sorts.

Posted for Sky Watch Friday, that heavenly meme

hosted every week by the Sky Watch team: Klaus, Wren, Sylvia, Sandy and Fishing Guy,

now in its 5th season. Congratulations, team, and thank you!

To see other skies in other parts of the world, please click HERE!

Around the world with mellow yellows

Southeastern Alberta, Canada

Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii

Galapagos Islands

Posted for

Mellow Yellow Monday

hosted by Drowsey Monkey.

Ocean Park, BC, Canada

Galapagos Islands

To see yellows from other places around the world, please click

HERE!

Dick in a sack race, Dominican Republic, 2004

Las Vegas, Nevada                                                                    Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear, copyright 2011.

Skies over Alberta, but there's still snow

Photos by Richard Schear, March 9, 2011

We had a little bit of melting yesterday, but didn't get the "chinook" (a warm wind from the west) that they had out past Calgary the night before.
With a chinook, the temperature here in Alberta can go up even at night. We used to have an indoor-outdoor thermometer, and could watch the temperature rising at midnight. What a phenomenon for a person who spent most of her life in British Columbia!
We must have had a bit of a chinook early this morning, along with a spot of rain, because a lot of melting has taken place, and we'll have to go out to the back yard to do a spot of work before Dick takes Lindy on her rabbit, deer and sky-watch walk this evening.

Posted for Skywatch Friday, the blue, grey, pink, orange, many-colored,

any-colored meme hosted by Klaus, Wren, Sylvia, Sandy and Fishing Guy every week.

To see what color the skies are in other parts of the world, please click

HERE!

Hello - Goodbye - camera critters are shy

This sweet young thing was peering around a tree, looking at Dick and Lindy as they looked at her. But she was somewhat shy, so she'd no sooner said hello, than she decided to say goodbye.

                                                                                    Photos by Richard Schear

Posted for Misty Dawn's animal photo meme...
Camera Critters.

To see other critters captured by other cameras, please click
HERE!

Shadow Shot Sunday: kids and animals, with shadows

One of the grandsons in Red Deer had a trip to this outdoor skating rink for his birthday.
Shadows followed the skaters everywhere they went.

Surrounded by shadows not far from our house, this wild rabbit isn't moving a whisker,
because it doesn't want to attract Lindy's attention.

Looking intently for the deer that weren't there, Lindy hasn't noticed the rabbit yet.
                                                                                                                                        Shadow Shots by Richard Schear

Posted for Shadow Shot Sunday, hosted every week by Tracy at Hey, Harriet!

Thanks, Tracy!

To see other shadows captured by other cameras, please click

HERE!

Pink was the skywatch color in Cold Lake, Alberta

There weren't many people around during Dick's walk to the wharf, but those who were there were fishing.

Autumn skies over the water in Cold Lake, Alberta, with a lovely pink tint at sunset.

Dick had business in the Cold Lake area, and he stayed nearby on this trip up north in the fall of 2010, giving him an opportunity to spend some time outside with his camera. Perfect for Skywatch Friday!

This young fisherman had just brought in a fish when Dick came along.

Photos by Richard Schear

Posted for Sky Watch Friday

To see beautiful skies from around the world,

CLICK HERE

These camera critters really are elk, says Dick, and I...well, I...

    Some years ago Dick and I were in the car, not far from home, when he suddenly shouted, "Elk!" at the top of his lungs, and stuck his arm under my nose in an attempt to direct my attention toward the field on my right.
    "No, dear," I said, when I had extracted his arm from my nose. "Those are pronghorn antelope. Little pronghorn antelope. Elk are large, sort of moose-sized."
    "Snrffle, mrff," he said, or something sounding like that. "I got the word wrong."
    "You probably don't even have elk around here," I said, because I spent most of my life in British Columbia where wildlife is really wild. BC is not where the deer and the antelope play, like Alberta is.
    "We do, we do," he insisted. "You'll see."
    But I never did see. I've never seen an elk in Alberta.
    Dick came home one day last year with a story about seeing elk an hour or two north of here, but he couldn't produce photographic evidence, so I refused to believe him. No proof, no "Oh, darling, aren't you wonderful?"
    Recently, however, he came home from a business trip waving his camera in the air, and, once more, yelling "Elk!" at the top of his lungs.
    "Where?" I asked, pretending not to see his camera. I looked out the window, but there wasn't even a deer or a rabbit out there. Wasn't even a dog.
    "In here, look, look!"
    "I'm rather busy right now, dear. Maybe later you can show me what you think is an elk," I said, smiling on the inside but looking like a very strict, very busy wife on the outside. Or a very busy blogger, anyway.
    "Just look here!" he said, pointing to the LCD screen on his camera. "What do you think those are?"
    "Spots," I said, "four spots."
    "Just a minute, just a minute, I'll zoom in on them."
    "Oh," I replied, straight-faced, "now there are only two spots."

Four spots

    "Here, here, here," he said. "This one's better, look at this one."
    "It's out of focus," I replied, looking at it.
    "Oh, that's the wrong one. Here, this one is better."
    And he was right. Two elk. Two large elk. And he hadn't really had time to leave Alberta, unless he had gone to Saskatchewan, which would have been silly.
    So, now I know there are elk in Alberta. And the third picture was better than the second one, also better than the first, for that matter, although you can enlarge the first one and see the four spots are elk, too. Not antelope, not deer, not rabbits. Elk. Yep.

Two of the four elk, rather nice-looking ones, too. 

To see other critters that have found their way into people's cameras, please click

HERE

Posted by Kay for Misty Dawn's Camera Critters photo meme.

Both photos, in this instance, are by Richard Schear.

My world changes with the seasons

The Alberta prairie was unusually green this year,
due to unseasonably heavy rainfall.

As autumn approached the prairie, the greens faded
while yellows and beiges became more predominant.

Ever patient, Lindy waits while I take a photograph of the sky,
then lets me take one of her, too.

In our yard, some trees were bare and ghostly
even before other trees turned yellow.

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies.

Posted for the My World Tuesday meme.