Camera Critters: not visible here, but...

I took this photo after a snowfall last month, when I could see, from the footprints, that deer had come to eat from the ornamental crabapple tree in our front yard, and last night they came again. They really did.
Our Valentine's Day snow was almost gone last night, and the ground beneath our ornamental crabapple tree was almost bare, so all the fallen fruit was uncovered. Five deer came to eat it, while Dick and I watched them through the window in the door near my desk.
The window's built-in blinds, open at a steep outward angle, made it possible for us to watch the deer and impossible for them to see us. At one point, the beautiful big brown eyes of a deer were staring right at the window. She sensed us, we know, because she moved her ears ever so slightly. We both held our breath. She continued to look, but couldn't see us. It was an amazing experience. She was less than three feet away.
The window was a gift for my December birthday, and I'm sure Dick now thinks it paid for itself in that long, wonderful moment. Many thanks to my dear husband.
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Posted for Camera Critters, hosted by Misty Dawn.
Thanks, Misty!

Our World Tuesday: a year in the life

I'll leave it to you to guess which seasons these photos represent in southeastern Alberta, Canada.

Posted for
Our World Tuesday

© Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear, Alberta, 2011/2012

Coffee Klatch Friday: grateful for 7 things

Vicki, who hosts Coffee Klatch Friday on her blog The Tapestry of Life, asked us last week if we could post 7 photos today, showing 7 things for which we are grateful. Of course I'm grateful for my husband, for his daughters, and for their children who let me be an extra grandmother to them, as well as for my own extended family, most of whom are in British Columbia, but the photos aren't of them. Maybe another time.

I am very grateful we have Lindy, who will cuddle up to my feet when I'm in my computer chair.

I'm grateful for these shelves above my computer. On the top is an angel my best friend gave me, and to the right of it a photo of my late parents when they were 80. Below is their wedding picture, from 1946. The first of the two larger black & white photos is of me with my sister and brother the only year we were all teenagers: I was 19, he was 17 and she was 13. Then the two in sailor suits: my brothers: one was 20 and in the navy, and one 9 months and in diapers. I'm so grateful Mom had the youngest.

I'm grateful to have one tidy, pretty corner in our cluttered house, featuring the antique flip-front desk my dad bought me when I was 14. The dealer said it was 85 years old then. It's much older now. 

I'm grateful to have photos like this of the ornamental crabapple tree in our front yard, especially today with the season's first snowfall outside and the thought of many more to come.

I'm grateful for the juicer I bought at half price. Lindy and I are enjoying the juice. She loves the pulp that comes out the other side of the machine, so I give her some, and make soup with the rest of it.

I'm grateful we (might) have found a solution to the problem of Lindy refusing to go into her dog house. Really. She's had it for two years, as long as we've had her, but she won't use it. So we went outside and made a fort/cave space using the dog house as one wall and the shed as another. We're hoping she will discover, all on her own, that it's a good place to go to get out of the weather when we're not home.

Finally, I'm grateful to have these two fun photos of Mom and Dad when they still had enough vim and vigor to travel, camp, fish, and take photos for Dad's Living Rivers books.

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!