How's The Painting Going?

 So I have shown you a photo of me up on the ladder working on scraping and cleaning in preparation for painting.  I have already shown you the setup and me on the ladder.  And I showed you how badly the wood trim - the eaves - on this side of the house needed painting.  This is a reminder.  And this is the result of my days of hard work, below.

This is an extra large image of the finished eaves!  Be sure and click on this.  I still have to paint the siding but that's only one coat of the finished paint.  It doesn't need priming. It took me two days to scrape all this.  It took two days for spraying with Clorox and TSP and hot water from a garden sprayer to kill all the mildew.  Then three days of painting all of this with a primer.  And then two days to do the final coat.  Tomorrow I will start painting the siding and this side of the house will look brand new.  The other sides have already been painted already over the last couple of years.  It is really deeply satisfying to make everything beautiful again!

Farewell My Faithful Companions

These are a pair of Timberland work boots which I have had for years and they are well used.  I think I have had them for at least 30 years, and probably longer.  There is no way to tell, but they are clearly well used.  The bottom soles of both boots became detached in the front and I used some contact cement to fasten them back on, and they were fine for a while.  But recently, as you can see in the photograph below, the entire sole became detached and that is really unsafe if I am up on the ladder and climbing up and down while painting.  So, sadly, they needed to be replaced.  They certainly have served me well but now that I bought a new pair from a different manufacturer, I no longer need these.  I have no idea how much they cost when I originally bought them, but the replacement cost of the Timberlands was about $200!  Yikes!  My new work boots only cost half that.

I do like studying this photograph, to see the wear and tear on these boots after all these years.  This view of one boot really shows the history of them, more than the photograph looking down at the two of them together.

 

A Cloud to Study

Tuesday. Dunkin' at the beach, of course.  We sat in beach chairs down at the waterline because the tide was out.  There were cumulus clouds moving into where we were but there were not a lot, of them nearby, and there was not much wind either, so it was interesting that one cloud would sit in front of us for quite a long time and we were studying it.  A single cumulus cloud, a "fair weather" cloud.  The delicacy of it was just sublime, with wisps all around the edges of it that if you looked carefully, you could see either appear or disappear over a few minutes.  So light, so delicate, and a gray bottom because the sunlight could not make it all the way through the cloud to the bottom so it is darker.  And of course, the deep blue sky to make the clouds stand out.  I don't think I have every studied one particular cloud for a whole half-hour.  It was really illuminating.

 

Another Evening at the Beach

Another walk at the beach around sunset.  We never know what we will see, which is fun.  I knew that the Moon would be in a crescent phase but had not been paying close attention.  So it was a surprise to see a 4 day old crescent Moon, and of course, to the right, the planet Venus.  But of course all of you already know about Venus being there.  I took several different views, and the key was some kind of foreground.  Just seeing the Moon and Venus in the sky was not enough.  But the branches of a tree completed the picture for me.

 

Dunkin' Day at the Beach!

Yeaaaaa...  It is Sunday and Dunkin' Day at the Beach day!  Wait!  SUNDAY at the beach?  Dunkin' Day is only on Tuesday, right?  Well, yes, actually, but...  Today was our anniversary and so for a treat we got coffee, tea, and two donuts and in the middle of a morning of heavy rain ended up at the beach as the start of a special day.  It was really nice even though we couldn't get out of the car - it was pouring.   But rain at the beach is a nice experience.  The two cloud-looking things above the cups on the dashboard are from condensation of the hot drinks on the cooler windshield above them. We actually saw a kayaker paddle into the beach and take his boat out.  I bet it was really nice being out on the water during rain, as long as you were dressed for the weather, as he was.

 

Venus and Clouds

Gray clouds and a bright dot.  But that bright dot is amazing, it is the planet Venus, one of the brightest objects in the sky, when it is in view.  Venus has phases like the Moon, and right now it is half illuminated, the way the Moon each month, is half illuminated.  Venus is slowly getting closer to us and growing larger in size, but it is becoming less illuminated and by the end of the month it will be just as. bright, but it will only be a crescent.  But you would need to use a telescope to see the phases of Venus.  Venus now is an "evening star" which means we see it after sunset.  Soon it will set and not be visible for a while and then in early November it will be a "morning star" rise in the east before the sun but may not be visible before sunrise until mid to late November.  Don't forget to look for it in the east then,  It will be just as bright and as beautiful as it is in the western sky. The magic of the planet Venus.

 

Japanese Silver Grass

OK, today you get to pick your favorite.  I thought I knew what I wanted but now I am not so sure.  I found this lying at the bottom of the driveway and I looked at the neighbor's yards and there was nothing like this at all.  Later on in the day, I saw what this came from. I drove up the hill, turned left, curved to the right, and there on the left was a beautiful collection of green foliage, with one of these on the top of each stalk!  This is the feathery seed plume of an ornamental grass, called Japanese Silver Grass.  So I walked around the yard holding this in one hand and my camera in another with the close up lens on it, and looking for a background to hold it in front of. I did about 4 different backgrounds and chose this one because this was back lit.  Stunning, isn't it?

As I was preparing this in photoshop, at some point it was enlarged larger than the frame and I caught a glimpse of this close up version.  I thought that the close version showed so much more detail in the plant than the full length view.  But now I am liking that I can see the entire shape of the seed pod in the first photograph.  So I am choosing that one, but you can tell me what your favorite is!  Thanks!