Photographs from the Mark Vollmer Fieldtrip to Washoe Valley

Well ~ Saturday we all met up at TMCC’s Meadowood building and carpooled down to the south end of Washoe Valley. Our first stop (besides Wendy’s so Colleen could buy a hamburger) was the wildlife viewing area with the boardwalk.

Very windy (what’s new for Washoe Valley, eh?!) down there. Not much to see but blackbirds ~ both red-winged and yellow-headed. You can’t see far into the lake from the viewing platform unless you have a telephoto lens that goes to as least 200mm…mine only goes to 72mm. So I took lots of fence pictures ~

We saw a flock of pelicans towards the enterance of Washoe Valley State Park so three of us headed back to see if they were still there. Parked at the trailhead of Deadman’s Creek trail and walked over to state park. No pelicans, but there was a redtail hawk sitting in her nest, who flew off once we were close enough for pictures. The bugger. I walked down to the beach while my sister and mom stayed under a couple of bird nest. Colleen got GREAT photos of a Western Tanager…and continued to get great pictures while teasing me with none.

We then went back to the trailhead to wait for the rest of the group ~ took a few pictures in the bottom part of the trail. Figured out the stupid macro on my camera there.

Lots of Phlox, Indian Paintbrush and Alpine Lupine on the way up to the top and at the top where the gazebo is. Sunset wasn’t that great, but pretty none-the-less.

And here’s a picture of Mark Vollmer setting up his shot of the sunset ~

DESERT IN BLOOM SLIDESHOW ~ I put most of my pictures (I took over 200 so I’ve narrowed it down some) onto my webshot’s album ~ I’m nv_michelle there.

All photos taken with a Canon Powershot S2 IS.

Capture Desert’s Spring Colors Workshop ~ Mark Vollmer

Last night was our class lecture and the highlights were:

* Class overview & introductions
* Opening multi-media slide show
* Slide show lecture: how natural light and compositional elements such as lines, patterns and colors come together to make pleasing spring photographs.
* Depth of field discussion
* Slide show lecture: how to use knowledge of lighting and composistional techniques to bring your emotions onto your image

Improving Your Photos:

1. Seeing Like Your Camera ~ Film nor a memory card can see details in light and dark at the same time with the same clarity of our eyes. Exposing for shadows tend to wash out bright areas just as exposing for sunlight will darken shadows. To compensate for this problem, expose the key part of the frame…since the main subject is normally at least 60% of the frame, expose for that most important highlight.

2. Realizing Your Vision ~ Mark states that the Goal of Photography is translating what moves us about a scene into a photograph. “A successful image resembles the feeling we had at the time. If someone views our photo and reacts with the same emotions that we had when we saw the scene, then the photo works”. Achieving this goal involves two processes:

A. Focusing our senses before focusing the camera. Smell, touch, taste, hearing ~ these four senses combine with sight to heighten our awareness with our surroundings and our creativity as photograhers.

B. With knowledge of lighting, design elements, intuitive use of the Guideline of Thirds, and awareness of how the camera will render the scene, we can successfully transfer our emotions into the image. Practice, Practice, Practice!

The class lecture brought a lot of new ideas along with jarring out what I already knew, but seemed to have filed away as I use digital now. It certainly has me thinking I should go buy an old 35mm camera, I don’t think I would even know where to look for the one I had over 15 years ago!

I have a Canon PowerShot S2 IS digital camera now. It’s a great little camera that I can shoot limited manual if I wanted to. It has all speeds, but the apetures only go from 2.7 - 8.0 ~ I wish it would go to at least 16.0. I can also buy different camera lenses, the lense now is a Canon Zoom Lense 12X 6.0-72.0mm. Maybe one that shoots to 200mm would be nice.

Washoe Valley, south end of lake looking north. 7/2006.

Tomorrow we are going to Washoe Valley for our field shoot. Looks like we’ll be going to the south end of the lake to the birding area where the boardwalk trail is. Then off to Deadman Creek Trail and hike up to the gazebo. I’m hoping that the Bald Eagles will be out for the photo shoot!

I’ll post pictures over the weekend!

Link to more trails out in Washoe Valley.

Ending with two quotes Mark had on his handouts ~

“To become a better nature photographer, one must first become a better naturalist.” - John Hendrickson

“The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

I’m a Featured Local Blog on Washoe Valley’s Website! Very Cool!

How cool is that? I was just checking my blogstats when I saw WASHOE VALLEY WEBSITE as a referrer so I clicked it on to see what it was. I didn’t know Washoe Valley had their own website!

Washoe Valley. Taken from south end of lake looking NW towards Slide Mountain. 7/2006.

I loved living in Washoe Valley. We moved up to Northern Nevada from Southern California after my dad retired from LAPD. He wanted us far far away from there…Bozeman, Montana actually. But mom put her foot down and they compromized and bought a house on Partridge Lane, Washoe Valley, Nevada. (I think there is a goat farm at our old house now) So in July of 1980 we moved to Washoe Valley. Thus started the longest damn bus rides to Wooster High School…first on the bus and the last to get off. Ugh. ROFL! Kids have it made today…Galena High is much closer.

My sister and I joined 4-H ~ sewing, pigs, dogs, photography, cooking, ceramics…my favorite being in the Swinging Swine pig club. We were the East Side kids…there was another pig group over there on the West Side. I loved my photography group too. I was good enough to join Wooster’s Yearbook staff. We had four pigs, two mallards, three chickens, two white geese (one later became Thanksgiving dinner after goosing mom one too many times), three Springer Spaniels, one cat.

Swam at Washoe Lake, Bower’s Mansion and Jumbo pond. Ice skated at Little Washoe, Davis Creek. Hiked, rode horses and 4-wheeled up Jumbo Grade to Virginia City. I still have a bucket full of square nails that I found along the water flume that went from Virginia City to Washoe Lake area. 4-wheeled in our 2 wheel Datsun pickup among the sage brush between Ormsby Lane and the lake. It was amazing where us teenage girls could get that little truck into. LOL! Attended Bower’s Mansion Bluegrass Festival (started up right after I graduated from high school). Kruse’s Feed & Hardware store…loved that place. I wonder if they still hold the spaghetti feed and dance every year out back of the store…pretty sure it was a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department.

Washoe Valley, south end of lake looking north. 7/2006.

Pelican (my favorite birdie) on Washoe Lake, south end. 7/2006.

Fishing at Davis Creek Park. 2007

Hannah’s fish from Davis Creek Park. 2007

We lived there when Slide Mountain came down. I had just retreived my sister and her friend from swimming at Bowers when it came a rumbling down the mountain. Lived there when a fire burned most of the west side (List Ranch & Little Valley area). Luckily we moved out just before the flood came and washed out Jumbo pond…as that came down and wiped out the whole of our front yard.

I still think the best part of living out there was just the smell. I loved the cool crisp mornings ~ the smell of the sage brush and earth after a rain. I pray that Reno doesn’t get their hands on Washoe Valley like they have been every other place. Would hate to see the valley over-built.

Someone Planted Rocks In My Yard!!! Landscaping in Sparks, NV.

Big sigh. I found out the hard way that the Truckee River used to meander through my property before the Corp of Engineers made it straight.

I took Friday off to do many things…but mainly to start back in killing the Junipers in the southeast corner of the lot. Started off at 7 am at Lowes ~ picked up a mini torch for metalsmithing. Then to mom’s house to write a bunch of kids names (and the two coaches) with puff paint on a soccer flag banner my sister and mom made earlier in the week (my niece is on a school soccer team for 2nd graders). Then mom and I went to Michael’s so I can buy some hemp for those beach glass necklaces. Over to G&G Nursery & Landscaping to pick out a Lilac and Weeping Cherry for the yard. I bought a beautiful Sensation Lilac (Syringa vulgaris ‘Sensation’) that will grow to about 15′ in height. It has single reddish buds that open to deep purple edged in white.

The weeping cherry is a Snow Fountain with white flowers and will grow only to about 12′-15′ high.

Picked my sister up for all of us to have lunch at The Sup. Was back home by 1pm to start in on the Junipers. After a while I got to the point that I couldn’t go on with the tools I had…pruning shears, hand saw and shovel. So I turned my sights on the two conifers on the side where I wanted to plant the weeping cherry tree.

Took the trimmer to the trees so I could get a better area to saw them in half. When I grabbed the one tree it sorta leaned…so I pushed…and it started to fall over! Gave it a good kick and tree with rootball plopped over. So I karate kicked the other one and it too fell over. ME STRONG WOMAN! HEAR ME ROAR! LOL! That was the easy part. Started digging and 4″ down ran into river cobbles…big river cobbles…small river cobbles…medium river cobbles. Lots and lots of bloody river cobbles. It took me an hour to dig a 2′ wide circle 18″ deep. That pretty little tree is planted and staked (just in time I might add…we’re supposed to have 40-60 mph winds hit the valley floor today ~ Bloody Nevada Spring Weather! 80 degrees one day - 58 the next). I still need to pull up the weed sheet thing that someone placed down and then plant some columbine and lavender around the tree area…then lay redwood mulch down.

This is what the conifers looked like from the backside, very nice looking ~ in the front…they were all dead as some idiot sawed off two others in front of them and left these two standing, very dead looking.

\

Some of the river cobbles…they are now in a ring around the tree.

I dug these up with the river cobbles…there was a bunch of glass and a broken tea cup too.

My husband took pity on me on Saturday…after our morning yard sale ritual he helped me get out the main stumps and roots. With the Chevy and chain no less! I think he became obsessed with getting them out, more so than me at that point. He was taking it very personally that they were putting up such a great fight. We worked all day on those bloody things.

Reposting this picture from the previous weekend.

And it continued into Sunday after church. He wanted to go to the El Rancho Swap Meet after the last stump and root system was pulled out…so while he was gone I started to plant the lilac bush and spruce up the corner.

I got the lilac in, re-planted an iris near the fence; planted a sage (can’t remember what type); made a rock stack out of some of the dug up river cobbles; put my obsidian rock between the lilac and sage; put the three metal quail in front of the lilac; put Rufus, the gargoyle, in front of the wee rock stack; and watered. I still need to buy two Old English Roses for the right side…where the dirt piles are still at. And plant more smaller flowers of something that catches my fancy…perferably yellow or white as I realized I will have A LOT OF PURPLE blooming in that corner!

Oh…here are some of my yard sale finds! A free, very large wooden pumpkin; a very cool 12″ copper owl; lots of beads.

Sewing Sunset’s Mississippi Hospice Volunteer Work

Going to steal part of my friend’s post on her blog today so we can get her message out to as many people as possible.   One should get in touch with the director of the program, as you will have to fill out a volunteer packet (log your hours) before starting.

From Sewing Sunsets ~

As you know, I always encourage readers of this blog to share their talents and skills with others, and today’s post is about sewing for others, and in this case, almost literally sewing a sunset by volunteering to sew for people who are experiencing those final sunset days of life.  A couple of days ago, I received a request from someone who manages volunteers for a hospice in Mississippi. She was looking for volunteers to sew for her hospice patients and was asking me for resources. I will be sewing for this hospice, Odyssey Healthcare (www.odsyhealth.com ) as well as continuing to sew for Mission of Hope (www.missionofhope.org ). I would like to encourage you to sew simple projects for this hospice, or perhaps one like it in your area. Although my dad was never put on hospice care before he died, I had the opportunity to watch the hospice staff as they visited other patients in the nursing home, and I was always impressed with their unique ability to bring smiles to people who were in situations where all they wanted to do was cry. I think that people who are directly involved in hospice work must be very special people indeed.

Anyone who sews, knits, crochets, or quilts can volunteer to donate simple projects. Blankets, pillows, pillowcases, adult bibs, crafts, and quilts are all acceptable.  Apparently, there are no restrictions and any donations will be used, with nothing going to waste.

If you should decide to volunteer to sew, knit, quilt, or crochet for this worthy cause, here is the contact information

TClark@odsyhealth.com or 228-297-5976

(I would suggest that initial contact be made via e-mail or phone because there are a few guidelines that must be followed.)

The mailing address is : Tiffany Clark, Manager of Volunteer Services, Odyssey Healthcare, 9414 Three Rivers Road, Suite 3, Gulfport, MS 39503

I hope that some of the readers of this blog will consider sharing sewing, quilting, crocheting, or knitting skills, even if it’s just one time. You might play a small part in making someone’s final sunset just a little bit easier, and after they have passed through that final sunset, the blanket or pillow that you made might bring some comfort to the family left behind.   At first, they might see through tears, but eventually, they will be able to look at a project that someone sewed or quilted, and remember happier times with their loved ones. The tears may still come, but with each passing day, it may become just a little bit easier to smile through those tears. Wouldn’t it be a great feeling to know that perhaps by creating just one simple project, you might play a part in bringing a small measure of comfort to someone?

Today, I hope to sew.

Happy Sewing!

www.sewseamless.com

Lap quilts, blankets, adult bibs, hankies, totes, small purses/clutch bags, greeting cards, lip balms, lotions, soap, hats, socks…if you can make it, they can use it!

Easter 2008 Weekend

We had a beautiful weekend here in Northern Nevada!  70 degrees and sunny on Easter Sunday ~ Who’d thunk it!?

Spent some time at Rancho San Rafael Park on Saturday throwing horse shoes (miserably I might add…more so than usual for me!), walking , taking pictures, and winning a game of cribbage.

I made that Christmas Ham of Paula Deen’s for Easter…love the orange marmalade & Dijon Mustard glaze…could have gone without the crust.  Next time just the glaze.  Very tasty ham.  The Mushroom & Asparagus salad that was in Raley’s Something Extra was VERY GOOD! 

After church I made a mad dash to mom’s house to see the kiddo’s and my BIL’s sister’s daughter…Brooke is a cutie. 

Some pictures from the weekend ~ First two from my front yard; rest from Rancho San Rafael park near UNR.

Easter pics of Nathan, Brooke and Hannah ~

Paula Deen’s Christmas Ham for Easter

I was watching Paula Deen on the Food Network last Christmas and drooling over her CHRISTMAS HAM recipe…only we were invited over to the in-laws for Christmas and I didn’t get to make it! So, guess what I’m making for Easter!?!

Only thing I’ll be changing is instead of crescent rolls I’ll be using pie crust to wrap the ham in.

Also will be making scalloped potatoes and from Raley’s Something Extra Spring 2008 magazine, MUSHROOM & ASPARAGUS SALAD.

Walk When the Moon is Full ~ Frances Hamerstrom

I picked up a wonderful book at our local Goodwill bargain book bin last night for fifty cents! 

Walk When the Moon is Full  by Frances Hamerstrom and illustrated by Robert Katona, 1975.

Each chapter was written on the appropriate night of the full moon ~ (from the Introduction):

This story is about two real children, Alan and Elva, who called their father Hammy and their mother Fran. They lived on a 240 acre farm in Wisconsin and longed to go exploring at night.
Elva, the younger, like to climb trees. Animals trusted her to come very close and her keen ears heard the faintest sounds.
Alan had a small but sensitive nose that found and remembered smells, just as his mind remembered facts. He liked to find things out.
Fran promised the children that she would explore with them twelve times - every month when the moon is full - for a whole year. Then Alan laughed, “The moon is full thirteen times a year.”
Each time they walked in the moonlight they found something new.
This book has thirteen surprises.

How it Began ~

Both children where in their pajamas for it was supposed to be the quiet time before they went to bed. Alan was looking at a book, but Elva had been standing at the window for a long time peering into the night.

Alan put down his book and went to the window too…At last he turned to his mother and sighed, “Do we have to go to bed early every single night until we are old?”

Fran set her mending aside and looked out the window…at last she repeated Alan’s words softly, “…every single night until we are old?”

Then she said, “No,” in a faraway tone. Both children looked up at the sound of their mother’s voice. “Why should children go to bed early every single night until they are old? I say, ‘No!’” “The moon is full. Put on your sweaters and snow pants and overshoes. You can pull them right over your pajamas. Find your mittens. I think they are drying by the stove with mine. Just a moment, I’ll tell your father we are going for a walk.”

“A walk! A walk in the moonlight!” the children shouted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I read most of the book last night before bed…following all of their adventures during the full moon. Deer, owls, sledding, sweet maple sap in icicles, woodcocks, white cockle flowers ~ and flowers that go to sleep at night, fireflies, foxes and weasels.

Then I smiled and thought back to all the times my sister and I did things at night! Some times by the full moon other times it was much scarier WITHOUT the moon!

CARPINTERIA STATE BEACH ~ near Santa Barbara, Ca.
This beach is a treasure trove for kids of all ages ~ we camped there every June for years! Tide-pools, great beaches, lots of swimming, hiking, exploring, tar to get stuck to the bottoms of your feet…we kids had a great time night and day there. I still remember getting up at night with our flashlights heading down to the beach for the grunion runs! What a sight to behold for a kid!

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK in July ~
Still remember to this day the time all of us kids were bubbling with excitement ~ fireworks in Yosemite! The ranger leading us all at night to a meadow…we all laid on our backs to watch…Nature’s fireworks! WHAT?! LOL! We all received a lesson on the stars ~ beautiful and we all stayed excited, even at the first disappointment of no kaboomie fireworks.

CALICO GHOST TOWN~ Barstow, CA.
Another favorite place to camp when a kid ~ and when we went camping there were always no fewer than 4 kids ~ mostly up to 12 of us from the different families that came along. Calico was a great place for us to run around. Nighttime was a favorite…cemetery, campfires, scaring the bejesus out of each other in the adits, pretending we were cowboys.

Guess I should stop here…otherwise this post will get too long.  :) 

Here is to all of you parents letting your children stay up and explore by the moon!

Copper Wire & Beads

Well…feeling a little better than yesterday ~ lots of praying for God’s intervention helped immensely.   Families can stress the hell out of a person.

Anyhoo…I picked up some copper wire from a garage sale a couple of years ago, stuck it in the Round-To-It box and forgot about it.  Heh…big sigh.  I pulled it out when we moved the downstairs bedroom upstairs and the upstairs bedroom downstairs.  (Remind me to smack my husband upside the head when he wants to rearrange the furniture again)

You see…the upstairs was my crafting room and hide-away.  It’s the only room upstairs (besides my glorious cast iron tub on claws) with two huge windows ~ one facing SW and the other NE.  My husband thought it was a great idea for me to have the whole downstairs master bedroom for crafting…and started moving things when I wasn’t home.  I hid the tears and helped him move the beds.

What was my point?!  Holy crap!  Oh yeah…I found my Round-To-It box in the move and while rummaging through it, found the wire.  Sunday afternoon we headed to the El Rancho Swap Meet like usual and I picked up a small ball-peen hammer and a few beads ~ both for $1.  Definitely hope that lady will be next week, as I’m bring lots of $1 bills. 

I have a really big vise that has to bolted to a surface out in the shed that has a flat surface to whack wire with.   So I gave it a try last night.  Didn’t put any thought into it, just did it really fast to see if it’d work. 

First is just hammered. Second with a bead and “antiqued” copper or brass spacers.  Will work on the bottom part when I get home ~ needs to be looped differently and then hammered.

The beads I got at the swap meet.

I think I’ll have fun with this.  Will have to get longer pieces so I can make the trees some hanging do-hoppers. 

 Toodles!

Blech…Can I re-do the weekend?

Was a crappy weekend (family) and that’s all I have to say at the moment…