Category Archives: Judy Wood

Freaky Fridays

August 31st, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

I’m not sure how this happens, since Monday is theoretically my “quiet” (or at least less busy) day, but it seems that most Monday evenings it’s all I can do to get to the computer, stressed and tired, to try and knock out a blog post, having spent the day rushing from point to point doing any number of other things on the one day a week I don’t go to the barn and/or ride. Tonight is no different, except that I *did* go to the barn this evening, contrary to my usual. I am looking after a friend’s horse that gets more exacting care than my horse does, and who needs to be tended to Monday or no Monday.
I couldn’t go this afternoon as I had to spend the day at home waiting for the garage-door-fixer guy to appear, which he finally did around 4 PM. I wasn’t about to deal with the end-of-work-day traffic to get out to the stables, so I rushed out after supper to do horse duty. A few blocks from home on my return trip, I realized I was essentially out of gas (that explained the “new” amber light on the dashboard display), and a trip to the gas station was a necessity, but first I had to go home to get my purse, where I found a small crowd standing in my driveway, consisting of my friend from down the street and *her* friends, some visiting from Australia, who were interested in a studio tour. I’m always happy to show people my studio, if they are hardy types not put off by chaos and the dogs, so we had a nice visit, then I really did have to go out and get gas, knowing as I do that if I put *that* off until tomorrow, I’d forget all about it and get nicely onto a multi-lane freeway before I ran out. So, here I am, a bit winded and with my head spinning, but by gosh I’m getting the blog out tonight!
Fridays lately tend to the surreal. In my previous post it was the Friday smoke day, this past week was the car crash on the corner. I was all set to go riding when I realized, the hard way, that the garage door had ceased functioning and my vehicle was trapped inside the garage at least until Jim could get home from work several hours hence. Feeling rather irritated by this turn of events, I was in our bedroom changing out of my riding clothes when I heard a tremendous crash, followed by dramatic shrieking. I got to a window as fast as I could, to see that a truck and a smallish car had collided at “our” corner. At least two people that I could see were already on cell phones calling for help, and the three “active” participants in the crash were all on their feet and mobile, so I didn’t feel my assistance would be required or particularly helpful. In a very short time the entire scene become rather circus-like, with four police cruisers, one fire engine, one ambulance, many emergency personnel, and a large number of neighbours with dogs, all crowding the intersection. The action continued for a considerable time, with a tow-truck eventually joining the throng.
One of the most interesting aspects of this whole situation, for me, was the fact that my dogs continued to doze on our bed for the entirety of this “street theatre” performance, coming to life only when one of my photo clients touched our front-door mailbox to retrieve a CD I had left there for her. As soon as they heard that, both boys came boiling up out of the lower level, barking hysterically and ready to defend their territory. Apparently they feel their security duties end at our property line. Anything beyond that isn’t part of their job description!
Summer, such as it was, is winding down here already and we are getting down to single digit temperatures (Celsius) many nights. I’m afraid to look at the zucchini patch for fear of what might be lurking in there, and the pumpkin planted in the compost is making a serious bid for total yard domination. For whatever reason (maybe they *like* no sun, vast amounts of rain and cool temperatures for weeks on end) this year was a spectacular one for lilies in our yard. They bloomed profusely, colourfully, and for an extended period of time. Shot one shows an overview of the yard (shot from the studio balcony) with one of the very large oriental lilies in bloom. It’s the white object in the upper right quadrant of this shot, near the large garbage pails. The garbage pails aren’t attractive, but they do give an idea of the scale of the lilies. Pretty well all the greenery in the fenced area is zucchini, with the exception of the strawberry quadrant in the lower right, which is mostly weeds. What was I thinking when I planted that many zucchini? It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually, now that I think about it, it was so darn cold and wet when I planted them that I really didn’t expect any of them to grow, and once they showed the fortitude to continue to live, I didn’t have the heart to dispose of any of them, good idea though it would have been.
Shot two shows the same lily up close.
We’ve had Mogo the mini-Dachsund as a house guest for a while, although for the moment he’s back home again. Here he is in his “little Prince” mode, enjoying the comforts of the couch that the dogs who actually live here aren’t allowed to get on, although I know they do when I’m not home!

There was a dressage show at Ebon on the weekend, so I logged quite a few hours getting client shots at the show ring. This shot, however, was of a non-competitor in one of the other rings, just having a ride and enjoying the beautiful day. Good thing she chose Saturday to do that, as by Sunday it was darn cold, cloudy, and ultimately raining. Saturday, though, was about as lovely a day for a horse show or any other activity as a person could imagine.

As I was heading back to the show ring, I looked down at the ground and saw this early harbinger of the fall to come. You can see in shot four that this lovely big tree already has quite a bit of yellow in it. I’m not sure if we are going to get an early fall, or if this is the result of stress from the very difficult summer the trees (and the rest of us) have endured.
And a personal note to end with. This past week saw the departure of my sister and her husband, moving to points west (Vancouver Island) after living only a few blocks from us for the better part of the last three decades. It’s kind of hard to get my mind around them being gone, even though they’ve been actively downsizing and getting the move underway for quite a while. Now it’s a done deal and they’re off to new adventures. I wish them well and look forward to seeing their new place and having a good excuse to head that far west for visits.
One last thing–here’s the early heads up that Art at Ebon, the one-day fall art show now in its third year, will take place again this year at Ebon Stables on Saturday September 11th, 11AM-5PM. I’ll have the poster in next week’s blog, complete with directions to Ebon. It’s been a fun show and very well received by the public in the two previous years, and as long as the weather co-operates (certainly not a given!!) we should be set for another good show, complete with twelve artists, lots of original art in a variety of media, horses, and food and drink available at the concession. What more could one ask for?

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: art at ebon, car accident, garage door, garden, horse, lilies, mini dachshund, photography | 0 Comments

Smoke but no mirrors

August 24th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Another week with some strange moments. The earlier part seemed pretty normal, apart from my shock at realizing that I was down to my last couple of days with my grandson before his return to school, one way and another. He resumes the educational process on Thursday, which to me is all wrong (as in I don’t think they should have to go to school in August. At all.) Due to other events in his life, I only got him for Tuesday and Wednesday. We did manage to cram in a fair amount of studio time and a photo shoot, which was good.
The photo shoot was to be of gulls near the city power plant, formerly a wonderful site for bird photos, being by the river and conveniently near the dump. It took us several tries and a fair amount of resourcefulness to get to our photo site due to many blocked roads and detours, and indeed we ended up going around a “road closed” barrier at one point. We were dismayed to find that the little beach that has served well as a vantage point in the past has been pretty well destroyed by some major civic projects in the area, one right opposite the power plant (no idea what that one is, but it’s sure intrusive), and another (new major bridge construction) just downstream. I fear our photo days in that area are doomed.
We passed by the Wednesday farmer’s market on the way back, and thought we’d stop and check it out. A new non-metered parking system has been instituted there and the only options are to pay at a central station, or phone in to a central system that would take your information and keep a running tab on use. We couldn’t in the end figure out how to do that, and didn’t have any cash with us, so we gave up and went home. My husband Jim (who is way better at figuring these systems than I am) had reported being able to sign in via the city website, so I went on a website search for the parking system registry. In the end, I spent quite a long time wandering the figurative hallways and dead-end nooks and crannies of the city website without ever finding what I was looking for. What I did find (while cruising the “p”s hoping for “parking”) was a heading for “Pumpkin composting”. I’ve never noticed a lot of pumpkins in and around the city—guess that’s because the pumpkin composting system is way ahead of the parking system.
On to the photos of the day. Shot one illustrates a further strangeness of the end of the week, when the entire area was engulfed in quite dense smoke, carried on the wind by the major forest fires of BC, two provinces over. I decided to head out to a local nature preserve where I could get an overview (or not, depending on how thick the smoke was) and shot one shows the quite limited visibility on the highway south of the city.

As I was leaving the nature park, I stopped at the side of the road to get some photos of one of my favourite dead trees. The edges of the road were thick with wildflowers, and there in the clump right beside me was a little warbler blending in with its surroundings and snacking on insects. Luckily I was able to catch a shot before he decided to vacate the area.

By the weekend, the smoke could no longer be smelled and was much less thick, but could still be seen as a nice haze that softened objects in the distance. I was hoping for a good sunset (unlike the disappointing event of the really smokey day which featured a blood-red sun hanging in the haze, but that was about it) so Jim and I headed out an old and little-used highway south of the city where there are some nice open vistas, albeit vistas that are rapidly being desecrated by clusters of mega-houses and developments. Shots three and four are from that evening’s shoot. Not the most spectacular of sunsets, but nonetheless very satisfactory.

Sunday was the day of the only polo match I’ve been able to catch up with this season, so despite poor lighting and a smattering of rain, I headed out to the polo field to indulge myself in some action shots. Shot five shows a dramatic moment with the local team (red shirts) and one of the visiting team (combined Edmonton and Winnipeg players) both in hot pursuit of the ball. It was quite chilly during the course of the game (better for horses and riders if a tad cool for the spectators), but by later that afternoon was really quite sunny, warm and humid. Typical.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: horse, parking, photo shoot, photography, polo, smoke, sunset | 0 Comments

Well, that was a surprise

August 17th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Much of the time I wander through my life without any particular game plan or goals. I follow my nose and my interests, and every so often it occurs to me that I should be doing something to further my newish career as an art photographer. I get a lot of online photo competition information, but mostly they cost money to enter, and I figure it’s a crap shoot anyway, so I don’t enter. For some reason (partly because it was local and didn’t cost anything) I decided to submit some photos to the Saskatoon Exhibition Showcase of the Arts competition in the appropriate division. For me, that was open/professional, which was the only category that applied. I almost missed getting my pieces in, due to terminal procrastination and deadline avoidance, but the day after I thought entries had closed (without me having addressed the issue) I realized I had the date wrong and still had time to get my entries in. I took this as a sign, and actually got them delivered several hours before the real deadline.
Fast forward to today, when we were to pick up our entries. The Ex and the art show were on all last week. I had received an email post by a painter who sent out a newsletter saying she had received a second and third placing in the original painting category. I figured that as I hadn’t heard anything about my work, I wasn’t in at the finish line, but that was fine as I knew my pieces would be seen by a lot of people while they were on display. Imagine my astonishment when I trailed in to the pick-up area this afternoon and found that I had won four awards for three photos! I got first, second and third place in the open/professional division, plus the People’s Choice award. Go figure. I suspect there is some sort of lesson to be gleaned from this, but I’m not sure what it might be. Possibly that there can actually be some positive returns for getting the work out there and meeting those deadlines. I might even have to follow through on some of the ones that require an entry fee one of these days!
On to the shots of today. I’ve been in garden mode quite a bit in the past week since the weather has continued rather lovely, the occasional torrential downpour aside. Note I said “in the garden”, not necessarily “gardening”–which means that quite a bit of the time I am wandering with the camera rather than applying myself to the endless and disheartening task of weeding.
Shot one features a now fairly regular visitor to the backyard bird feeder, one of the young bluejays. We have had bluejays consistently in the past, summer and winter, but have been through a bit of a bluejay “drought” this year, so it’s lovely to see them back in our territory. In fact, on Sunday morning we had seven of them lurking about the east side of our yard until the local merlin came screaming through and scattered them. This young fellow is just coming into his full adult plumage. A couple of weeks ago he looked ridiculous as his body was fully feathered but his head and neck were virtually bare. He resembled a small blue vulture. He’s still a little thin in the neck area, but coming along nicely.

Shot two is my Mickey at his ease in front of the fish pond. I think of much of the back yard this year as the “tangled garden” as it reminds me of the famous J E H MacDonald (Group of Seven) painting of that name. I don’t plant sunflowers. The birds deposit the seeds and I leave the ones that start to grow in acceptable places, and weed out the rest. It saves me the decision-making of where to plant them, although I do have to make decisions on where to “unplant” them.

The final three shots are of the artworks that did well for me at the show. The top one is “In the Woods”, which got the first place and the People’s Choice awards. This has been useful in confirming my recent thought that it should be one of the next images I have printed up much larger than usual and on stretched canvas. I get a few of these done each year, and as it is a bit of a pricier venture for me, I try to be quite selective about which images I use. I think this one has earned the right to the fancy presentation.

Image four is “Time’s Companions”, one of my “Time” series and a personal favourite. It got second place.

And finally we have “Chiaroscuro” (aka T. Hunter, which is the name of the cowboy) which took third place.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: bird, blue jay, Boxer, boxer in garden, dog, horse, photography | 0 Comments

Horse Mode

August 11th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

I seem to have spent much of the past week out standing in the field, or, to be more accurate, out standing in various fields, as well as ringside at horse shows. I’ve logged a lot of hours and quite a few hundred photos, but it’s nice to be getting caught up after all the cancelled shoots and shows of earlier in the season.
I’ve been making good use of my monopod and now feel quite comfortable handling it. I’ve also started to learn when it is a help and when it can be a hindrance, depending on the type of shots I’m working on. It’s great for horse show shots, especially “over fences” ones, where you know where the horse is going to be heading and can be set up for the action. Less good for fast and erratic action shots which require instant responses and quick reactions to get the shot. For those situations (as I learned the hard way), hand-held is still best. Added uses of the monopod include using it as a leaning pole to prop myself up while waiting for things to happen when there is no seating available, and as an aid in fending off overly curious and pushy young horses (which most of them tend to be). All in all, a very useful bit of equipment to have.
Shot one shows part of the herd of Gypsy cob mare and foals from the shoot I did at North Fork Stables last week. We had a lovely morning for our shoot, with none of the deep mud that plagued my last visit there a couple of weeks ago. There didn’t even seem to be any mosquitoes or other insect pests to inhibit the sheer pleasure of being out with my camera in the midst of a whole herd of mares and foals. I continue to be fascinated with this breed, in a visual sense for their extravagant movement, colour, and “big hair”, and as a horse person for the opportunity to observe their interactions and special personalities, which are in many ways quite different from other breeds with which I am familiar.

Shot two is also from the North Fork shoot. Before we moved the herd out to the pasture for their action shots, this mare took the opportunity for a good stretch to work out the kinks she had acquired during her nap. I’ll bet that felt really good!

Another photo shoot took me east of the city to get photos of the Warmbloods owned by a breeder friend. She has a lovely collection of youngsters and a couple of new babies from this year’s foal crop. I always enjoy photo shoots where I have nice backgrounds to work with, and this location provides that in spades, especially this year as the large amounts of moisture we’ve had means that things are still lush and green, with many wildflowers that we only see in a wet year. Normally at this time of year the grass and pasture areas in the country would be pretty brown and crunchy by now. Shot three shows a couple of the two-year-olds having a canter. We were trying to get individual shots of the youngsters by getting them into this turnout one at a time, but these two are best friends and couldn’t be separated. The fellow in the foreground is sporting an “artificial” tail as his real tail had some trauma last year and is very sparse. He needs something to whisk away the insect life that was absolutely voracious the day I was out there, so his owner fashioned this substitute for him until his real tail grows enough to become functional. Looks kind of odd but does the job nicely.

Shot four is from the same location. This shows Cody, the very old gelding (early 30s) who has adopted Galahad, now six weeks old, whose mother died immediately after giving birth. This little guy is healthy and sassy with the devoted attention he receives from his owner (who was doing four hour feeding shifts twenty-four hours a day for the first few weeks, taking time off work to do so) and the steadying influence and company of old Cody, who has a new interest in life now that he has a job to do with his young adoptee. Galahad has another foal to visit with over the fence, and when they both get a little older, no doubt they’ll be having play dates and running together.

Shot five is from the Ebon Stables horse show of the weekend. Strangely for an Ebon three day show, it didn’t rain once, and we were all quite thrilled to note that not only were the rings oddly free of deep mud for the first time this year, but there was actual dust!! Wow. This shot features Shawna and Ben (Ebon’s Baby Grand) making their way around the jumper ring. The trees in the background started showing fall colours in mid-July, which I have found very distressing on a number of levels. Since summer only just got underway here a week ago, I’m not yet ready for fall which is what these bushes look like. I think it more likely, though, that they have been seriously compromised in some way by the several months of extremely wet conditions, and I fear they may be dying. Time, as usual, will tell.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: Ebon Stables, gypsy cobs, horse, horse show, north fork stables, photography, warmblood, warmblood youngsters | 0 Comments

Not exactly as planned—

August 3rd, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

My original plan for tonight was that I would be out at a friend’s very nice farm, getting shots of her horses and the various other interesting species that she cares for, on a lovely prairie evening, ending with a nice series of sunset shots. Instead, I am here at the computer waiting (with a limited amount of optimism) for the city crews to appear and diagnose/fix our major out-drain so that we can use our sinks and other even more vital facilities that put water into the city sewer system.

It started around noon today. I had put on a load of laundry and was getting myself some lunch after a nice morning of lurking in the garden trying to photograph our varied bird population, with a little bit of recreational weed-pulling on the side. I needed some more yogurt to go with my fruit, so popped down to the basement to access my back-up supplies from the little downstairs frig. I had one of those “what am I seeing?” moments as I stopped on the stairs just short of the small lake of water covering much of the basement floor. Right.

A quick glance showed me that the water was the outflow from the washing machine, and that the floor drain at the base of the machine wasn’t actually draining anything. Luckily we have a wet-dry vacuum cleaner which was for a change right there where I needed it, and not miles away being used by other family members. I’d never run it before, but fairly quickly figured it out, although I do confess to wondering if I’d be electrocuted in the process as vacuuming water (or doing anything with water and a machine that involves an electrical outlet) just seemed so wrong. However, it did the job with great efficiency and I soon had the worst of it handled. By this time Jim had come home from his morning’s work, and we agreed that this was likely a “tree roots in the drainage pipes” blockage, and that with any luck it would be the city’s tree and their job to sort it out for us. We’re still working on this theory, although it is many hours since we called and were told they would “try” to come out today to get us functioning again. Turns out their work day extends to 11 PM so there is still a chance we’ll see them sometime in the next few hours. In the meantime, I have to stay here and hold the fort, as Jim had a “date” to go to the Fringe festival with a friend, so my photo shoot is postponed for another night. Might not have worked out anyway as we had a bit of a deluge (first one in several days) just around suppertime and things are still cloudy and decidedly soggy.

We had a lovely week and week-end, all in all (long weekend too!) as can be seen by today’s photos. Shot one shows my grandson and partner in crime, Mark, doing some hauling on Thursday. The neighbours down the street had some large chunks of wood left over from a mulch job, and I thought I could make use of them as decorative elements in my front yard area, which tends to the rustic. Mark was delegated to be the mover of these chunks, and I caught a photo of him and Arrow inward-bound with their haul. The sad little dead tree in the background is one of the many victims of the strange fall and tough winter that claimed a lot of trees and shrubs.
Saturday morning saw me heading west of the city to a lovely horse facility that was hosting the Oldenberg Inspection of mares and foals, part of a rigorous program common to many of the Warmblood horse breeds (and indeed of many others) to keep the quality of new generations high and to uphold the breed standard. The inspectors were from Germany, touring western Canada and stopping at various locations to grade the horses on offer. This was a first for Saskatchewan, and seemed well received by the testers. Shot two shows a very bold little filly, totally confident and unconcerned about her poor mother who was not happy to have the youngster free-lancing around the ring on her own. Note the braided mane on this little one. I’ve never seen braids (and nice ones, too) in such a young foal. That has to be a testimony to someone’s patience and determination!
Sunday I was at a small horse show at Ebon Stables, doing show shots for various clients. One of the visiting horses was Enzo, who now lives about a half hour out of the city, but who in former years was owned by the person I got my gelding Alpac from, and indeed they were “room-mates” for several years before I acquired Alpac. The boys hadn’t seen each other for over ten years, so we let them say hello over the gate. I’m not sure how to assess their reactions to each other, but Alpac (black on the right) at least was certainly very interested and perky. Enzo was a little more low key, but that pretty much sums up their personalities anyway. It was really a treat to see the boys back in the same place at the same time after all those years. Funny thing is they both started out in Cranbrook BC and each made their way to Saskatoon over the course of the years.

Towards the end of the horse show, one of my barn friends came along to tell me that the baby barn swallows near the pony pen were having flying lessons. I made my way up there after the show and they were still in the area. Even a fledgling barn swallow is pretty hard to photograph in flight, but I caught this little one just in process of the pre-launch count-down. I always marvel at the acts of courage and faith these valiant little things display when they try their wings out for the first time.
I finally got all the Saluki dog show awards completed (and on time, too) and that show was this past weekend in Calgary. Shot five shows one of the images I created as part of this project.I call it “Saluki Heritage”, and it was this concept that had me heading out a few weeks ago to get my Peregrine falcon shots. I still plan to get back to the falcon place for more, as it is an exciting photo op for those of us who hunt images.
And before I leave you for this week, the excellent news for me is that finally Alpac got his horse shoes back on and I actually was able to ride on Saturday for the first time in two months! Regular readers have put up with me moaning about this for all of the two months–if you are new to this blog, the short version is that we have had such massive amounts of rain that the mud was pretty much sucking shoes right off the horse’s feet. I gave up trying to keep Alpac shod until it was dry enough that they would stay on. He needs the shoes for a problem with his front feet, and while he is “pasture sound” without them, he needs them for work under saddle. I haven’t handled this well, but now, with any luck, it is all in the past for us.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: barn swallow, dog, foal, horse, olderberg inspection, photography, saluki art | 0 Comments

Season of flowers

July 27th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Another week and more slow progress on the weather front. We’ve actually gone three whole days now without rain, although the last downpour, on Friday, was quite spectacular in a brief and localized way. I was unfortunate enough to be caught in it on a long downhill haul trying to work my way out of the city to get to the barn. Couldn’t take my usual route, although I made various attempts, as most of the city streets are under reconstruction in the traditional summer fix-up frenzy and I was in major detour mode, starting with the one right outside my driveway. How people who aren’t residents or are relying on GPS systems to navigate can get anywhere in this town is beyond me. I’ve always lived here and I’m finding it challenging just going to my usual destinations.
So there I was on a long downhill road, no shoulder or any way to pull off safely to the sides, when the skies opened and suddenly there was no visibility, even with the wiper blades set at the maximum rate. Not safe to keep driving, but also not safe to pull over as I couldn’t get off the road enough and others might not be stopping, until they hit me, at any rate. So I was carrying on as slowly as possible, then it started to hail. At that point I did find a side street where I could park for a while until I could see. By the time I got to the street I needed to turn onto (at the very bottom of the hill), it had become a torrential river with no way other than the hard one of finding out how deep it was. As it turned out, it was fairly deep but still navigable, and with no large surprise holes in the bottom. I was quite traumatized by the time I got to the barn, although thankful that it hadn’t rained nearly as much there. It’s “dry” enough out there now that if only the farrier would actually come, I could get the shoes back on my horse and start riding again.
On to the photos. Shot one shows a rose that is in a container by my front entryway. This is another way of saying I go by it and have to look at it every single time I enter or leave my house. Normally this would be a good thing, but I find this rose to be about the ugliest one I have ever had under my care. I thought I was getting a soft mix of sunrise colours, but it has turned out to be a garish and rather violent set of tones, rendered even less attractive by the strange leprous mottled spots on the petals. It doesn’t even have a scent, although that’s perhaps all to the good as I don’t like to contemplate what sort of scent would be produced by something that looks like this. The main good feature of it for me is that it will die over the winter, not being a variety that is hardy here. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year.

Shot two shows a potential new neighbour, checking out the little house in the yard next door. We’ve had several sets of baby sparrows launched from our own birdhouses so far this summer, and it seems the process isn’t over with yet.

Friday I went out to my friend’s farm to photograph her old dog who is ailing but still looking good. I had to take the opportunity to get some horse shots (she breeds Paints) while I was there as well, and photo three is one of that series. This herd shot looks quite idyllic, but in reality these poor horses were being absolutely tormented by biting flies of various species. They are in the far north pasture and too far from the house and from view for a smudge ( a smokey smoldering fire, carefully contained and monitored) to be safely burned, unfortunately for them. The closer-in horses have keenly watched smudges burning in their areas, and as a result are virtually insect-free and much more comfortable. This photo is yet another example of how deceptive photos can be, as it looks so lovely but in reality was far from it for the poor horses.

Shot four is one I took on the weekend of an immature gull riding the wind currents over the river. He didn’t have the flight capabilities of the mature gulls who were swooping and doing aerobatics, so he just faced into the considerable wind and hung there like a kite much of the time.

For whatever reason, this has turned out to be a spectacular year for lilies. Nice that it’s been good for *something*!! We have a fairly extensive collection of both Asiatic and Day lilies, and shot five shows some of the beauties in our north backyard bed.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: flower, garden, gull, horse, horse herd, lilies, photogaphy, rose, sparrow | 0 Comments

Settling down

July 20th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Things (that being code for the weather patterns in this instance) are settling down at last and we are getting a little more into summer mode, although at best I would have to call it “summer lite”, which suits me fine as I’m not a fan of really hot weather, and what we’re getting now is nicely warm and mostly sunny, although there’s a really alarming sounding thunderstorm brewing if the gunshot-like crack of thunder I just heard is anything to go by. As long as it stays warmish and dryish, with a good strong wind to beat back the hordes of voracious insect life (of various biting species) I’ll be good to go until freeze-up.

Nothing too much stands out from the past week. The usual round of gardening (mostly endless weeding), daily trips to the stables to tend to my gelding, now on the farrier’s list for getting his shoes back on but not yet shod due to farrier busyness, hence still not being ridden, and all the little hunting and gathering forays needed to keep even a two-person (and two dog and one cat) family going from one week to the next. I’ve rather belatedly decided that I should be doing something to keep my fitness level up until I can start riding again, so am doing more walking and bicycling than usual, which I have to say I am enjoying. Seems a waste of a walk not to have at least one dog along with me for these outings, but generally I’m heading to a store of some sort where they wouldn’t be welcome, and also the boys are aging and not up to the activity levels of previous years. Plus even this moderate heat is more than they can handle in the daytime, Boxers being very prone to heat stress. So I walk alone on these outings.
Shot one was taken en route to the barn one day last week. That’s not a deep blue sky as such, rather was a solid bank of dense and rather threatening clouds, although they do look nice in the photo against the brilliance of the canola field. Another good example of what I call “prairie minimalist landscape”.
Shot two, by way of contrast, was taken on the way *home* from the barn. Nothing like a bit of variety to keep things entertaining. I was driving my alternate route hoping for some shots of a horse herd that lives along that road, when I spotted this hawk with his catch (I think it’s a Richardson’s ground squirrel, aka gopher), from the bits I can see. I was pretty far away from him but had my big lens so was able to get this shot. I was concerned that he’d try to lift off before I could get my shot, but he didn’t and was still sitting on the fencepost when I left, which made me happy as I don’t like to disturb the wildlife that I photograph.

We’re well into summer show season at Ebon, and the outdoor rings are actually dry enough to be functional. Not dry, but dry enough. I got this shot on the weekend at a little one-day schooling show. This features Shawna, who educates and puts the miles on the young Ebon-bred horses in training. Here she and Bonniche are showing nice style over a fence. I finally used my new and heretofore untried monopod for a bunch of shots at this show, and once I get some familiarity with handling it, I think it will be a good asset to my photography. Hand-holding big lenses is a challenge, and while I’ve done well enough to date, I think with the help of the monopod I’ll be able to do better.

Shot four is another monopod shot from last night when I was out noodling around with the camera in the back yard. This is a dahlia that has just come into bloom. I love the rich jewel tones and shades of it against the dark background.

Shot five features the sour cherries that I have in abundance on the couple of bushes in the back yard. This particular cultivar is “prairie hardy” and indeed was developed at the University of Saskatchewan over the last number of years. I have started a sour cherry liqueur from some of these as it was one of the few recipes I could find that didn’t involve having to pit them. It’s a long-term project, so won’t be ready to sample for about eight or so months, but at least I’ve made a start.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: dahlia, hawks, horse, jumping, jumping horse, photography, u of s sour cherries | 0 Comments

Mid July ???

July 13th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

To my mild horror, I find that we are rapidly galloping towards the middle of July later this week. Well, those who can ride their horses are galloping, anyway. I’m either navigating my bicycle or trudging on foot. In any event, the essence of what I am saying here is that the summer season is speeding along without us having had much of a summer to date. I guess it would be speeding even if we *were* having summer weather, it just would seem slightly more acceptable. However, the rain has slowed down a lot and we’ve had some sun and warmish temperatures. Unaccustomed as we prairie folk are to humidity, which we have this year in spades, it’s likely a good thing that we aren’t hitting the 3os/90s as those temperatures in combination with the humidity would be very stressful. I know there are a lot of places in the world where people have to function in high heat and humidity for months on end. I have no idea how they do that, but they have my profound sympathy and respect.

I’ve been working on my Saluki dog art images and one of the ideas has been to do a photomontage featuring a Saluki with a nod to their desert hunting heritage in the form of an Arabian horse and a hunting falcon in the background. Surprisingly, the latter has proved easier for me to come up with than the former, although there are a couple of high-end Arabian horse breeders in this vicinity and I could likely arrange a shoot if I need to. Hunting falcons, though, no problem.

When this concept first came up a few months back, I immediately put in a call to a long-standing friend who has for decades been deeply involved with falcons, Peregrines most specifically. I inquired what my chances would be of getting some photos, and was told to call back in early July, as at the time of my initial call the adult birds were all busy nesting and nobody would be flying until the new crop of youngsters were fledged and ready to launch.
I was uncharacteristically organized enough to note this down in my day-book, so that I did remember to make call number two at the suggested date. Indeed, a few of the youngsters were now able to fly and were making a start on their training program as “working” falcons. I was told what time would be best for my purposes, and off I went, driving into the country in the early evening under dark and threatening skies. I did drive through a bit of rain en route to the shoot, but by the time I reached the acreage in the hills where my friend and his birds live, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful evening. It never did rain there (about fifteen minutes out of the city) but apparently it bucketed down in sheets in town. Go figure.
Shot one isn’t much of a photograph, but this is what I saw atop the roof of the house when I got out of the car–the young Peregrines silhouetted against the skyline, looking to my mind like hulking and vaguely sinister gargoyles.
Shot two is one of the action shots I got as they flew overhead, being drawn in by food attached to a fishing line operated by my friend. Getting this sort of shot is pretty challenging as the birds are moving fast, and very quickly get too close for my big lens to maintain focus. Timing is everything with this type of photography. At least they were relatively consistent about where they flew, so that I could anticipate a bit where they would go and how they would act. This is an immature bird, so the colouring of the legs and beak area will apparently evolve over time, also the wing tips will ultimately be a bit longer and more pointed, if I have understand and remember correctly what I was told.
The bird place is nestled on top of a hilly ridge area, and shot three shows a bit of the vista to the west as I was starting back to the city that evening. It really is beautiful countryside and I should try to get out there to explore some of the back roads and byways. I’ll certainly be returning for more falcon shots as just one go-round isn’t nearly enough to keep me happy. Photography is my version of “the hunt”and I love getting out in the field with my camera and some exciting subject matter.

There was a dressage show at Ebon Stables on the weekend, and I was out there a fair amount getting shots for clients who were riding in the show. I do odd shots in between clients just to entertain myself, and one of the visuals I like to collect is close-up shots of manes in their various configurations of show braids. I have quite an extensive collection by now, and I fantasize that some day I’ll do something interesting with them in the way of a photomontage. Shot four features a mane with a running braid, something I don’t see very often in the shows that I photograph. This type of braid is one that takes a long mane to accomplish (such as Arabs usually have, as was the case here) and most of the horses I photograph are Warmbloods with manes that have been shortened, so they require a completely different style of braid.

Shot five is a pastoral scene that appealed to me for its colour and texture (doesn’t hurt that there are horses also). This was taken from the side of the highway on the road home from the stables. The bright yellow in the background is a canola crop in flower. Looks nice in the photo but in truth most of the canola fields (those that got planted at all this year) are pretty wretched due to the cold and sodden conditions at seeding time (and ever since).

I’m not sure what tonight and tomorrow will bring us. After having had several rather nice days in a row, we are apparently in the path of something large and unpleasant in the way of weather systems, so we’ll see what develops. What is being called for is thunderstorms/heavy rain, high winds, and single digit (Celsius) temperatures. Hmmm. Good thing I have lots of library books on hand.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: bird, braided mane, hawk, horse, peregrine falcon, photography | 0 Comments

But wait, there’s more—

July 6th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

–more water (in the form of rain) that is. Just as we were starting to enjoy and appreciate the occasional day that offered a bit of sun and warmth, we now have become stuck in an alternating “just lovely” and “cataclysmically dreadful” weather cycle. This being the case, I find myself with little else to remember from the past week apart from the weather. That means as we move smartly along to the photos, they will feature “all water, all the time”, with only the occasional change of venue to vary things a bit. Sorry. I’d really rather have something else to photograph and obsess over. Maybe next week. Or month. Or season. Or by freeze-up, which I actually find myself thinking about with some longing, as then at least the mud will be frozen and I can get shoes back on my horse and get riding again.

All was relatively OK until last Monday night, when the skies darkened and by later in the evening we were in the grip of high winds, tremendous rainfall and continuous and violent thunder and lightning displays, right over the city and surrounding area. For three solid hours! Apparently there was also a tornado watch, of which we were happily unaware at the time.I’m not sure I can recall a storm system of that intensity that went on for such a long time. Generally when they are that wild they blow over and/or out pretty quickly, but this one was relentless. There was a lot of flooding of intersections, low-lying areas, and filled roadway underpasses. Many areas of the city (both commercial and residential) have sustained a lot of flood damage. Mercifully we are not of that number, and every time the now-active sump pump in the basement ejects another large amount of water ( at twenty-minute intervals day and night, lately) I thank my lucky stars that we had it installed, or our basement would be floating as well. One of the more notable newspaper reports of the storm detailed how a manhole cover shot up out of the street, blown by the rising level of water in the storm sewers, and passed through the bottom of a city bus that happened to be driving over it at the time. That’s water pressure! In the end, we got about 100ml/4 inches of water in the three hours of the storm.

In my usual foolishly optimistic way, I hoped that maybe Ebon Stables had been spared the storm, but no. As per usual, Ebon took at least as much of a hit as the city did, perhaps more. The first three shots show various angles on what greeted my lens when I got to the barn on Tuesday afternoon. Apparently the water levels were even higher in the morning, including water pouring across the grid road to the barn. By the time I got there in the afternoon the road at least was high if not dry.

Shot one is taken from said road and features some of the show rings.

Shot two was taken from the west end door of the main barn. The waterway to the right of the rail fence is usually the road that joins the big barn and the upper area. You can see our barn man just to the left of the truck as he tries to get some pumps going.
Shot three is another view of the flooded rings. I photographed a couple of horses jumping in the (then perfectly dry) far ring the day before the storm.
Shot four shows the lower trail to the weir area of the river, a couple of days after the storm. Grandson Mark and I had to go downtown to get his camera sorted out, and since we were in the area we went over to the weir, hoping for some pelican shots. Even the pelicans have abandoned their usual fishing grounds right at the base of the weir waterfall, due to the high water level and great rate at which it is flowing. This shot shows how much higher the river is in the past week, since the rainstorm. The circled area shows the edge of a waterside fence. Usually this is well above the waterline and we can walk right up to that point. The dotted line shows where the river edge was a week or so ago.

The idyllic image of shot five was taken on Saturday evening as I was on my way home from the barn. By Saturday, we had endured another storm on Thursday that left a further inch of rain, and other parts of the province were hit by a severe tornado. The main problem with this lovely “lakeside” shot is that normally the water area with the canoe is a farmstead lawn. I had actually driven past this scene when I had a “what did I just see there?” moment, and had to back up to record the novel visuals.

We did have an absolutely lovely weekend, but it’s been pelting rain again all day today and it’s still coming down. In theory there is an outdoor dressage show at Ebon in the upcoming weekend, but we’ll see. At least there’s an indoor option!

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: flood, photography, rain, storm, water | 0 Comments

Reunion time

June 28th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

There’s been a bit of a let-up in the monsoons, only about 4 inches/ 10 cm of rainfall in the past week. I had my horse Alpac’s name on the farrier’s “to do” list for getting his shoes back on, but then we had the added rainfall which once again reduced the turnout to muddy slop, so we’re back on hold for another week for the shoe operation.
We had a “milestone” occasion of sorts in the form of the 45th (no, that’s not a typo) anniversary class reunion for my husband’s medical school class (class of 65). There was a relatively modest turnout, but I was impressed that everyone that appeared was in good shape and in good form, which was nice to see. Jim is one of the few still working, and with apparently no plans to stop any time soon, despite my occasional hints that cutting back a bit more (or even completely) might be something to consider. We had a very nice dinner at Soulieo , my first meal there but definitely not my last. It was just the right venue for the event. I was amazed when I was told that one of the attendees at the larger medical college event, of which the class of 65 reunion was only a part, was a gentleman who graduated from the U of S medical school in 1939!!
With the lessening of the relentless downpour, I have been able to work at the ongoing job of replacing the shrubs and bushes that died over the winter. Shot one shows a nice Morden Blush rose that has gone in where I rooted out a very sprawling juniper that was in fact not winter-killed but rather doing too well and offending us by being totally out of hand. It’s taken me a week of intermittent digging and prying to get it out, but I have finished the job of going backwards and am now having a good time popping new items into the area, as demonstrated in shot one. I added a Persian yellow rose to the same area today–which claims to be hardy to minus 50, so I sincerely hope this will make it through all foreseeable winters, although I have tried this one before and had it die on me, so who knows?

Shot two shows one of our visiting guests from Ontario. This is Oliver, a year-old Standard Poodle who drove here for the class reunion, along with his owners, long-time friends of ours.Oliver’s “Dad”, Bob, and Jim were classmates and room-mates during their medical school years. We don’t get to see these friends very often so it was a treat to have them in town for a few days, and also to be introduced to Oliver for the first time. He’s a fine and handsome boy, very well-mannered and low-key, although I did find the almost invisible eyes a little unnerving when taking his picture.

It’s flower week at Ebon stables. Every year a local greenhouse shares their end of season bounty with Ebon. This year’s haul made the trip from the greenhouse to the stables in the big horse trailer, which I found provided an amusing visual (shot three).

Shot four shows the big “flower” trailer relocated to the show barn area where all the planters are stored off season. There was a good turnout of volunteers to help with the massive job of weeding and soil loosening in the pots, followed by a gargantuan planting effort. I put a couple of hours in before I had to leave for other commitments, and while a lot had been accomplished at that point, there was still a lot yet to be done. Gotta love all those yellows!

I posted the dog version of this concept a while back. Actually I’m not sure it was on this blog–check the April 5th entry here .I decided we needed an equal nod to our feline friends, and have come up with this photomontage to pay tribute to the cats we know and love, past and present.I’ll be donating a print of each of the cat and the dog versions of this to Pets in the Park Saskatoon for the silent auction, coming up in in early July.
A final note to readers in Saskatoon and area. I’ll have a booth at the Nutana Collegiate 100th Anniversary event, to be held on the grounds of Nutana this Saturday, July 3 from 10AM-3PM. Call by and have a visit if you have the time.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: cat photomontage, class reunion, dog, flower, photography, roses, standard poodle | 0 Comments

Yes! the sump pump works!

June 22nd, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Another week and a few more inches of rain to add to our misery, although we are just completing our third rain-free (and not only dry but actually warm, mostly sunny and pleasant)day in a row. Makes me think back to the drought years of the past couple of decades when we would now be entering our third *month *of extremely hot temperatures (in the high 30s/90s and up ) with no rain whatsoever. I do recall back then swearing that I would never complain about moisture, but these days that’s a hard vow to honour.
On the other hand, it could be worse for us here in the middle of the province. It *is* worse in the southwest. The town of Maple Creek has been totally flooded , the result of heavy and extended rainfall, and parts of the trans-Canada highway have washed away completely in that area, making for a 150 km detour for travellers who need to head west. They are still in the midst of unsettled weather systems and could possibly be hit again with yet more rainfall. With the warmer weather and high moisture content, there is also the potential for tornadoes, which I had forgotten about for a while there, until I heard mention of funnel clouds in the south on the radio today. One thing about living here is that we do get to experience extremes.
I’ve finally made a sort of peace with the whole rain thing, especially now that our sump pump has started spewing out large quantities of water from the area under our house. We had it installed during the last wet spell a few years ago. The water table at that time was sitting right at the underneath surface of the cement floor of our basement, and was continuing to rise. From the moment the sump pump was installed, it ejected gallons of water at a time every fifteen minutes, day and night, for over a week. Since that time, it hasn’t functioned at all, and we thought it might be broken, but suddenly last week we hit a critical point and it has been doing its job intermittently ever since. Makes me feel all warm and misty-eyed to think that we actually did the right thing by installing it, even though we only seem to need it every few years. Better that than needing it and not having it!
On to the photos. Last Monday evening I got to photograph the delightful little creature in the first photo. This is Rosie, a baby porcupine who is in the care of my wildlife rehab friend. She still had her umbilical cord attached when she came into care, having been seized in the wild and carried home by a farm dog, mercifully uninjured in the process, although being taken from her mother and from her native habitat is injury enough. She is about a month or so old now, thriving in her new home, and is a fascinating little character. I’ve done a couple of photo shoots of her so far, and my daughter, who does articles for the Saskatoon Express magazine, has written about her in a piece that will be accompanied by my photos. The wildlife rehab article won’t be out for a while yet, but you can click on the link above and see her feature on horses via download (June issue). It takes a while to load but is worth the wait. Look for “Horses in Four Seasons” starting on page 12. I’ll try to remember to give a heads up when the wildlife rehab one is published.

Shot two was a “what the heck?” moment I had while driving home from the barn on one of the dark, dreary and rainy days last week. I was stopped for the light and noticed that there seemed to be a big space around this vehicle in the eastbound turn lane, then I realized that was because it was on fire. I grabbed this shot while waiting for the light to change. I did briefly contemplate pulling over to the shoulder for more shots, but then decided that in case the whole thing exploded it might be a good idea not to be in the area. Occasionally I am capable of making a sensible decision.

The postponed horse show at Ebon Stables finally took place on the weekend, although with the additional several inches of rain we got last week, it was a near thing as the show rings were still partially submerged the day before the show. Shot three shows the area that is usually the parking lot for visitors. By the weekend it wasn’t quite that watery, but still wet, boggy and not user friendly except for ducks, frogs and kids with rubber boots.

Shot four shows a collection of competitors waiting for their turn in the hunter and jumper rings. In the end, it was a really lovely weekend for a horse show, with warm but not too hot temperatures, mostly sunny, and even the footing quite acceptable under the circumstances.
This sign is one that I pass on the way home from the barn. It kind of sums up the mindset we have developed in response to the weather we’ve had to date. Not sure if the problem with the spelling of alignment is due to lack of space or lack of “e”s, although it looks like a space issue to me.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: car on fire, horse show, photography, rain, saskatoon express magazine, sump pump | 0 Comments

Partly sunny, partly not

June 15th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Another week, more rain, but also some sun and a bit of drying, which gives heart, despite the forecast for yet more rain possibly starting tomorrow. I’ve been in heavy-duty mode on a number of fronts in the yard. Last fall was mild, then really cold with no snow cover, followed by a longish toughish winter (what else is new around here?) and a lot of the trees and usually reliable perennial plants didn’t “shut down” properly, with the end result that many failed to survive, despite having lived through many seemingly worse winters in the past.
I decided that anything that didn’t show evidence of leaves or indeed any sort of life was likely an ex-plant, given that we are into June now, so I went off to the garden centre and bought a bunch of replacement shrubs and small bushes. Of course as soon as I started digging out the “dead” bushes (mostly Barberries that have a lot of really nasty spikes), I realized that down at the soil-line there were a few feeble hints of life. It reminded me of the black death/plague scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail –”I’m not dead yet!” So, what to do? I decided that I really much preferred the Ninebarks that I had purchased as replacements (pretty foliage, nice size *and* no blood-drawing thorns) so I went ahead and dug up all the not quite dead Barberries and relocated them to the back lane where they will have a chance to rise again should they so choose. I just didn’t have the heart to pitch them straight into the garbage, so time will tell whether they make a comeback or not. The odd thing (well, one of the many odd things) about the winter kill is that some plant material that I thought was virtually indestructible has died, and others that we consider to be at risk even in a good year have come back perfectly well. There’s no accounting for these things, I guess.
My first photo was taken on the way home from the barn on one of the many rainy days, although the variation on the theme that day was that the rain was very fine, rather than bucketing down as has been the norm. You can see that things are *very* green, which is nice, and the young Warmbloods down the hill are enjoying the fresh grass. One of the big hawks that hunts the Ebon area was sitting on the ground with the horses–you can see him just to the left of the middle of the picture, near the dark bay horse. This seemed a tad odd to me, but perhaps he had caught a gopher on the ground and decided just to stay there for a while. The horses were quite happy to ignore him, and vice versa.

By Friday it had actually stopped raining, so wandering outdoors with the camera at the barn was something I could indulge in. I still can’t ride due to lack of horseshoes on my gelding, and his turnout is still too muddy for us to contemplate putting them back on with any assurance that they would stay on, so I had time to check out the activity “up top” at the show barns, as there was a small dressage show on the weekend. I noticed this young hare having a nice time amongst the dandelions as I went past a grassy area. I like to think this is the one that a previous barn-man rescued and bottle-fed as a tiny baby, but these guys all look pretty much the same, so who’s to know?

My quest to the show barn area was well rewarded when I caught a glimpse of this horse and rider pair doing their warm-up. It was very exciting just to see a clean horse and no mud, but the bonus here was having this rider (Shannon Camphaug Sluser) at the show at all. She rode at Ebon when she was at university here, but now does the higher-end circuit in areas much farther afield, so we don’t often have the pleasure of seeing her at local shows. This is her new young Hannoverian who needs to log some “show miles”, so they were in attendance at this show, and will apparently also be back in July. He is a gorgeous horse and a very nice mover, and I’m sure they will go places as a team.

There are ducks pretty well everywhere this year with all the rain we’ve had. There was even a mallard hen nesting in a stall at the show barns at Ebon, although sadly I think once her peace and quiet was shattered by the incoming show horses on the week-end that she has abandoned her nest. “Her” stall was left strictly alone and had a “do not disturb” sign, but just the fact of a lot of activity suddenly arising was likely enough to send her away. A shame, but nothing really that could be done about it. This isn’t the Ebon mallard hen, but is one that was enjoying the ambience in a pond at the university campus on the weekend.

I’ve been continuing to play with encaustics, and this weekend my assistant (aka grandson Mark) and I decided to try a “shellac burn” technique with one of my trial encaustics. This essentially involves coating the artwork with shellac and setting it on fire. Mark is always interested in anything that involves flames, so we had quite a happy time working on this project. Shot five shows one of the encaustics in mid-burn. We tried both a “wet” and a “dry” burn, and while both processes show promise, I need to do a lot more trial and error with this, as with encaustic in general.

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Tagged in: dressage, encaustic burn, hannoverian dressage horse, hare, horse, mallard hen, photography, yard work | 0 Comments

Progress, reruns, losses

June 8th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Monday again, and some progress to report on some fronts, more of same on others, and a few losses as well. The weather (I know you’re all keen to hear about it) has slowly improved, which is to say we are getting some rain only about every second day or so, and not the relentless twenty-four hour a day downpours of most of May. I’ve adjusted my parameters on what constitutes a “good day” weather-wise of late. It can be cold, overcast, and windy (today was all three) but if it isn’t actually raining, it’s a “good” day. I consider that to be in the “progress” category.

The “more of same” is that once again my poor horse has lost both his shoes, and is not really rideable until he can get them back on. One of his hooves needs corrective shoeing and while this has been a chance for me to assess its progress, the verdict is that he still needs shoes to be rideable. Until the mud in his turnout finally dries up to the point where it doesn’t suck horsehoes right off hooves (and we’re not the only ones this is happening to!) and he can be reshod, he can’t be ridden. Since being able to ride most days is one of my sanity valves (aka barn therapy) I hope that this will sort itself out soon. In the meantime, we’ll make do with extra grooming and more “grazing in hand” time, assuming it’s not raining and that we can fend off the mosquito population.

In the “losses” column, one of the “old boys” of my retired Thoroughbred’s small herd is no longer with us. I got an email last week to say that TJ had colicked severely and had to be put down. Of all the many things that can afflict horses, colic is surely one of the most dreaded and feared by horse people. I’m not totally sure how old TJ was, but my Native is now thirty, and TJ had a year or two on him, so while we can mourn the fact and the means of his departure, he had a long and good life. I think he was a three-year-old when I first met him, so he’s been part of the story of my life as a horse person for a good many years. Rest in peace, TJ.

As a respite from my endless shots of mud and watery surfaces (that aren’t supposed to be watery) I have a couple of flower shots as a nod to the season. Shot one shows one of our orchids, which has produced a fabulous spike with about twenty of these flowers. Orchids often take quite a while to get around to blooming, but once they are in flower the flowers can last for weeks or even months. We’ve been enjoying this one for a while now and it shows no signs of slowing down, despite having been moved from the house to the outdoors greenhouse, then to the outdoor deck (when we foolishly assumed that the weather would stay warmish), then back to the greenhouse with the heater on when it was getting close to freezing again, also to keep it from drowning in the monsoon, and now back outdoors on the deck again, where I hope it can stay until fall. It probably hopes so too.

Shot two shows the gorgeous little spring gentians that are out front in Jim’s little “alpine garden” area. This is the first year I can recall this one blooming for us, and it is a bright and cheering sight at the side of the walkway.

Shot three was taken on Sunday, which, as you can see, was a supremely lovely day. I needed some work done on the big studio windows up top and that meant a call to the family “heights” specialist, my son-in-law Bill. As a part-time fire-fighter, Bill has the credentials that we look for when we need to send someone up a ladder. While he was up there, he also unclogged the rain gutters, and, as seen in this shot, checked out the weather station at the top of the studio, so it was a worthwhile venture all in all.

Our little friend Mogo the mini-Dachshund is here for a couple of days. I was working in the back yard and realized I hadn’t seen him for a while. I always worry about him somehow getting out of the yard, and me having to leave the country rather than tell his owner that I’ve lost him. Once I cast my eyes about, though, I spotted him on my vintage “reading” chair, quite comfortable, albeit with less sun on him that he would have liked. That’s my Mickey in the foreground. I’ve tried putting beds and blankets out for my boys to cushion the hard deck, but they never use them. There is a nice soft lawn available that they can make use of if they wish.

Shot five shows a photomontage that I recently completed for one of my barn clients. This one features various aspects of the partnership of Paige and her boy Blaze. I don’t remember how old Paige was when they bought Blaze, who was a seasoned show pony, and a good performer in the show ring if you knew how to deal with him, but I know she was *really* tiny. We used to watch her lessons and marvel that the horse even knew anyone was up there, and I always felt she was so light that gravity probably didn’t even work for her. Well, that was then and this is now, and Paige is still a slim young thing, but she’s grown a lot and has developed into a skillful, determined and competitive young rider. Blaze is now retired and Paige has a lovely young Warmblood mare that is her perfect complement. This year will be their first show season together and I look forward to starting a new collection of “memory” shots for them.
For anyone in the Saskatoon area, this type of photomontage is one I can create for you as a custom work, of horse, dog or whatever combination of animals you might have for me to work with. Keep me in mind if you want a special custom and personal image created for you. Email me at judywood@sasktel.net if you have any questions or would like more information.

Last weekend’s horse show was cancelled due to the show rings being mostly under water. This coming weekend, in theory, there is a dressage show at Ebon, then the cancelled show will be the following weekend. Eventually, I’ll have some horse show shots to share, I sincerely hope!

Tagged in: dog, gentians, horseshoes, orchid, photography, photomontage, weather | 0 Comments

More of same, sadly

June 2nd, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

I’m starting to feel a tad desperate about things around here. The relentless rain, cold and wind continue virtually unabated. We have achieved (if that’s the correct word) a new record for April/May rainfall since the start of local weather records in 1872. I suppose that includes the snow that fell as well. Temperatures in the past week have hovered in the “highs” of 6 C/43F which when combined with the bucketing rain and high winds, means that I have been back into the storage closet quite a few times to dig out winter clothing I thought I wouldn’t be seeing again for at least a few months. I tend to the optimistic side of things (mostly) but even I am starting to take this personally and am feeling a bit grey and watery. To add insult to injury, the Sears Fall and Winter catalogue arrived today. Forgive me if I take a moment to run screaming from the keyboard. Just as a “reality” check–at this time of year, we usually can expect temperatures to be up to 26C/80F and to be worrying about whether we will be getting enough rain for the crops to grow!
Yesterday’s trip to retrieve my horse from the far distant end of his turnout paddock evolved into an endurance trek with me (literally) pulling myself hand over hand using the top of the fence to keep myself from going down in the greasy mud, and/or pulling myself loose when stuck. Once I got to Alpac, I had to keep one hand firmly attached to his halter so he could drag me forward to get to the gate. I’ve kept horses at Ebon for a lot of years, and I don’t ever recall conditions being quite this bad. Scratches/mud fever is an ongoing worry, and I have been actively working to keep it at bay, so far successfully, I’m happy to report. Our new horseshoes have stayed on for a whole week as well. First outdoor show of the season is coming up on the weekend, and I’m not sure how that will go, given the conditions of the grounds.
With one exception, today’s photos will reflect the gloomy tone I have adopted here. I do actually have some nice flower shots (yes, there are a few things in bloom, and by gosh it’s green out there too) but in the spirit of sharing the suffering, I’m going to post the grey and dreary evidence of what we have been dealing with for the past several weeks.
Shot one is the above-mentioned exception. My wonderful horse Alpac had his 20th birthday on May 20th, and I did this photomontage to celebrate the event. It features him at various ages and stages of his career. He was a show jumper before I bought him, as witnessed by the jumping shot of him with his previous owner. I school dressage, but there aren’t a lot of shots of me riding. The rather sedate other “under saddle” shot shows me on him, taken by my grandson Mark a couple of years ago. The standing full-body profile shot in the lower left corner was taken a couple of months ago, and shows how he looks now. I think we’re both still good for a few more years.

On to the dismal reality shots. Shot two features a large tractor with attached tilling equipment (I’m not a farm girl and don’t know a lot of the technical terms for these things) that has been sitting idle in the field across from Ebon for the past ten days, waiting for conditions to dry up enough that the land can actually be seeded. This field now has quite a large and happy population of ducks that dabble in the puddles and enjoy the bits of grain left over from last year. They’re about the only ones to appreciate the weather of late.

Shot three shows my friend and fellow rider Roger, who often helps bring in the horses on weekends. He hoped that Red here would make his own way over to the gate to come in, but no such luck, so he had to go through much the same painful process I did in order to get the straggler in on Sunday. You can see by their feet just how mucky it is out there. I don’t think Roger is having fun.

One of the interesting features of barn life in the last couple of weeks has been the enormous flocks of Franklin’s gulls that will suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere, swirling in noisy circles over the barn and fields, then as suddenly shooting off into the distance. They must be foraging for insects in the moist fields, as I can’t think what else would cause this pattern of behavior. This shot shows only a fraction of the flock.

Shot five shows “Lake Ebon”, a body of water that has appeared since the rains started, on what is meant to be a grassy lawn (and in-hand grazing area). There will be a horse show in the rings that appear in the background this coming weekend. I may be resuming the “mud studies” series I started at last summer’s shows!

Tagged in: alpac photomontage, franklin's gulls, horse, mud, photography, rain | 0 Comments

Raining, cats and dogs. Birds too.

May 25th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

We jumped ahead into summer for a bit last week, now have regressed to something more springlike. With any luck we won’t travel back any farther and end up in winter again, although I did hear the word “snow” in conjunction with a weather forecast for the north of the province. Mind you, the north of this province goes a long way up (check the link for a map, which shows where I am in Saskatoon compared to how far north the province extends. Distance between Saskatoon and Regina is 260 km/160 miles for scale), so with any luck we’ll be safe. We might, though, get frost later this week, which isn’t welcome news considering I spent the drier bits of the weekend planting my vegetable garden, including a few items that won’t take well to any hints of cold. As per usual, we’ll wait and see what develops.
Since it was a long weekend here (Victoria Day), most of my immediate family members took advantage of the extra time off work/school to depart from the city. My local daughter went off to BC to visit her sister, and the male members of the Saskatoon clan (husband, son-in-law and grandson) all hied themselves off to the lake cabin a couple of hours north of the city, all of which left me home alone to entertain myself and wrangle the resident domestic animals (plus Mogo the mini-Dachshund who is staying here while *his* owner has left town as well).
We’re off to a bit of a late start this year as far as getting gardening underway, so I went out and purchased some plant material and spent much of Saturday morning digging, planting and generally sorting out various bits of the yard. The weather started getting a bit blustery and overcast by noon, so I decided to ditch the gardening and get out to the barn while I could still ride outside. By the time I got Alpac tacked up and out the door of the barn, it was really windy. Our ride started a bit oddly with him doing a sudden lateral spook accompanied by a mild bucking fit as he had seen something he didn’t care for. Might have been the back end of some farming/seeding equipment just visible behind the north line of bushes, which was the only different thing I could see that might have looked out of place to him. Sometimes you never know just what sets them off. I was a bit rattled by this event, but hung in there for the duration and didn’t have any particular problems after that, thank goodness. By the time I was heading home from the barn, it was apparent that we were in for a serious turn of weather, and we ended up with huge winds and torrential rains until late Sunday night.
On to the photos for today. Friday was very nice and the barn cats were happy to relax and enjoy the nice conditions. Here is one of them, happily ensconced and having a lazy time at the east end of the stables.

Shot two was taken on Saturday, just after I had finished riding. I was going to the car for the camera in order to get some shots of the jump lesson that was underway. It was hard not to notice a great carry-on of crows just beyond the dugout trees to the east. I headed over that way to check it out, and realized that two ravens were being mobbed by about a dozen crows. I couldn’t get very close and the lighting was dreadful, but I did get a few shots. This one shows the size differential between the larger raven and the much smaller and quicker crows. The ravens were on the defensive here, in what I believe was a “turf war” over territory. They all disappeared over the fields shortly after I got this shot, so I have no idea how it all sorted out in the end.

Shot three shows another bird inhabitant of the barn area. This is a female killdeer sitting on her (very exposed) nest, right between the dressage and jumper training rings at the stables. Every year the killdeers seem to manage to put themselves and their babies in harm’s way by nesting in relatively hazardous and busy areas. I think the problem is that they establish their territory and nesting sites when things are still muddy enough that no-one is yet using the outdoor riding areas. They get committed to their spot, then suddenly find themselves in the midst of riders, lessons, and horse shows. I just hope this poor bird is able to get her babies hatched and out of the way before the barn cats figure out where she is! I do feel she has a bit of a wild-eyed “what have I done?” look.

I took shot four on the way home from the barn. I was slowing down to get a shot of the red barn down the hill from the stables, with the dramatic backdrop of the pre-storm darkening sky, but then I realized that there was a big Swainson’s hawk sitting right there, so I photographed it instead. This is one of a pair that returns to the area around Ebon every summer.

Shot five shows the visiting Mogo and his reaction to the turn of the weather. He was happily basking in the sun in the back yard on Saturday morning. This was taken Saturday evening after the temperatures had plunged, the wind was howling, and the rain bucketing down. He wanted no part of it and spent the next day snuggled into the mohair blanket on the couch.

Tagged in: gardening, killdeer, mini dachshund, photography, rain, raven and crows, swainson's hawk | 0 Comments

Big difference!

May 18th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Well, what a difference a week can make, especially here in the prairies in spring. It finally stopped snowing and raining, the clouds have departed, and the temperatures have shot up. In fact at the moment, early evening, it’s still too hot (28C/82F) to take the dogs out for their post- supper walk, and I have the air conditioning turned on. As with all short-nosed, deep-chested breeds, my Boxers don’t deal well with heat and can suffer serious health consequences from heat stress. We’ll have to switch to “summer hours” for walking, later in the evening when the sun and the temperature have both dropped. Suits me fine. I don’t deal well with heat myself, although warmth is sure welcome after the past month or so.
It’s been a good week with a variety of photo ops and lots of time spent outdoors, in the home yard/garden, at the stables, and at a client shoot. Funny how a person can switch so quickly into a whole different mode according to the external temperature. All the stuff that I “needed” to do indoors (even in the studio) now suddenly seems sort of irrelevant and definitely something that can wait to get done (other than meeting a few client deadlines, that is!). Goodness knows there is lots to do in the yard, and outdoor puttering is the order of the day. We’ve had a late start for many of the permanent plant residents (aka perennials, shrubs and bushes) and there are quite a few that look like they didn’t make it through the winter at all and won’t be “starting” ever again. This includes some plants that we have had in our yard for many years, but those are the breaks. We had a very odd fall, very mild then suddenly intensely cold, so that the normal fall “shut-down” and internal winter plant prep didn’t happen, with a relatively high mortality rate as a consequence. I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to renew the parts of the yard that were hardest hit.
I made it out to North Fork stables to do some photos on one of the first lovely days last week. Shot one shows Orion, one of the youngsters from last year’s foal crop. He was a tender little baby last year when I photographed him, quite unlike the strapping yearling (full of attitude and joie de vivre) that he has become. Here he is running the fence-line with his sire on the other side of the fence.

Shot two is also from the North Fork photo session. Here is part of the mare and foal herd thundering off. So far this year there are five foals on the ground, three more to come! If you compare these little guys to the visuals of Orion in shot one, you can readily appreciate how much size these horses can put on in one short year.

Today was herd health day for the “old boys club”, of which my retired Thoroughbred, Lord Native, is a charter member. Club headquarters are at my friend Donna’s acreage south of the city. Shot three is one I took this afternoon as I was heading out there. Nice to see the farmers out and able to work the land in preparation for planting. One of the things that always amazes me (and I’m from here so I shouldn’t be surprised, but always am) is how fast it gets dusty. It can be pouring rain for weeks on end (as indeed it has been), but usually within about one day of the rain having stopped, there’s blowing dust. Unless, of course, you’re looking at the turnout paddocks at Ebon Stables, which seem to defy this law by staying deeply and intensely muddy forever.

We don’t get bluebirds in the city, but in the countryside to the south and west of the city, they are plentiful. There are many areas where the locals have installed numerous bluebird houses along the farm fences, and these are well used by the returning bluebirds. I took shot four of a mountain bluebird at Donna’s while I was waiting for the vets to work on Native. Despite the fact that we are nowhere near the mountains, we are in the summer breeding range for this species.
Shot five shows Native himself, hanging out near the neighbours while his regular companions were in the barn getting checked out. He was relatively calm for a while, but just before I needed to bring him into the barn, he suddenly decided a frantic search for his missing room-mates was in order, and he covered quite a lot of territory in a relatively short time in the process. I haven’t seen him do anything other than a slow amble for several years, and it was really nice to see that his trot and canter are still there and in good working order. I was trying to get his attention as he was rushing about the pasture in search mode, and since he is fairly blind (which is why he didn’t know where his friends had gone ) I was a bit concerned that he wouldn’t see me in his path and stop before he ran over me. I got enough of his attention with voice and waving arms to get him stopped so I could get a lead shank on him, luckily for me. Didn’t have the camera with me through all this action, sadly, as it would have been nice to get a few shots. He is thirty years old (and the youngest of his group of three) and all things considered looks pretty darn good. He’s still got some long winter hair to get rid of, but compared to the thin wreck he was last fall, he now looks great. Donna takes it as a personal challenge to keep the ravages of time and the elements away from the old boys, and she does a pretty darn good job of it. We think his big weight loss last summer was related to the fierce insect attacks of mid and late summer, so I’ll get him a fly sheet this year and with any luck that will do the job.
On the way home today I noticed a couple of largish birds hovering over the fields along the river. I stopped and got a couple of shots of them, not sure if they were a pair of hawks or the ravens I had seen there before. They were fairly high up, and mostly silhouetted against the sky, so a little hard to see. When I got the photos downloaded and zoomed in on one to see what it was, I was surprised to see that they were turkey vultures. If I’d realized that at the time, I’d have hung around a little longer in hopes of them soaring a bit closer. I’ve only ever seen turkey vultures once or twice before. It does explain why the shapes didn’t seem right for either a hawk or a raven, though! If I do get any decent shots, I’ll post them here.

Tagged in: foals, gypsy cob horses, herd health, hot weather, mountain bluebird, old horses, photography, tractor tilling the land | 0 Comments

Thank goodness for Friday

May 11th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Another week, highlighted by ongoing snowfall, heavy rains, high winds, cold temperatures, and one or two sort of nice days. Much like the story of the past several weeks, in short. I’ve been plugging along with my usual stuff. Further exploration/play in the studio with the new art medium (encaustics), slowed down for the moment due to me having to wait for some essential supplies to come by mail. I think they must be coming by mule train from the US, since I sent my order in just after mid-April and there’s no sign of it yet. I’ll have to learn to factor in a longish wait time in future when ordering from this source. On the other hand, it could just be that I’m impatient! I’m almost to the point of being ready to share a few images of some of my encaustic work done to date–maybe in the next couple of weeks or so.
Friday was actually a really nice day, bracketed by the torrential downpours and high winds of the previous week-days, and more of same for the subsequent couple of days. Grandson Mark was off school that day, so we moseyed down to the weir area of the river to get some photos. My “Nikon major” and my large aperture lens finally returned from their trip to get their problems diagnosed and cured (not sure if they are sorted out or not, time will tell) and I was happy to have it back in service again.
I noticed a new lower level trail to the weir area, that has presumably been there all along (or at least for the last several years) and which I had managed not to be aware of until just recently. This gave us a different angle of approach to the water and bridge area, which we enjoyed making use of. As we were heading towards the weir and the pelicans, I looked to my left and saw the rather large “ball” of photo one, hanging from the bridge walkway overhead.
Shot two shows the ball in the context of the bridge and surrounding landscape. I like to imagine this is some art student’s large-scale project, and quite appreciate the whole thing. The expanse of sand in the foreground is part of one of a couple of quite large and well established sandbars that have appeared in the river this spring. Shows how low the water level is, as most years there is only water here. Once the spring run-off comes through from the Rocky mountains (not usually until June here), river levels can rise quite a bit, so we’ll see how this develops over time. In really high-water conditions, the river will be up to the top of the areas of the bridge supports that jut out like prows.

A lot of pigeons live around the bridge, and many of them were in evidence right at the edge of the river, drinking and grubbing around for whatever morsels of food they might be able to locate. Shot three shows a couple of them. I really appreciate pigeons for the beauty and precision of their flight, and for the many and varied colours and patterns they exhibit. I’ll have to come back and lurk more in this area to add to my collection of pigeon shots.

Later in the day (Friday was really the only day dry enough to get out with the cameras, so all today’s shots were taken on that day) we headed off to the stables to check on my gelding, Alpac. Shot four shows the state of one of the grid roads on the alternate route we took to the barn. Luckily my more usual route is on paved highway for the most part, and the last bit of unpaved road to the barn rarely gets as bad as this one. The turnout pens for the horses at the barn are even worse than this, though, and when I brought Alpac out of his paddock I discovered that he had lost both his horseshoes to the mud. Those things are nailed on solidly with long nails, so it says something about the mud that it is sucking shoes off horses with great regularity these days. Alpac needs shoes on his fronts for correction of a hoof that has been troublesome, but I’m waiting until it dries up out there before I get my farrier to reshoe him, as there just isn’t any point to it under current conditions.

My dog Mickey has continued his all-too frequent visits to the vet for ongoing treatment of his eye ulcer. After three go-rounds of having it scraped down, and relentless daily applications of antibiotics, pain-killers, and Atropine, today he was finally declared to be cured of the original ailment. I still have to keep on with a couple of the eyedrop treatments for about another week, but the worst is behind us now. Shot five shows Mickey in the yard a couple of weeks ago when we were part-way through the process. Most of our visits to the vet have been simplified by the fact that we were the only ones in the waiting room. Today there was a little white fuzzy dog that arrived just ahead of us. Something that has always puzzled me is why owners of small dogs that resemble marshmallows with legs never seem to think to keep them out of the way of dogs that look like Mickey. Mostly the big guys are relatively OK with smaller dogs, but there’s really no way other than the hard way for the owner of the little dog to find out. If I was on the small-dog end of the leash, I’d just keep my dog well clear.
With any luck, I’ll have some new horse images to post next week—weather permitting, I should have some Gypsy cob foal shots. I can hardly wait!

Tagged in: Boxer, boxer dog, bridge, dog, landscape, muddy road, photography, pigeons | 0 Comments

May (be it will stop raining eventually)

May 4th, 2010 | Posted by Judy Wood

Here we are, into another month (almost half-way into the year, as well, however the heck *that* happened) but not much in the way of dramatic change from last week, or the week before that. That’s one way of saying it’s still chilly, dark, cloudy, wet and windy most days.We haven’t actually had a snowfall this week (yet) but there is a severe winter storm/blizzard warning for the southwest of the province in effect at the moment, and I suppose if it gets colder overnight we might just wake up to snow here as well. The same southwest area also reported a severe thunderstorm with hail and high winds about an hour ago. Not sure how that meshes with the projected heavy snow, but all in all it sounds grim. That’s ranching country and this is calving season, so it’s going to be tough for the cattle and ranchers, that’s for sure.
I remember hearing from a rancher friend who lives in that part of the province a few years back, during an unpleasant spring much like this one. There were large deep puddles everywhere on the range and in the areas around his buildings, and he had to keep a close eye out that calves didn’t drown immediately after they were born if they weren’t on high ground. That was also the year that he was almost literally fighting the coyote packs that were preying on the newborn calves if they were born a little too far out in the field. He said it was often a race between him and the coyotes to see who could get to the newborn first. It’s still pretty much survival of the fittest out there a lot of the time, and traditional ranch life isn’t for the faint of heart, either human or animal.
I’ve had a “hunkered in” kind of week, due to the prevailing weather conditions. I did manage to ride outdoors on the one decent day with dry footing last week. Now the outdoor riding rings are pretty well under water. Luckily for me, I’m pursuing a new art direction with my usual excessive zeal, so I’ve been quite content just to settle in to the studio, work on the learning curve, and figure out what exactly I should be doing and how I should be doing it. You’ll learn (and see) more when I feel I’m getting somewhere, which for the most part isn’t happening just yet. I have to say being able to order art materials online from all over the continent is a dangerous thing!
Shot one was taken mid-week during a brief break from the downpour. It’s pretty self-explanatory.
Shot two shows a typical day of late in the field just south of the stables. This is about as bright as it gets by early afternoon, and on days when it’s actively raining, it’s a lot darker. I’ve been missing my big “fast” (large aperture) lens that is good for low-light conditions, of which we’ve had an excess, but it’s off being checked out along with my main camera body, the theory being that the two are somehow not getting along together as well as they should. It’s been a few weeks since they departed, and although I’m managing well with my remaining system, I’ll be glad to get them back. There’s a train there in the background along the horizon line, but it’s a bit hard to see.

Shot three shows some of the water accumulation in one of the show rings at Ebon. It’s pouring again now and is supposed to carry on overnight, so by tomorrow there will be even more water here. I always appreciate the nice lines and patterns made in the ring surface when it is groomed, and which are more noticeable when filled with water as in this shot. This is a sand ring, and it takes a lot to get it to hold water.

Shot four features a couple of the new neighbours on the east side of the grid road near the barn. They have a nice little body of water in the ditch for recreational dabbling, and a handy grain field with lots of leftovers to feed on.

Since I’ve been trapped indoors more than usual for the time of year, I’ve been playing a bit with Photoshop and my image collection. This is a “war horse” themed piece featuring Random, the Friesian stallion, with whom I have taken some liberties. Most of the contemporary European Warmblood breeds had their origins in the heavy warhorses of the Middle Ages, and I’m assuming (although I have to confess I haven’t researched it so don’t know for sure) that this likely applies to Friesians as well. There is an ancient map of Friesland laid into the background here for context and content, although it’s pretty hard to make out. The knights and the medallion were accessed through Dover copyright-free images on a CD I bought. I try to work mostly from and with material I have generated myself, but sometimes that just isn’t possible.

Tagged in: calving season, coyotes, Friesians, horse, mallard duck, photography, rain, war horse | 0 Comments

Equine Artists

Category Archives: Judy Wood

Freaky Fridays

Smoke but no mirrors

Well, that was a surprise

Horse Mode

Not exactly as planned—

Season of flowers

Settling down

Mid July ???

But wait, there’s more—

Reunion time

Yes! the sump pump works!

Partly sunny, partly not

Progress, reruns, losses

More of same, sadly

Raining, cats and dogs. Birds too.

Big difference!

Thank goodness for Friday

May (be it will stop raining eventually)

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Category Archives: Judy Wood

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