Sidetracked Charley

Shadows on the barn door by J. Binford-Bell Tomorrow is May 1st. We used to do May baskets when I was a kid. We worked for days doing them for all the neighbors and then took off early May Day morning to deposit one on each stoop or porch or door knob. Per Wiki : May Day is  related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November q, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various Northern European pagan traditions. The end of April seems to be officially the end of the doldrums of winter and the Mud and Flood season of the highlands here. Many of the locals escape if they can and I end up with a lot of pet sitting and property watching jobs. May the locals begin to return from extended vacations. And those that own second homes here come back from Mexico or Phoenix to get their homes cleaned up and prepared for the Memorial Day weekend and the summer rental season.  May is when yo

Magique playing peek-a-boo Which figures first: the dogs or the camera? We are getting into some very beautiful weather and both the dogs and the camera are an excuse to be out and about instead of in my studio or cleaning up my kitchen. When they were younger my attention had to be more focused on them but now I can be so absorbed in focusing the view before me that I miss the presence of a dog in the scene like above. Rainbow Magique Or sometimes after I get home with a bunch of "cast offs" I fully intend to trash I realize the dog in the foreground made the shot. Certainly gave it scale. The goal that day was to photograph reflections. Quite accidentally, Magique spooked these geese that added ripples to all my subsequent photos of reflections. That can be one of the biggest problems taking photographs with dogs - getting them to not chase your subjects. Mine are pretty good 90% of the time. But they don't understand not rippling the water. They think t

SEA-TAC circa 1952 A group of us now senior citizens got tripping down memory lane recently about airports -- as they once were. My memories were of the Albuquerque and Kansas City airports mostly. And one of the earliest was when my father came back from Korea. He was an US Air Force officer. Military flew free in uniform then. It would have been just about the same time this picture post card of the Seattle airport was taken. Passengers walked off the plane on a rolling set of stairs and across the tarmac to people that waited just behind a railing outside. See if that would ever happen in these high security times. Anyway Dad was one of the first passengers off. I was sure it was my daddy but Mother assured me Dad was almost always last to deplane because as a pilot he felt the tail seats were the safest. But Dad got off first that day because he had flown the commercial prop plane from somewhere outside San Francisco when the pilot and co-pilot came down sick from food poi

New location for raised beds When I moved from Questa to Black Lake I abandoned the large garden plot and three great 4 x 8 foot raised beds. I did not miss the garden plot but the first spring I erected two 8 x 4 raised beds. And quickly found that I could grow more than I could eat in them. Number one I could grow fewer things at the higher altitude and shorter growing season. Lettuce, spinach, kale and mustard greens thrived. Squash was very risky. So when I had to move the old beds for the studio addition and found them rotted out after eight years I decided on 4 x 4 foot raised beds. But I had one summer of container gardening in the back yard in between. When the construction crew was gone I built the new smaller beds and located them in a scattered pattern toward the front of the studio. Mistake. They were not as protected as I thought they would be and didn't get enough sun. Last summer I toyed with beds at the base of the studio window for squash. I covered them w

Chairs at Monet's Pond by J. Binford-Bell It has been one of those weeks. One of those weeks when I would like to be lounging by a pond just spending time doing nothing. But I have been busy. Busy can be good especially when their is money attached to it. I have this "day job" I do in the "slow times." I pet and property sit. And even work as an odds job woman. April, which is a dead time for art and tourism, is a a busy time for pet sitting and property watching. Those that can afford it leave town. April can be a rather dismal month in the mountains. Not warm enough to do summer projects and not cold enough to enjoy winter sports. Us locals call it mud and flood season only this year there has not been much of that. But there have been spring snows putting a kabash on spring projects for gardening. But all those little jobs that have been preventing me from just sitting in a chair and being lazy are going to make it possible to build myself a tunnel g

Spring runoff by J. Binford-Bell The cyber stalking by the gang of five plus one has made me take a long look at how I spend my time in cyber space. As a result I will be spending more time blogging and less time interfacing on Facebook. And that interface will be limited to trusted friends. More blogs means more time off the computer and out in the world gathering fodder for those blogs. And given that I am a photographer there will be more photo blogs no doubt. Forensic evidence While accompanying my dogs they located this fragment of bone. It is a large bone, not human but I do not know if cow or elk. But notice the tiny teeth marks near the pine need on the upper shaft. Rodent no doubt. But an even bigger mystery is the animal with the big enough jaws that it fractured the shaft to extract the marrow. Well, moving along quickly . . . I was after all seeking tranquility away from bullies. Tranquility Base New Mexico It was a beautiful morning for a pleasant stro

On the edge by J. Binford-Bell Anne Frank wrote in her diary that in spite of all that happened in her short life that she continued to believe that people were basically good. I don't agree with her. I think People, seen as a large faceless mass, are basically mean spirited and bad. Our goal in this short life is to rise above that base me-above-all-elseness. I was watching a documentary about Buddha last night and how he believed we could all be the Buddha. At the same time I was being attacked on a social media for absolutely no reason by people that were clearly not the Buddha. It was reminding me of the rock wars we had as kids. It was our side of the street against the other side. How alien and scary the people on the north side seemed. We must protect ourselves, so we gathered rocks and headed to the high ground, a low hill that overlooked the road and down upon Judy and her minions. We were ready until we began to itch. Our fortress was teeming with poison oak. W

Calm before the storm by J. Binford-Bell Monday morning, April 2nd, 2012, was a glorious dawn. The day began with a wonderful walk with the fur kids and camera. Then it was off to the Angel Fire Visitor's center with my sister's and my photographs to hang for the Binfords' Back Country Photography show April and May. I had worn a light hoodie for the walk and just shirt sleeves to hang the exhibit. But the minute I stepped out of the Angel Fire Visitors Center I realized that was a mistake. Clouds had rolled in and by the time I got home it was spitting snow. The Bell by J. Binford-Bell It was April and I know we can get some heavy snows in April but I frankly was not taking this one seriously. I was playing with my camera and the photo opportunities instead of locating the snow shovels, bringing firewood into the house, finding and having ready all lanterns and flash lights. Big mistake. Lawn Chairs by J. Binford-Bell Forecasts were now saying a fo