Author: boolie

Fading Glory, Fading Use

An old wooden garage in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland

Many of the garages in our old neighborhood are too small to hold modern cars. Even our little Crosstrek is a tight fit in our old one car garage. I’ve wanted to photograph these side-by-side garages for a while, as they have seen better days yet still hint at their former glory, and on this day fortune smiled as Ellie decided to walk down this street and I happened to have my camera with me.

An old wooden garage in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland

Spying on Santa

Our cat Boo rests in his favorite box beside the Christmas tree

For thousands of years on Christmas Eve, children have hoped to catch Santa delivering presents under the Christmas tree. But he always managed to avoid detection, until this year that is, when he looked down at a box beside a Christmas tree and realized, too late, the box was looking back at him. Don’t feel bad Santa, Boo is a clever little fellow. And the Boo Box has only increased his powers.

Frozen Rain Garden

Ice surrounds rocks in a rain garden

We got a little bit of snow on the weekend but it was the freezing rain that followed that made a mess of things. It did make for some lovely patterns in our rain garden though, the ice was starting to melt when I took this picture, I liked the way the ice had slightly pulled away from the rocks with a bright white line etched in its wake.

Within a couple of hours it had all melted and I was able to take Ellie on her first walk after missing the previous two.

Snow Watch

Snow Watch

Our cat Sam watches the snow fall outside our picture window. This is the fourth time we’ve gotten snow this crazy winter but this is the first heavy snowfall. The other times ice was much more of a problem, but this is the lovely snow I had hoped to take Ellie out in the previous times. They’ve canceled work tomorrow so I’ll be able to take her on a nice long walk in the morning.

Cornucopia

A variety of mineral deposits at Yellowstone National Park

As someone who loves playing around with shapes and colors and textures, my head nearly explodes when I see a scene like this. Sadly I didn’t have a wider lens at the time but I did my best to capture how many different little scenes you could see from this one location. Two of my recent posts (the orange mineral deposits and the watery fingers) were taken from this spot but with a longer lens, plus some other pictures I may post in the future. Mammoth Hot Springs is always crowded since it is both fascinating and right next to the hotel, so as someone who is a bit crowd averse I limit my time here, but otherwise I think I could spend a week wandering around. One of my favorite hiking trails also leads up from near here.

Oh Yellowstone!

A Lovely Pair

A pair of mountain goats in Yellowstone National Park

This pair of mountain goats reminds me of a pair of Kiwis (or were they Aussies?) that I met at the lookout on the top of Mount Washburn. They were young and touring a bunch of national parks in my homeland and asked my opinions on my favorite parks. They were lovely folks and although I headed back down the trail before them, they later came running past, saying the ranger had told them there were mountain goats near the trail. I kept my walking pace and arrived a short time after them, but the goats were already all the way down the hill and moving off. I got a quick picture but a better memory, meeting nice people on the trails is one of the joys of our national parks.

The goats aren’t native to Yellowstone but they were perfectly adapted to this part of the park, I was astounded at how quickly and easily they covered the steep slopes below the trail. I was even more impressed by the time I arrived back at the car, huffing and puffing, and unconvincingly consoled myself that they’d probably be equally slow and tired if they were carrying a heavy camera and lens.