Not Just for Guests
Trixie takes a nap on a summer afternoon in the guest bedroom. Yesterday and today I’ve spent in our bedroom across the hall as it’s been hot and didn’t cool down much overnight, and we have a portable air conditioner in this room. Trixie took a nap on my lap for a few hours around noon so I took a nap too to avoid disturbing her. By mid-afternoon there was a shift change and Sam replaced her, he’s curled up on me at the moment.
Fern Canyon
I’ve seen ferns growing on canyon walls before but never where they are about the only thing on the vertical walls as in the aptly named Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Visiting the canyon had been on my list of places to visit in the redwoods, but so had many others, but it was a friend’s insistence that I go that made it a focus on this visit in June 2016. You can drive in but I hiked the James Irvine Trail from the Visitor Center down to the Fern Canyon Loop Trail.
It’s a mesmerizing place to visit, thousands of green hands waving gently in the wind, and I took some video with the old camera but hoped to return this spring with the new and better one. The road into the canyon was closed however so I decided to wait until the fall. I want to get there early in the morning so I can get some video without so many people around, the voices of people shouting was hard to avoid on my last visit, even when I couldn’t see anyone from where I was standing. It’s such a lovely and peaceful place — at least it is when the stream level is low like it was here, I can only imagine what it’s like when the water is high.
I Don’t Put My Cats Up On a Pedestal …
… but I might put them on a stool. This picture of Boo is from March, I had just received my Sony A6500 camera and wanted to give it a quick test. Having only shot with Canon for a couple of decades I didn’t know how to do much other than press the shutter, but I put Boo and Sam up on the stool for some quick test shots. I tried Trixie too but she was not so willing to pose. Taken with the Sony Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 lens, which I thought would be a favorite, and it is. Lighting is a mix of late afternoon light coming from the big picture window behind me and room lighting from the room to my left.
Snow at a Distance
Boo and I have to enjoy this snow at a distance. Though inches apart Boo was separated from the snow by many degrees as he enjoyed the start of a rare heavy snowstorm from the warmth of one of our picture windows. For me I went out into the snow the next morning when Ellie and I took our walk, but am now separated by time. I can but look back and try to remember the cold and the quiet as we are in the midst of a long dry and hot spell in summer, surely as close to the sun as Boo was to the snow, the snowy night but a distant memory.
Pepper, You’re a Good Pup
My walk home from the train varies a bit depending on how I catch the lights as I pass the busier streets, but sometimes I walk past this mural at the Davita Dialysis treatment center in our neighborhood, part of the MIKE program for underserved youth. It always makes me happy to see Pepper smiling so, that’s one happy pup. I wish more buildings had murals, it’s a little bright spot on the way home.
Boo Docks the Boo Box
Provisions replenished, he’ll be back sailing the hardwood.
