Early Spring Potpourri 2016

Look at this plump, fluffy and curious robin! We spied him at Robert's Bird Sanctuary by Lake Harriet.

There is Cedar Apple Rust growing on a Cedar tree along the Minnehaha trail. Weird!

We admired a tree smothered and covered with shrooms at Interstate Park in Wisconsin.

We caught a baby painted turtle at Wood Lake. And inspected his good side.

And lookie here. We also found a baby snapper. We left him be.

A spring rainbow at Wood lake. 

Subtle color also delighted at Wood Lake.

White flowers poked through the crumbly leaves at Interstate Park.

We saw a peek of purple there too.

There's a Rookery at Interstate Park. Soon, the wild squawks of baby blue Herons will be a disturbance of the peace. 

I profiled a great beauty at Robert's Bird Sanctuary.

Two turtle time at Wood lake.

There's green sprouts about at Robert's.

Do you know what bird these feathers belong too? Leave me a comment if you do. We found an avian crime scene among the trees at Robert's, and I couldn't resist collecting a few beautiful yellow feathers.

I heart feathers.

And do you know what else I love? My cats. Help me solve The Crime of the Cat Food over at The Chorus of the Crows

The links:

Life thru the Lens

A Rural Journal

Saturday's Critters

Bird d'Pot

Wild Bird Wednesday

My World Wednesday

Photo Friday

Travel Photo Thursday

My Favorite Trip

Image-in-ing

Practical Mondays

Let them eat figs!

click to enlarge

What is the secret ingredient in this family recipe?  Well, our feathered friend would like you to think it's figs.  But we know better.

Don't tell anyone.  But secret is the theme over at www.illustrationfriday.com this week.

Duluth From Top to Bottom

 My husband raced in the Duluth Inline Marathon for the 13th time this year. He finished in 1 hour and 20 minutes.  So that left us plenty of time to take in the sights from top to bottom!  But since this is a bottom photo I should say from bottom to top.

We visited Park Point for the first time.  A 5 mile sand bar (the world's largest freshwater sandbar) with beautiful dunes.  It is a great birding spot.  But on this day it was so darn windy that we didn't see a thing.  Except a cool perspective of the city.

And feathers.

Now we ventured to the top.  And visited Enger Park.  Also for the first time.  Geez.  What were we doing all those other years.  Enger Park is the home of the iconic Enger tower.  www.engertowerduluth.com  And part of Duluth's scenic Skyline Drive.   You can see the long sand spit from the previous photos on the far left of this photo.

The famous Aerial lift bridge is on the left of this photo.

Skyline Drive continues to Hawk Ridge.  A place we have visited several times over the years.  They always have a hawk festival on the weekend that we are there.  Migrating birds and hawks are banded and released.  For a small fee people are able to hold and release a bird of their own.  More on that next week.

Photo Contest Loser

Clouds

Shadows
Red

Lakes

Barns

Texture

Circles

Bridges

Reflections

Birds

The letter "A" (Arenal Volcano)

Every month Joan over at www.myretirementchronicles.blogspot.com hosts a photo contest. These are all of my entries to date. Not a winner in the bunch. There are several honorable mentions every month as well. I've only had one mention. Geez. I think that the judges are some of my sorority sisters from college that thought I was a big fat loser. Or maybe the judges are some old high school classmates that thought I took the short bus. Or maybe the judge is secretly Simon Cowell. Although I haven't received any nasty comments. I bet that if Simon really visited blogs we would have a lot of comment moderation going on. Delete! And I'm convinced that one of the judges is Heidi Klum. She probably takes one look at my latest photo and declares," You're out!" So I've decided to pack up my knives because I will clearly never be Top Chef...I mean Top Photographer. I'm joking of course. I'll keep playing until Tyra Banks tells me to immediately pack up my camera and go home. Shoot.

Feather...Pillow

I love feathers. These are turkey feathers if I remember correctly. And they are the inspiration for today's sewing and painting project.

I drew the feathers onto tracing paper. Then I used blue transfer paper to lightly apply the image to some muslin fabric.

Then I used fabric paint and voila...feathers.

Here I've sewn the pillow together with a contrasting fabric backing. It will cover another pillow like a pillow case.

I applied some fringe and it's done! My new feather pillow is just one of a million crafty projects I've been working on lately. I might be exaggerating only slightly.

Like this one. Does everyone recognize the middle feather?

Poor Little Fishes

There's no guessing this week as to the connection between my last art post and today's photo post. It's fish. I just got back from Costa Rica. So what do I do? Put my Florida photos on my blog. But they were the closest match to this week's theme. And I love these photos. Unfortunately the reason I was able to photograph these poor little fishes was because they did not survive the brutal cold front Florida received in January. But I couldn't resist capturing their fleeting beauty. And obviously there were lots of other things washed up on the beach that day. All the photos were taken during one beach walk. Even my header shot was taken that day. It's the foam at the water's edge. Enjoy!

Two fists full of feathers

One of my favorite places to walk is at Wood lake here in Minneapolis. You would never know that 35w hugs the West side of this marshland trail. It's definately a world away and full of nature's usual suspects. I've seen fox in the afternoon. And families of raccoons in the evening. You never know when a deer might run across the trail. And at all times of the day there are herons, ducks and lots of geese. So would it surprise you to know that I have a certain drawer at home devoted to my collection of feathers. On two different evenings at Wood lake recently I collected a fist full of feathers. One of the fists pictured is mine and the other my husbands. I think feathers are objects of beauty. My cats think they are almost as good as the real thing!