We're back from the long voyage!

We're back from the long trek from Washington State to Texas! It was an amazing 6 days, and was more fun than the trip up there two years ago. We had driven Amy and the boys up to Ft. Lewis near Tacoma WA so they could move into their new home on post. Now that Chad is back in Iraq for the second time, Amy gave up her house in Washington to be nearer family in Texas while Chad is deployed. On the way back, we knew a lot more about where to stay and made it a point to do all the things we said we'd do if we ever had the chance again. My hat is off to my daughter Amy who is a wonderful trip planner, navigator, and driver. She drove long hours across several states, and allowed me to take the photos you will see in later posts. Thanks Amy!

We had many adventures, and saw more beautiful places and wildlife than we had going up to WA. We stayed at a restored historic hotel in Oregon, went back to our favorite cheese/ice cream store in Idaho, saw breath-taking rock formations in Utah, saw the Grand Canyon and the Meteor Crater in Arizona, and even stopped by the "real, authentic" burial place of Billy the Kid. We stopped by a Quilt display and saw some wonderful handmade (and machine made) quilts, and stayed in a cabin in the National Forest near the Grand Canyon. What an adventure!

To see some photos of Shoshone Falls in Idaho and mesas in New Mexico, that I took on the trip up to Washington, click on the links to see some of My Old Photographic Memories.

I will be posting some photos of all the high points in future, but this one I wanted to devote to two of my favorite photos of the Grand Canyon. I still can't believe I was actually there. To say that no photo can do it justice seems trivial but I believe it's the absolute truth. I hope you like the photos above. There are plenty more to come! Stay tuned....

Mike Z

PS Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there. I am truly blessed to be counted in that number!

Rose of Sharon

This week has gone by so fast. We had had so much rain last month, the flowers all started blooming at once it seemed. Our Rose of Sharon bush in the back yard was all green leaves one day, then all blooms the next! Took a quick photo of a representative specimen, and immediately it was like the "rain faucet" shut off for the next week. All the flowers began to look a little tired. Then today it rained a little, tomorrow maybe more.

Will be traveling the highways of the Great Western United States next week, but when I return I expect to have lots of photos and blog entries to report.

Hope you are well, and thanks for stopping by!

Mike Z

The Gardenia bush in Alice's front yard

We're back to flowers now. When Jan and I pulled up to my sister's house on the way to New Orleans for the reunion (see the causeway post), the beautiful fragrance of gardenias filled the air as I got out of the car. The gardenia bush, sort of small when I had visited last, had grown to near the height of the carport of their house! There were hundreds of fragrant white blossoms all over the bush. I vowed to get at least one good shot of a gardenia before I left the next morning.

The gardenia is almost a legend in our family. Like the magnolia, the gardenia was a favorite of my mother's. And my father, who also liked them very much, would always plant a gardenia bush at each place we moved to. We were never without the blooms during the spring, and we could hide and cool off in the shade of the dense dark green leaves during the hot summers.

The gardenia was mom and dad's "dating flower." Whenever he could, my dad would bring mom (not a mom then, of course) a small bunch of gardenias when they went out on dates. I can't say for sure that this is true, but we always heard the stories of dad bicycling from New Orleans to Mississippi, where mom lived (about 150 miles), to visit with his grandparents, and date Imogene. I can't remember if he rode the bike because he didn't have a car, or if the car was broke down. Either way, it always made us kids aware of just how strong Ray's feelings were for his beloved 'Gene.

A kind of sad footnote to the legend; when mom passed away, we wanted her to have a gardenia bloom with her in the casket. But the gardenias were out of season, so Alice found a silk one that we placed in her folded hands. I think she would have been glad to know that we remembered how much she loved them (and us).

PS Thanks to my brother Bill for reminding me that the flower is a gardenia, not a camelia. I swear I knew that, I really did....

Birds on the Williams' Back Porch

I think I have mentioned on previous posts that I'd be trying my hand at taking bird photos today. My in-laws Frank and Karen had told me about Jan and Wayne Williams and the abundance of birds on their back porch. The Williams' live in a "less citified" part of Austin and all kinds of wildlife roam about their area pretty much un-bothered by the humans living there. Jan and Wayne have been feeding the birds on their back porch for some time now, and they enjoy sitting on the sofa in the den and watching them out the picture window that leads to the porch/deck.

This being my first "real" attempt at capturing wild birds on photo chip, I decided to bring the biggest memory card I could find and stick to my motto "take 100 to get 1." I started out with the camera on a tripod pointing at the feeder, and used a cord remote trigger to take the shots. Two problems -- the cord wasn't long enough, and all the action with the birds was happening in the trees and birdbaths around the feeder! So I made an executive decision and tried the rest hand-held. Using my elbows as a "tripod" on the arms of the lawn chair, I did my best to stabilize the camera while carefully pressing the button. I was at pretty much maximum zoom on the telephoto lens, and I am very bad about camera shake when I take shots hand-held.



The first and boldest birds to hit the feeder after I settled back into the lawn chair were the finches. I had the camera set on auto exposure and auto focus, so it was difficult to get focused and set before they flew off. The leaves and surrounding foliage made the autofocus go a little crazy, so I switched to manual focus. Later shots came out much better, I think.


The next birds brave enough to get close to the feeder and birdbath were the whitewing doves. They mostly stayed in the trees and eyed me curiously, but never went to the birdbath or the deck floor to feed. Jan says they usually just pick the seeds that the finches and cardinals toss out of the feeder, but they didn't this time. I did see a young cardinal picking seeds off the porch floor, but no doves.



Next came the cardinals! These beautiful birds were the ones I was hoping to see. Jan said they were a little off their feeding schedule, as they are still parenting the fledgling babies, and as with human babies, it takes a lot of effort on the parents' part. She told me that the young birds are changing rapidly this week, and had just gotten the orange color in their beaks. I think she said that the beaks were black before they changed. I include a baby photo below:

Last to come around were the noisy aggressive blue jays. As soon as they arrived the finches and cardinals hit the road! They didn't stay away long, but they sure didn't want to tangle with the jays, either. The jays stayed at the birdbath, and up in the branches, and were particularly wary of me and the camera. I tried several times to get a clear photo of one, but if I moved even slightly, off they went. I got this one good photo (in my humble opinion of course...) after several attempts.

I end this post with another photo of the purple finch. This was the bird that I was surprised to learn about. There are no purple finches in my area, which may be because I live in a more urban area of Austin. Or, it may be because I don't have a bird feeder! Either way, I thought these were very unusual and pretty birds.


Wayne mentioned that there might be some deer passing by at the bottom of the hill behind their house. Sure enough, I spotted two does moving through the trees, but wasn't able to get a clear photo of either one. Maybe next time.

Thanks to everyone for visiting my 'blog. I sincerely appreciate you dropping by. Next post will probably be more flowers, since I have collected a few more flora photos in recent days. Stay tuned, more to come!

Best regards, Mike Z

PS Looking on Bob Zeller's wonderful website, I noticed that he calls the purple/red colored finch a house finch. It looks a lot like the purple finch in my photos, so I will have to do some more research to see which mine are. Will keep you posted.