Capturing Summertime

This week's You Capture theme is summertime. 

Go ahead and hum along with Ella, you know you want to..."Summertime...and the living is easy...."

Except around here the garden is gearing up.

 first figs of the year

black-eyed peas (folks around these parts call 'em cowpeas)

shelled black-eyed peas

sandcherries about to meet their jelly maker

thinly sliced zucchini being cooked down a la Fearnley-Whittingstall

tomatillos bound for a Rick Bayless recipe, adapted here

Tired of all those vegetables and fruit? Here, I'll toss you a bone...

mouth-watering ribs, read about them here

Ah, summer. The livin' is busy and the eatin' is good.

You Capture is a photo project designed to motivate you to get out and use your camera(s). There are pros and beginners alike who share their captures; extend your summertime fun with more photos at: I Should Be Folding Laundry.

Capturing Purple

Purple has been a favorite color of mine for a loooong time. As a youngster, my bedroom walls were lilac and the afghans knitted and crocheted for me by grandmas and friends were always purple in hues ranging from psychedelic black-purples to very staid and lady-like violet shades. It's not a color I can wear, or want for dishes or towels... it just makes me happy. So as soon as I saw Beth was accepting links for this morning's You Capture: Purple & Bathrooms, I grabbed the camera and made a quick tour of the house.

in the garden

purple glad

from the larder

home grown purple and white pearl onions

in a patio pot

in the kitchen junk drawer; a Christmas gift from someone who knows my purple passions

Duck Tape, don't leave home without it.

and Pasque flowers found morel hunting last year (yes, an archive photo... but they're so pretty!)

not morels

The other theme this week is bathrooms, of which we have two cool art-deco examples. But seriously friends, 'clean enough to photograph' is a little beyond my motivation level today. Maybe later.

"I never saw a purple cow..." but there's a good chance you might find one over at I Should Be Folding Laundry.   

Flowers for YouCapture

Whew! Do we  have a lot of catching up to do! Since YouCapture got me going the first time, I guess it's right that I jump back in with an offering from our yard for this week's theme: flowers.

We've been working on our backyard since the day after we bought the house in January. In late February we planted beds with plain & fancy gladiolus (from a big box store) and some irises liberated from our just-recently sold house. Despite our rough handling of them, a few of the irises flowered and -- much to our delight -- the glads came up strong and vibrant.

Part of my catching up, blog-wise, will be about the lawn-to-garden transformation that's taken up a bunch of our time. There are lots of pictures and thoughts to share. In the meantime, the tomatoes are still seedlings, the okra plants are a mere 4" tall, and the runners on the pole beans are only just reaching the bottom of their 6' climb. The veggie contribution to this week's theme is from a Japanese Eggplant (Ichiban) planted in patio pot. 

Over at I Should Be Folding Laundry, everything is coming up ro... you know. Go check it out.

Memory

In what seems like a former life, I worked for a Bay Area company that wrote printed circuit board design software. I had never been around programmers before and I loved working with these incredibly bright people; they were my first exposure to real geeks.

When I saw my first board design being inked by the plotter, I was entranced-- it was beautiful! Since then I have scavenged boards from almost all of the computers I've owned and they serve as reminders of different phases of my life... that one was wasted on a Crystal Quest obsession, this one helped me write my dissertation, that one was my way of removing the Ws from keyboards... memories.

Beautiful subjects, eh? (embiggen for better view)
Well, if you're just not seeing it, it could be the photos: I'm at the beginning of a learning curve for the newest technology in my life (thank you, M!), a Pentax K2000. Really, the photos will get better.

For beauty from a real pro, check out the gallery at Marion C. Martinez's Circuit Board Art, where technology, recycling, religious iconography, and fashion peacefully coexist (someday I will own a piece to photograph). 


The most parsimonious route to other technology-inspired pictures at I Should Be Folding Laundry is here:

L is for Luxury

Ahhhhhh...

You Capture: Things that Start with 'L'

Now this is what I call multitasking... stress relief after a really busy weekend and a hectic start to this week, plus a quick snap for this week's assignment. Reapplying nose to grindstone now...but if you've got the leisure, head to I Should Be Folding Laundry to see what in the 'L' is going on.

Warm pad, old cat

 

This week's YouCapture theme: Warm.

This is our eldest cat on his K&H Thermo-Pet Mat. He sleeps on that mat year-round, pulling in every one of those 102 degrees to ease his aching, 20-year old bones. The TPM has been plugged in non-stop for over a year and continues to be worth every penny.

Don't forget to check out additional wonderful, warm thoughts for this week at:

YouCapture: Cold

A bouquet of fern frost for this week's YouCapture theme: cold. 
Found on my front sidewalk.


When I saw the theme over at I Should Be Folding Laundry I decided I might as well get the first post out of way, even though there's not much else here. Welcome! Next time you visit, you should be able to find out the approximate location of that sidewalk and a little more about what goes on in a seemingly stochastic life.  Yes, the blog background is fern frost, too.