Everything But The Kitchen Sink ...

ALERT: EXTREMELY RANDOM, RAMBLING BLOGGING TO FOLLOW ....

So ... I went to bed early, being tired and all. Me and this jet lag thing are not getting along at all this time. Sometimes I don't even notice a problem being an insomniac and all.

So ... I am up. And have a HUGE need to tie up some blogging loose ends - little things I was going to blog about, things I left out, you know - the stuff y'all don't care about but I am going to put in in here anyway ... BECAUSE MY MOM READS MY BLOG.

AND LIKES IT.

Go figure.

So ... random stuff to follow.

1) On the plane during my flight from LA to Houston, I was coveting my neighbors Blackberry. The phone wallpaper was a photo of somewhere that looked like Arches National Park (one of my most favorite places on earth ... but as I think about it - the more places I go visit ... the lower on the list it gets ... how sad). All I have had is the stupid red Verizon red funky 'V' or what ever it is. So I set about figuring out how to change it.

It was so easy, it was embarrassing I didn't know how:

I e-mailed it to Gary and he told me that I must have too much time on my hands, but now, every time I look at my phone, I smile ...

2) My Chicks and Hens plant is planning on taking over the world ...

Really ...

Note the ones on the ground that Gary bumped off when he was putting in bark:

Did they die? No, they are not only alive, they are blossoming. I have no clue where the roots went since Gary put in a ton of bark. My friend, who says she has a brown thumb - but grows a garden every year, says she would like some - she is convinced she won't kill them.

My note to her: You CAN'T kill them. Probably even if you try (like, oh, say, knock them off the plant and leave them to die on the ground ...). I DON'T DO ANYTHING AND THEY LIVE. I don't water them, I don't talk to them, weed them. A cute little nursery of baby ones are growing in the center of the pot - it is just adorable! I am thinking of putting them in the rest of the pots because I clearly cannot keep anything else alive ...

And I so LOVE their shape. The itty bitty little leaves (?) what ever they are as they get progressively bigger and bigger. And I think it is cool when they flower - they just sprout a sprig and tiny white flowers appear:

I am addicted to photographing them:

3) In my Wildflower Posts I tried to only put photos of wildflowers and some of my photos were feeling left out.

This one didn't make the cut based solely on the fact that I rolled down my window, pointed my camera out it and took the photo keeping my eyes on the road and not even looking at what I was taking a photo of ... so in my book it really isn't a photograph.
But it's pretty ... and it is after three in the morning and my standards have plummeted ...

Sunrise photo - I limited myself to only one, but I like this one even if all the trees are ugly (I believe I shot this out of my moving car also ...):

Swamp on Skinner Lane that frustrates me because it has all those beautiful Iris's (?) and unless I swim through alligator infested water to get to them, cannot do them justice with my telephoto lens ... (they are not in the picture, they are to the left of the photo ... just sayin' ...)

Lovely house or something in Brenham (or Hempsted?), the beauty marred by a ginormous wire cutting through the photo. Can you see it? I could photoshop it out of the trees and sky - but not the house itself - you can only do so much with photoshop ... or need to have patience and be an artist ...

And WHAT THE HELL? I'm toodling along on some podunk little road, filled with farms, decrepit old barns, cows, broken down trucks, old rusted farm equipment ... and this:

Me thinks someone has some insecurity issues ... or 29 kids ...

It has flowers, but ... there is a horse!

4) I just gave up and decided to put in some more Wildflower photos that didn't make the cut.

Took this out of my car window (I really did get out of my car ... a lot!). What I like about this photo is that field hidden way back there - it must have been fantastic looking (and there was a fence in front of the front of this photo and I am not jumping (read: 'rolling over') a barbed wire fence in search of the perfect field of bluebonnets ...

Thought this would look better than it does. The 'artsy' "take-the-picture-of-indian-paintbrush-through-a-fence-overgrown-with-ivy" ... it even sounds better than it looks, doesn't it?

5) Confession time:

Photoshop is magic.

And for you that want to know how I did this (and there are some - just ignore this if you are not one that has told me you want to know). I wanted to boost the color of the bluebonnets, but not darken the cow. I made a duplicate layer and set the blending mode to 'linear burn' which boosts the bluebonnet color - but darkens the cow. So I add a mask to that layer and 'erase' the effect of the linear burn by 'painting' over the cow (with the opacity set to 50% and feathering you don't have to be exact - I didn't have to ..., well - stay within the lines of the cow ...). I then get rid of the very light pole in the background because it was bugging me.

7) A funny.

While driving on The Great Ocean road in Melbourne, we hit rain and fog for a stretch and were disheartened that our photos would be crap. We happened to be driving a section that was inland and not right on the coast, but in the rain forest.

We see Kangaroo and Koala warning signs often, but as we sped past one, I burst out laughing. I asked Gary if he had seen it, but he was too busy looking at the road. I told him it was a Kangaroo warning sign, but that I could have sworn he was skiing! I was thinking I needed a photo, but it was pouring rain and I don't really think Gary believed me - so was not really inclined to turn around and go back for it.

To pacify me, he told me I could make one in photoshop.

Tonight I decided to Google 'Kangaroo Warning Sign' and skiing. And sure enough - I found photos on the web of just that:

But since the only one without some proprietary crap written over it was itty bitty, I made one in photoshop ... just for fun:

So - that's it - all my random crap. Everything but the kitchen sink ...

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ah, why not: