Up and down

An entertaining week here in Saskatchewan, for various activities and also for the several seasons we had in the course of a few short days. As I mentioned in last Monday's post, we were finally enjoying some truly lovely weather, much, in fact, the same as yesterday and today have been. I headed out to "my" herd south of the city to see what was new on Tuesday evening as I hadn't checked in for a while, and I was curious whether any of the mares had presented us with new foals to admire (but no).  Hoped I might catch a nice sunset at the same time, but as I was en route down the highway I realized that things were looking a bit dark, cloudy and windy. By the time I got to the herd a few minutes later, it was downright blustery and threatening, but I carried on nonetheless and managed to get some interesting atmospheric shots in the "maternity ward" as I like to think of the mare herd these days, and later of the yearlings in action.

Turns out the cold front that blew through on Tuesday evening was heralding a nasty weather system, so we went from a lovely and temperate 22 degrees C (about 70 F) on Tuesday to 3 degrees C (about 36 F) on Wednesday, and that 3 degrees was the *high* for the day. Went down to minus 10 at night! Then by Friday I arose from my night's sleep to shake my head in amazement/distress to see snow on the ground. It took me a few minutes to process that one as I couldn't make sense of what I was witnessing, besides which the first minutes after arising aren't amongst my more alert ones. Seeing white on the ground just confused the heck out of me for a bit.

The only good part of all this is that I hadn't been fooled by the few nice days into getting carried away with planting any of the newly purchased bedding-out plants I had picked up at the nursery, nor had I been tricked into moving the houseplant collection outdoors. I've been caught out in May before by these sudden plunges in temperature, and hard though it is I've learned to exercise a little patience before plunging headlong into full garden mode. Still, my little fingers are just itching to get all that stuff into the ground!! 

Today's shots feature a compendium of the ups and downs of the past week. First shot shows a close-up of the blossoms on the little Manitoba maple tree in our front yard. At the beginning of last week this little tree was covered with these, and there were large numbers of very small and active insects buzzing around every blossom. Jim went out to examine them and reported them to be either a very small wasp or a very small bee. They looked from a distance just like a bunch of little gnats in the air, they were so tiny. By the end of the week I was taking shots of these same blossoms with caps of snow sitting on them.

Shots two and three are from the horse herd shoot. Shot two is a tight crop of a wonderful piece of gnarled wood. I love doing photos of this sort of texture, and the old woodpile in the yearling pasture is a veritable treasure trove of texture and subtle colour variation. I spent a bit of time doing shots of this sort as I was heading back to the car, but the light had really gone on me by then and most weren't of acceptable quality. My friend Donna is going to join me and we plan a "woodpile shoot" tomorrow evening (weather permitting!!).

Shot three shows some of the yearling herd (plus one pregnant mare) scattering ahead of a huge wind and scouring dust as the weather system hit. I was about ready to run for cover when the wind and dust first started, accompanied by some driving rain, but then I looked over and saw the yearling herd in action and ran towards them instead. As I did so I thought, "This is why I bought the camera armor, so it will have its first test this evening". The outside of the camera got incredibly dusty but presumably the inside will have been protected by the casing of the armor which is designed to protect the camera from dust and moisture. 

Shot four shows Mickey heading back in through the light covering of snow that had accumulated on the back deck Friday morning. He wasn't impressed.

The up side of Friday being so rotten weather-wise was that I had to do indoor activities, so I was able to devote some time to playing with a shot of Mana, the young Gypsy cob filly featured in one of last week's photos. I'm pleased with the way this one turned out and have plans for many more art images featuring these horses. 

So that was the week--a bit of everything to contend with. One of these weeks (or months) I might even be able to post a whole week with no snow or threat of snow!! I can hardly wait. Mind you, I do whine about extreme heat, dust, and biting insects, so be forewarned!!