No deadlines--

Finally a small breathing space for me with no imminent deadlines, having hung a bunch of works in one of the  Circle Park Mall public gallery spaces a week ago. I was quite unwell that day with a cold which was miraculously short-lived and lasted only a few days rather than the usual two weeks to a month that is generally my lot. Luckily I had husband Jim to herd me around and assist with what needed to be done. That's about the end of my art obligations until the pre-Christmas shows which start for me at the end of November, although there is an invitational show I might submit to earlier in November. I also have a couple of pieces in the Saskatchewan Craft Council members show, up at the Affinity Gallery now. Whew--now that I stop and look back, it's been a bit hectic on the art display front in the last while. 

I also joined the Saskatoon Camera club for the first time this year, and placed first in my category in the birds/wildflower competition for this month with a gull shot.

Most years in the fall we get grackles passing through the area. This year they had their second go-round last week. There were likely a couple of hundred of them in front and back yards over the course of much of a day. Shot one shows one of them (I suspect this must be a male from the plumage) pausing in the big cedar tree by the back deck. These birds are not as hard to photograph as corvids, but still are a bit challenging. Most of my best shots were taken through various windows from inside the house, as they were less aware of my lurking presence. Luckily I was ambitious enough to clean the windows a couple of weeks ago, so shooting through them was actually possible. 

Shot two is also from grackle day. I call this one "Simple Sparrow and the Invasion of the Grackles". Simple is a little hatchling from this spring that I believe I have written about here before. She is not a standard-issue sparrow, being a bit slow on the uptake and less given to fear and flight. She's always the one left sitting behind when the flock has fled from a startling sight or sound. She has a very devoted father who I think is the main reason she is still with us, since the finely-tuned survival skills of the species don't seem to exist in her. There were no other sparrows to be seen when the grackles were swarming over the yard, other than poor Simple, who was sitting by her usual feeding spot, wondering what was going on and looking generally confused.

I was lurking in the back yard trying to spot the nearby raven that I could hear but not see, when I looked up through the leaves of the oak to get this shot. The positive and negative shapes of the leaves and their shadows always make me think of jigsaw pieces.

Shot four was taken on an overcast day last week (we did actually get a day or two of rain, for the first time in months) on the way to the stables. A couple of weeks before, this was a grain field. As soon as harvest was over, the digging started for this very large pond and the foundations for a house, not visible to the right of the picture. Instant trees, too. I don't generally approve of good farmland being developed this way, but at least there is going to be a body of water that will be useful to the wild birds of the area. The main part I don't get about this project is why on earth they are building so close to the highway. Seems to me if you can afford a pond of this scale, you can afford the snow removal equipment that would allow you to have your house and pond a little farther away from the road.

It was quite dark all day Friday when we had the rain, but I got out between downpours to catch some water droplet shots while Jim toiled away at the drain on the corner, trying to clear it of the massive amount of leaves that were totally blocking it and flooding the intersection.