ROULIER'S RUSTY RELIQUES

JUST LOVE THIS PICTURE

I just love this picture it says so much with so little.

BLOOD MOON

We had  pretty good view so I ran out on breaks from the fabulous Bronco game. My hand held camera took a crappy pix but it did capture the blood effect :)

MY THREE CHARLOTTES

I have three Charlotte's living just outside my back door, I'm always happy to see them because they eat so many of those pesky bugs. These spiders are polite they don't come inside to spend the winter. For pictures of mine and some info scroll down.

The garden spider spins a large complex orb-web, which measures up to 40 cm in diameter and is used to capture insect prey. Individuals spend much of their time at the center of their web, and detect vibrations in the silk through their legs when insects become trapped. This spider wraps prey items in silk before consuming them. When this species is threatened, it rapidly shakes itself and the web up and down, and may drop to the ground on a silk thread. The web may be rebuilt every day, and the old web is consumed so that the proteins used in its construction are conserved and re-used.

Males approach females with caution in order to avoid being eaten. During copulation, males embrace the female's abdomen; sperm is transferred by the insertion of one of the male's palps. The male departs after mating, and the female spends a number of days inside her retreat. She then begins to spin an egg sac or 'cocoon', which protects the eggs. She stays close to the cocoon for a number of days before dying. The young spiders emerge from the cocoon in spring; they gather into dense groups until after their first molt, after which they disperse by 'ballooning', a form of dispersal in which the spiderlings are carried on the wind by a thread of silk.

The word 'spider' derives from the Old English word 'spithra' and is related to the German 'spinne', both of which mean 'spinner. Spider webs have been used to heal wounds and to staunch blood flow for many years.

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VACATION

Just got back from vacation where there is no cell phone or wifi. I got out of the habit, pretty quick, of posting regularly :) Also my first vacation without kids I almost didn't know how to deal with it..........

full moon over neighbors camper, we never saw him most everyone were just parking their campers and coming up once in a while

Osprey babies

the Madison river Yellowstone looks are deceiving it was 50 degrees with a wind that day

Madison in Yellowstone, Mike is standing in the shallow water, out by the rock it was almost waist deep

Wyoming where we got gas it was raining and cool that day but picturesque......

STUDIO CLEAN UP

I'm finally getting around to cleaning my studio here are a few shots......

In my studio I have two large drafting tables side by side under both are storage. This shot is my mess that's half cleaned up when I thought to photo it!
pretty much one half is clean
shot of both tables the far one as clean as it will get.....

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BIRDS NESTS AND BABY BIRDS

 A couple of artsy friends of mine, Sue Doyle and Terry Decker, gave me the most spectacular bird's nest ever and it included 4 little periwinkle blue woodpecker eggs. Mom unfortunately was electrocuted but her babies will become a piece of art and live on.

In addition Sue Doyle also gave me a decorative bird house which I hung outside on one of my trees couple of years ago and a mother bird liked it enough to have her babies there, it is pretty glitzy. This year the magpies are back in full force so I have to run out and chase them away because she's back and I'm sure that those little guys would make a tasty meal. We have way too many magpies up here again, they eat the songbirds babies and eggs, last year was the first time in a long time I've had birds back in the yard.

Glitzy house, home sweet home! You can just barely see a little beak in there.

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WHERE I LIVE

Right now, where I live, it's beautiful absolutely breath taking. After winter and months of rain I decided that me and my dogs could use a little exercise. So early in the morning we walk to the top of the mountain that we live on. It has totally been kicking my ass, the initial climb is a pretty steep incline. Here are a few shots.

almost to the top is a birds nest in the sage brush....
view looking east toward Denver
view looking west towards Evergreen...
half way down looking on down on a couple of houses on our street
looking down at our roof

ANOTHER PIG POST

This is absolutely fascinating, trying to figure out the best way to dry this pig out. So I was thinking that his ears and snout are dry enough so I am going to start wrapping the ears and nose in wet paper towel.

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PIG ROAST

Okay here's what happened. My friend Deborah sends me an email "I got a pig head for you"......hummm what does that mean exactly, a pig head??? So I'm intrigued. "okay"...... she then sends me another email, "...it's smoked and the cheeks are missing but it has the ears and the nose". "okay"......."it's in a bag in my trunk". "okay" now what. "I'll leave it for you at the gallery". Today I unwrapped the little beauty and here's what I found, oh yeah it had an earring in the ear, touche Deborah... My plan is to try and dry it out further while maintaining the ears and nose, maybe do some alcohol dips then coat with resin. It is just so cool.

WHAT WE ARE DOING ON OUR ALLEY WALL

For at least a year we have been talking about what to do on the alley wall. It was wheat pasted a couple of years ago with posters for the month of photography. Over time the posters were ripped and torn covered with tagging. So we decided on Friday night to finally just do something about it. With totally no planning we jumped in two days later. Here are some shots from Sunday. Stay tuned more to come.

the wall before

scraping

still working

hanging some new posters over the old

another shot of part of the wall

final one still more to go so stay tuned.