I’m always whining about being busy but add to that having to fend for myself for two weeks, an extra couple pinches at work (is it reasonable to work 14-15 hours a day??), a big project at Silverland & you get ‘holy shit’ busy. Had to figure out how to do internet banking & how to work that blasted washing machine… I feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills!
Not all work though, I got in a backpacking trip on the long weekend & caught up to an old high-school buddy for an afternoon of fun in Kananaskis. Today is a loose ends day so finally caught up on my photos too.
I need to spend a little more time shoot'n, with a few exceptions the shoot'n I did on the backpacking trip were taken too quickly... brain wasn't set right or something. Maybe I'll carve out part of a day soon for some camera time. But in the meantime summer is going by way way way too fast!! Now where's my todo list...
Friday, August 13, 2010
Crazy Pills
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Portfolio Shoot'n - votivational!
My favorite time of year to try & get a few new portfolio photos, see some three to five year old projects & assess how the plants & construction have held up, that kind of thing. Try being the operative word though. Getting out to do it when there is a little cloud cover & there isn't some major deadline pinning me in the office... well when it does happen I try & enjoy it. .jpg)
The processing will mostly be winter work but had a quick look thru to make sure I didn't screw anything up too bad. Hopefully more to come.
As for the direction this blog is taking... most of my current photography is over at zenfolio including last Saturday's scramble to The Fortress. Just a better forum for those trips but I'll post here from time to time with something noteworthy or if I perhaps do something I like in processing. 
Or another photo challenge. Or whatever. I'm open to ideas. Anyone??? Anyone???
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Happy Canada Day!!!
Four hours of getting my Silverland stuff together, then reconciling my Visa expenses, a bunch of other loose ends, I'm finally able to process some photos. 
Calypso Orchids... I just can't get over how cool these are!
I didn't agonize over anything... lots of time in the winter to go back in a play around some more, but I was starting to fall behind & that was bugging me. I still plan to bring the blog up to date but in the meantime head on over to Zenfolio to view the pics recently uploaded. If I know you, send me an email & I'll send you back the passwords for the locked albumns. For now some socializing & fireworks are calling.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Extreme Osmosis
Getting landscapers to work in the rain is not my favorite task ... mostly because I can strongly relate.
Kelly's idea of comedy did not impress the 'saftey officer', but it did sum up the situation.
I'm way behind... a backpack, some hikes, a graduation, awards things, anniversary get togethers... its coming. Eventually.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Photo Challenge, May long-weekend
Great long weekend... couldn't crack the whole todo list but I did get a lot done including a hike! I decided to see if I could do the whole photo challenge on the hike, see what you think.
animal (wild – bird or four legs. No pets) 
scenic (prefer landscape), 
plant, (None other than the Boundary Pine)
macro (nature oriented)
The hike was west of Longview: Grass Pass, Boundary Pine, & Bull Creek Hills. The full selection on the day can be viewed here
Friday, May 21, 2010
Coasting across the line
Heading into a long weekend... I've worked the past two Saturdays & averaging 14hr days... running out of gas...
Last Sunday Mike & I hit the slopes of Sunshine for a fine day of spring skiing. Late in the day clouds rolled in with a little precip but nothing too major. No legs left by then anyway. 
As is the custom for the spring season Sunshine has been bringing in bands, today it's Nelson's own BC/DC. They do a great job of covering AC/DC (mostly their earlier stuff) ... fun show. Ya just gotta love a band whose lead guitarist wears a cow-suit.
Party on Garth
Meanwhile back at the ranch... Eric didn't ski with us due to a soccer injury so this was the backyard Sunday morning. How many kids were here???
So this long weekend Moe and I are doing another photo challenge thingie. As we both had about a three email limit on setting this up heres the deal:animal (wild – bird or four legs. No pets) scenic (prefer landscape), plant, macro (nature oriented) so four frames total
Not too restrictive but I really really need to get the camera thing going again. If I can combine that with a hike even better... Not sure where Moe plans to post his shots, his blog: it gathers dust.
Then there's the garden, clean out my truck, Silverland agenda, letter for Eric's grad (already late), visiting with friends, Little Britches parade & rodeo, maybe skiing... or a good book & a sunny patch.
Oh & before I forget I uploaded photos from fall 2009 AZ, UT & NV to Zenfolio today from my laptop. A bit easier to scroll thru than on the blog, full screen is nice, but they aren't annotated yet. What do you want fer nuth'n?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Bright Side
Shot from a surveying day... in a yard where this was really the only bright spot.
How many things do I need to shed, cancel, defer, drop, shank, or shit-can with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love? source
I found this & felt like sharing... kinda the opposite of how things are going lately. The mountains, they call.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Fernie Bonus Days
April 17 & 18, 2010. The final two days of the season at Fernie. Great skiing with sun & soft spring snow with the favorite part for the kids being the hydroplane across the 'pond' at the bottom of the Boomerang Chair. We also had several big feeds off the bbq, enjoyed the hot tub & the company of our little group of reprobates. There were a few beer that survived but the scotch was not so lucky.
Rest of the photos can be viewed here
Ski season isn't over yet, Sunshine remains open!!! (I love spring skiing)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
All Rev'ed Up
...and nowhere to go. Stupid weather.
Best quote in quite some time from a client, part of an email commenting on his design:
"Keep the front bed as per Design #2. (wifes name) likes it, therefore I now like it."Gotta appreciate a guy who knows how to make a compromise ;>) Click to read full post......
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Scraps of Spring
In my garden this weekend, oaffus-doaffus dog & weather battered, but still a welcome splash of color
First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus -
Crocus.
- Lilja Rogers
Went to the Calgary Horticulture Society’s annual trade show yesterday & I actually learned a lot. I also got to meet up with quite a few nursery & landscape types who otherwise scatter to scurry around with their respective heads bent to their work the remainder of the season.
Quote of the day came when Ken Wright of Bow Point Nursery Ltd was asked in a seminar on native plants to comment on deer proof plants: “Deer are going to eat whatever plant is your favorite.” I thought that was pretty much the perfect answer.
I was going to go looking for prairie crocus today but decided to focus on a few other tasks like a landscape plan with a really screaming deadline & my hip deep office mess of just about everything that I’ve dropped in the past month.
As Eric had his Easter school break this past week I took a mid-week “powder day”. Since I finally have some backup in the office net productivity was unaffected as that day easily represented the time I would spend in an average past week doing stuff other than my job. Well, maybe one day wasn’t enough actually. Reaching that point of the year where the work outstrips even the most ‘productive’ week so hack & slash … onward I toil. Have a good week, & hopefully spring is coming to your neck of the woods too.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Spring 2010 roundup
First of all… have you noticed its spring?? Or what passes for spring in this part of the world. Shhhh… don’t jinx it.
Tessa has been enjoying the warm weather.
Work is almost full bore, the final nudge of the throttle to full comes when the crews start & that will be another ten days or so (depending on the weather). Will likely get a few days skiing in over the school break now that basketball is done.
So you got left hanging with basketball… Eric’s team came second at Zones which gave them a berth into Provincials. The basketball played at Zones was intense; the team that came first in the Zone went on to a second place finish at Provincials.
The first game of Provincials was a loss in a tight game & it bumped the team to the “C” pool so at best an eighth place finish. The coach talked to the kids about playing the second game using the whole bench, get everybody on the board, (& if it was close try & win). It was a 20 point loss, certainly a team they could have beaten, but it finished the tournament on a real happy note & I felt it was the right move. In many of the games leading up to that point some of the rookies had seen little or no action… now they can say they played at Provincials. I never checked the score-sheet but I think everyone recorded at least one basket. 
For Eric the last game of his High School career came on the following week as he & team-mate Brandon were selected to represent NDC in the 1A/2A South Central Zone All-Star game. The participants were split East & West & they made a game of it; the final score 93-91. It was smiles all around with many of the kids saying that was the best game they had ever played in. Eric said “I was actually getting passes on my fast breaks”. A great way to finish the season for me too watching Eric among his peers whom he had played against throughout the past three seasons (or longer).
On the weekend I jammed 1512 Basketball shots into Lightroom and spat out 258 keepers into my Zenfolio site for sharing with the athletes, family & friends. I had been considering Zenfolio for quite a while having initially been introduced to it by an scrambling partner Wietse. That was more than a year ago but with the revamp on the company website I needed a new place for what formerly was my Designers Corner segment… the first segment on the build is my tree portfolio which has saved me a lot of time describing the trees I propose for landscape clients in the past…. So the time had come for Zenfolio. I hope it will help me to stay a bit better organized when it comes to my photos and as Wietse pointed out, it acts as an online backup. Such that anything in the ‘clouds’ is secure; it’s another place to keep ‘stuff’.
So if you want you can wander over to Zenfolio for basketball, skiing, or the start of the landscape portfolio. Just mind the pylons, barricades, & open man-holes… heavily under construction.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Get open
Well I managed to go a solid month without posting, unlikely a record... I've been busy it seems.
Ok, I had this big long thing written accounting for my whereabouts… lets just say the last while has been a gong show. I’ll blog a bit belatedly about a couple of things otherwise suffice to say it goes like this: work…basketball…chores….shit weather…work…work… with every once in a while SKI or SUN…
But basketball deserves a few more lines. Eric’s team, NDC Timber wolves, finished third in league play leading into the playoffs. NDC is 2A, the top two teams were Foothills Comp (4A) and Highwood (3A) our cross-town rival. NDC defeated STS to advance to the quarter final Friday night against Highwood. We have never beaten Highwood at basketball. Long story short it was an epic game that ended 64-61 NDC. First time a 2A school has made the league final since 1999. Foothills Comp is a strong team with a post who must be 6’6” or 6’8”… anyway, the final game was a hard fought 43-73 finish during which we seemed to frustrate them enough their coach was yelling at them like they were loosing. Time was we’d play them and they’d sit their starters and still roll over us. Most excellent to see that improvement.
Next up at the end of this week is Zones in Didsbury. The boys must defeat Drumheller & Brooks ranked #1 & #2 in the province respectively in order to advance to Provincials. Last year they got to Provincials by finishing second to Drumheller and due to our Zone being so tough there was a wildcard slot from our Zone. We’ll see how it goes; it’ll be fun to watch Eric wind up his High-school career playing at that level.
I only shot about a third of this years play due to my camera being in the shop for a while & some games I just prefer to watch. I’ve got a few good shots using my longer lens even though its auto-focus is frustrating. Overall there should be a good collection of shots once I find time to process them all.
What to do next winter??? It’ll be an adjustment I’m sure but I’ll bet the time will get filled, & maybe I’ll even do some snowshoeing! & more shoot’n… you can count on that.
48.jpg){kind=small}
