Where are you?

It occurred to me this weekend that we have now been in Utah for three years.
I blogged from Texas for two years and those memories were tied to a full ten years of my life so these three Utah years seem very brief in comparison.
As we sat out on the deck after our meal of crawfish, we watched a quail up in the ash tree.
Usually quail make a call that sounds like the question"Where are you?" repeatedly.
This one was simply making a soft "puck puck" , perhaps he, like we, finally realizes that we are here for real.

The things that enchanted us when we first moved here still make us quite happy.  Quail regularly being found on our property is one of the "happy making" elements: if you have ever seen quail scurrying across a lawn, with a tiny heads and a pudgy body attached to short legs you would understand what makes them so cute.

Add the comical motions of their black feathered top notch that bobs as they survey their world and you have an automatic "pick me up" view.

The male usually arrives on the property first. He usually lands on the roof top and after surveying the area calls out "Where are you? to which other nearby quail respond "Chicago! Chicago! Chicago!"

Eventually the females arrive, and a few kids, younger looking birds, and they get down to the business of scratching about the lawn looking for a snack or two.

This guy didn't call out and no other quail came by to visit.
After a bit he flew off.
Maybe he is headed to Chicago.
Who knows.

Saturday morning the male human called out his usual summer call:
 "Go Fish-ing! Go Fish-ing".
He scurried about loading up the cooler as his female changed into her hiking clothes and grabbed her camera.
About an hour later he had landed a nice cut throat trout on a dry fly.

The first catch was released...

The second catch swallowed the fly!
We wound up having that fish with steak as an inland form of "Surf and Turf" on Sunday. 

For some reason the river didn't offer much to me in the way of picture catching, but a road side sign announcing "Blue Lake" caught my eye.
Aren't all lakes blue?

This one was Tidy Bowl blue, an unusual shade of aqua blue instead of the typical sky blue or mossy green or even muddy brown like most lakes.

Add in a field of flowers and it was just natural that we pull over to investigate what "Blue Lake" had to offer.

It really was blue and quite curious.  Bernie could see tiny fish suspended motionless in the water. He stuck the tip of his fishing rod into the water and the fish didn't even move.
He said it was like they were in a syrup thick fluid.
Quite strange.

I thought I had stumbled upon a pumpkin in the surrounding meadow....

It proved to be a very large mushroom.
I let it be, not having any way to identify its culinary nature.

 

The sky had been cloudy and rain had fallen off and on all afternoon . I found myself wishing it would clear up a bit... 

And making mental notes about returning to the lake when the aspen changed to autumn splendor gold.

 

A momentary break in the cloud cover lit up the surrounding forest tops with golden light.  That's the kind of moment that makes me really happy when I am out and about with my camera.

The red moss forming on the dead pine beetle stricken trees added a bit of color to an otherwise forlorn situation.

I later read up on why the lake was such an interesting shade of blue: apparently it is a lake set in limestone.
The limestone dissolved in the water creates the unique color.
I'll click "Like" on God's facebook page for that creative bit of lake color selection any day!

Now try to picture this same shot with all the tree leaves in a brilliant golden yellow....
Wow.

Photographing reflections in water is an easy way to get a great shot and also a brain teaser.

Without including the skyline in the shot the picture become a puzzling scene: Is the picture upside down?
Answer: No!

 

Winding our way home; the sun beginning to cast low lights on  the roadside wild flower fields.  I realized that it is far easier to get a great photo of autumn colors than it is to capture the marvelous colors of a summer wild flower display.

Clouds and sunsets just take a bit of patience.  The first tinges of sunset colors are a signal to wait....

Take another shot of the wild flowers...

Take an inadvertent self portrait...

Keep an eye on the ever changing light...

 

Then just about the time the sun begins to touch the mountains...

Pull over...

And enjoy another one of God's beautiful closings of a day.

Silver Lake Field Trip

So the buzz was that Silver Lake had just gotten stocked with fish.

Bernie asked if I wanted to tag along for a late afternoon bit of a date.

Naturally, I said yes.

He was quick to get a bite.

I was quickly bitten; the mosquitoes had hatched from their long winters nap.

Just one week ago the paths around the lake were still snow and slush cover; silly us, we didn't even think about bringing along bug spray.

Every time I focused my camera a mosquito would land on my trigger finger.

Even with a tripod a lot of the shots were quite blurred from my flinching away to smack the offending creature.  

It got to be a contest: Could a mosquito nail me before I could nail a picture.

Funny thing: Bernie always carries bug spray in with his fishing gear and we rarely need it.

This one time he didn't pack it. 

I can now report that I bled for my art.

One time I waited just a fraction of a second to get the shot before hitting the bug.

The bloody gore that was splatted from the death blow was quite remarkable.

My blood, not the mosquitoes; it was all MY blood from inside the mosquito.

Ewww.....

But for the sake of fields of flowers to photograph, I was willing to suffer.

At least for awhile.

As pretty as the flowery cluster appeared...

I was much more taken by the orderly arrangement of the five pollen bearing stamen on each tiny flower.

Kind of goofy, kind of like a flower design from outer space.

I also get a kick out of flowers that start out as a purple bud, then swell to pink then turn baby blue upon opening.

Now look at how disorganized is this yellow flower's stamen.

(Probably if I were to look closer at it, I would find that actually they are very orderly, and sprout out at very regular intervals.) 

When I came around one bend in the lakeside path and spotted a sizable patch of shooting stars I was thrilled.

Growing up, finding just one blooming was a cause for celebration.

(Just to be fair, there were other flowers blossoming in the patch as well.)

Last summer my friend Gail saw a shooting star for the very first time. She said she was so surprised to discover how tiny they are in real life.

So for the record, the shooting star flowers are about an inch in size.

Who named them "Shooting Stars" I wonder?

Such a poetic description of the beautiful dart like bloom.

Bernie had moved out to a dock to get away from the mosquitoes at this point and suggested that out there with the slight breeze I would be less bothered by the bugs.

He was wrong about that...and graciously agreed to cut his fishing time short after watching me swat bugs off my camera, legs, hands and catching them in my fist mid air.

The wild iris are almost done blooming, but a few were still glowing about.

That's the thing about wild flowers:  They bloom during specific time frames, and if you miss being out in the wild while they are blooming, you might still be able to catch their appearance at a slightly higher elevation.

Silver Lake is up a bit into the Wasatch mountains.

One really nice thing about Silver Lake is the trails across the lake and around the lake that are wheel friendly.  Families with oldsters, injured or very young can still enjoy being outdoors together using various wheeled transport.

The Sticky Geranium is one flower that blooms the entire summer and even in to early fall.

Still I enjoy the first time I see one each summer.

I admit: Blue wild flowers are my favorite.

The low setting sun created an X-ray like effect on the flowers!

Seeing the bent stamen inside the buds was really cool.

It is interesting to me how many flowers have a simple five point edge. 

It makes the four point ones seem almost odd.

Bernie brought me this flower while I was shooting other flowers and asked me what it was.

I didn't know (shock!) but I think it is a really odd looking inside.

I suppose there is someone out there who will claim this to be their favorite flower.

Some ONE....

The multi-petaled flower don't seem to abide by rules about petal size and shape.

Five pollen covered pom poms.

Five!

Ah haa haaa haaa haaaaa!

(Sesame Street...and "da Tount", as our kids used to say as two year olds....occasionally when a number is spoken I can't resist the urge to repeat the number and add my own spooky laugh afterwards...)

These flowers were an end of the day discovery as we were driving the twenty minutes back home.

Bernie decided he wanted to cast into a roadside stream. I was distracted when he disappeared into the woods to follow the stream so I went searching for him.  I found a patch of these waist high flowers were in bloom, totally not visible from the road. 

About a mile from home Bernie began to comment on how beautiful the sunset was becoming and pulled over for me to take a picture of two.

After just a couple of shots I noticed that the air was filled with large black dragonflies.

Naturally I had to at least try and capture them in flight.

See the little helicopter like thing hovering over the horizon?

Dragonfly.

I was intent on just trying to get one into the picture; my mind kept repeating what I had heard at the photo class this weekend: Have your subject looking into the picture,  not leaving it.

Just try telling that to a dragonfly subject!

And my mind was going "Switch to the Active/Sport setting!"

(That setting allows one to focus on something with a half click and then follow the subject as it moves. The camera will keep the moving subject in focus.)

I didn't switch.

Maybe next time.

There...I got one shot with the dragonfly flying into the picture instead of out of the picture.

Funny how just moments earlier I was happy just getting a nice shot of the sunset.

It was a beautiful thing to behold if one could just ignore the darting flight of dragonflies!

(Not sure why this photo of a wild strawberry blossom slid down to the end of this post but here it is and here it will stay!)