Virginia Breeze

Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.

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I only seem to be interested in man made objects as photo subjects if they are related in some way to nature. Or they are art. The statues of the generals on Monument Ave. are a good example of that. Leaving nature behind and going into the middle of Richmond to take some photos would be very challenging for me. And I’m not sure it is important to do it. It’s all very much up in the air as they say.

Here is a good example of nature redeeming something that many of us would not like to see in our neighborhoods. Bury it underground! Our neighborhood is old and they are still hanging around and often fail due to wind or ice. Squirrels sometimes vaporize themselves trying to investigate transformers.

I probably lost a few gentle readers with that last comment. I’m sorry. But I have this love/hate thing going on with squirrels. I’m trying to learn to love them because Beth would like it if I did.

But I generally find it difficult because they like to sleep in the road. And this causes me to swerve the car to avoid disturbing them.

But we are moving in the wrong direction here. Electricity is a marvelous thing. It allows me to write to you anywhere in the world. It saves lives every day in hospitals across the world. I love electricity. But I do not embrace it. I do not like the way it feels when my hand inadvertently becomes part of an electrical circuit. I prefer that small amounts of various legal chemicals light up my brain.

Look around and you will see all of these tremendous forces that could kill us in a second are under control in one way or another. They are peacefully humming along not five feet from where you sit unless you are out in the wild in South America.

There is an atomic energy plant up the road and it is humming along. There are large Naval ships down the river in Norfolk. They are humming along and creating V shaped wave patterns as they go about their business.

I watched the sun come up yesterday morning. It was very bright and I could not see well for several minutes after it arrived. But it was humming too. Sometimes a sun somewhere in the universe will blow up. But not our sun. It is well behaved.

Every once in awhile nature decides to stand up and stretch. Winds may reach one hundred miles per hour or more. A transformer blows up and a squirrel goes to that great pile of nuts in the sky. A nuclear power plant decides it doesn’t need a roof and would like to commune with the stars. A ship fires a guided missile that lands in a building somewhere and dramatically alters its architecture.

This is why I appreciate this photo so much. Everybody is playing nice here. Mornings like this are to be recorded and treasured. Tomorrow is a new day and one that may be full of explosions.

Ask my friend Chip. Or Dale. I can never figure out who it is waving to me as he (or she) passes from my view and under my car.

And yes I do remember to wave back at them as they happily dance around in my rear view mirror.

I have gotten away from my photos for the past few days and I don’t want to ever do that for too long. And I don’t remember posting this one. Maybe I did. I’m too tired to look right now. I will come back tomorrow and change it if I did. But I like it. It’s about Christmas and that’s over. But it is alive and well in my memory where it will stay awhile longer. It was very cold on the day I took this photo and it was a great deal of fun being out there and doing it.

I looked. But that’s alright. There are plenty more. This one suggests the fading away of the Christmas lights as nature reminds us once again that it is beautiful too. It will be with us all year round! And it won’t charge us for electricity!

I have taken a lot of photos of butterflies in the past five months. But I never photographed butterflies with so much electricity running through them before.