This little guy is one of MANY dragonflies that call The Orchard Compound home. They float by constantly then their lives end and this is what's left. Very much like butterflies. This one resides on our kitchen window sill.

I shot this with my iPhone 3GS in macro mode. Ran it through photo fx filter and uploaded with flickup. Frankly, I'm not happy with flickup but it's the best I can find that uploads to Flickr and then tweets it. If you know of another app please let me know.

This evening we grilled some marinated pork chops on the grill out on our front porch. After a great meal, I walked out on the porch to cover the grill and put things away. As soon as I opened the front door, this great big bull elk and I scared each other! He was about 20 feet away just off the front steps. So, I stepped back in and grabbed my new iPhone 3GS and started rolling. He sauntered off and I covered the grill. By the time I sat back down and sent this to YouTube, a few of his friends wandered out of the woods.

LOVE that!

This evening, as the sun was going down and the summer solstice was happening, Joyce and I went for a walk around The Orchard Compound in Hobart. We spotted some foxglove on the neighboring property that's been abandoned for many months and snapped a shot.

This was taken with my brand new iPhone 3G S. I ran it through the photo fx app but think the original was a bit better and larger. Now that the new iPhone has a better camera, I need to change the way I was taking pictures with the old one.

After what seems an eternity, the strawberry plants in pots on our deck are finally starting to ripen. If we could get a few more days of serious sun we'd have a basket full of them.

Now, if only the tomatoes would do the same.

This was snapped on my first generation iPhone and enhanced a bit with the photo fx app. My new iPhone 3GS arrives next Friday. YAY!

Also, trying out the beta for sending strait from Flickr to Twitter. Hope this works.

Every Friday I get to work at the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center in Bellevue. It's always great, but when the weather is about as perfect as it can be, then it's awesome!

Today I had the chance to get out and hike around. Found a geocache. Saw a bunch of birds including a Goldfinch, Heron, and many more. The Goldfinch is the Washington State Bird...but I also saw some beautiful rhododendrons, the Washington State Flower. There was a cool garter snake, a frisky squirrel, and other assorted wildlife. The air was filled with cottonwood, almost like snow. My beloved, Joyce is sneezing her head off now. She's allergic.

This shot was taken with my Nikon D-40. The trail I was on consisted of dirt and boardwalks. I took the bridge over the Mercer Slough and followed the Heritage Trail around to find this cache. The trail skirts a wonderful blueberry farm. You can buy the berries at the stand on Bellevue Way. They're great! Come fall, this area will turn quite colorful.

All in all, a great day for a short walk in the wild...just a stone's throw from the big city.

When I pulled into the Pacific Science Center parking garage this morning before 6 a.m. I was greeted with fog and some salty air. Could just make out the top of this construction crane working on a new church across the street. Just LOVE that smell. Always reminds me of our boating days.

This was shot with my first generation iPhone and run through the Mono filter in the CameraBag app.

So, I'm stuck at home nursing my sore shoulder. Decided to try making a quick video with a program called Fotomagico. I got this through Macheist last year so it was quite inexpensive. Not sure I would have paid full price for it. But it's quick and easy, for sure. This whole thing took me about two minutes to throw together, then had to wait for it to render. But all settings were default. Could have tweaked each shot a bit to avoid the black seen on some of the slides. Very easy. Here's the resulting HD video posted to Facebook.

Today is Friday, so I get to work at the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center in Bellevue. This place is like heaven in the heart of the city. Just gorgeous.

After slaving over a hot computer for six hours, I grabbed my GPS and went out for a little geocaching. Found one about a half mile away, but what I really found was serenity. I've driven by this thing a thousand times and never saw it. It's a fish ladder right in downtown Bellevue. This heron was standing there looking like a salmon sentry. As cars and trucks rumbled by right behind me, this little spot was serene. The name of the geocache hidden there is Save The Salmon. Not sure the heron had that in mind.

Some of the interns from Pacific Science Center helped plant the area around this spot. A great program.

Being from the Seattle area, we know full well how wonderful Dale Chihuly's work is. Seeing it in the desert was something else. We strolled through the fabulous Desert Botanical Garden on a hot April evening. We saw a snake and small lizard, hummingbirds and ducks, and enjoyed the incredible fragrance of the spring air while mesmerized by the glass.

Another aspect of this stunning exhibit and the garden itself was the photography taking place. Nearly everyone had a camera! Dodging photographers, trying to stay out of shots, waiting for people to move, it was all just as much part of the experience as marveling at how the glass was created or what inspired the artist to place the pieces where he did. While most of us don't have the eye of an artist like Chihuly, many of us are out capturing the sights of the world around us. I think that makes the world a bit better. Here are a few more shots.

My brother-in-law, Jim Rodal and I climbed Poston Butte in Florence, Arizona to find a geocache planted up there. It was Jim's first cache adventure and his first climb up there. I'd been up once before, in 1998 BC - before caching :) - and it was even better this time.

If you've ever been to Florence you've seen this hill with a huge, white F on the flanks. It's one of the few pieces of higher ground in an otherwise flat area. There's a monument on top placed there in 1907 when Arizona was still a territory. The view is spectacular. More images can be found here.

There are three Geodetic Survey markers up there along with the cache. We found only two of them. We spotted some prairie dog-type critters, a number of lizards, a few bee hives, and strangest of all, the entire pyramid is a gigantic ant hill! Fascinating to watch the millions of ants swarm all over it.

Another mystery to us: how did the people who built the monument pound those big iron rods into solid rock? There are a bunch of them up there. Talk about a tough job!

Since Jim and my sister Janice live down there for half the year, and since Joyce and I vacation here every year, we're thinking of making this sort of an annual pilgrimage.