Laughing Ravens

 More than anything, this was just a chance to test out new gear and see how it felt to try to narrate and shoot at the same time. By and large, I am finding the videography part much harder than my usual photography. If I had to guess, I think my attention span is affecting a lot of the process.  Part of what I was testing last week was the new wireless lav mic I picked up after Christmas... which should allow me (and potentially another person in an interview setting) to talk, and have that audio recorded directly to the camera. I know the rest of the world has been doing this for ages... but for me, this is a whole new world. Tons to learn and tons to play with.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this video came through for you. I wish that Blogger had a way to store videos without having to go through YouTube, but from what I can tell, that's the only path for videos longer than a minute or two. If you know of other places I could host videos, please let me know....

  There are some evenings where I keep going long after I should have gone inside for the night. Sometimes it is because I went back out to the garden after dinner. Tonight, there were a lot of perennials and shrubs I wanted to get into the new beds in front of the solar panel, before the rain starts. We're expecting to get rain off-and-on for the next three days, followed by a jump in temperature into the high 80's. Considering that this week has struggled to get to 70F, that will be quite the shock to newly transplanted plants. Getting them into the chips, surrounded by coarse compost, and watered in... that makes the transition so much better. Tonight, the solar lights that dot the garden came on not long after the sky yellowed, then darkened. As the little lights started popping on, and swaying gently in the last breezes of the day... I realized that it was probably time to head inside. I still needed to get everything watered in, which of course made it absolutely dark as ...

proof that eventually the sun does shine here in Trumansburg     But proof, yes Proof is the bottom line for everyone  -Paul Simon "Proof"   Thanks to the sun finally coming out, the solar panels have started generating more power than we consume in a day. We have had 8 days with sunshine since Dec 22 when we turned these panels on. Why do I bother showing photos of our solar panels? Strangely, because it marks the end of our lawn in this part of our yard. My goal, this spring and summer, is to turn this grassy space into new beds for our garden. I've mowed this spot for 24 summers (and I am sure this will elicit some grumpy contention)... and I have hated mowing it ever single time. I dont love the smell of freshly mown grass. I dont enjoy the smell of pouring gasoline into the mower. Just not my thing. Instead, we're going to lay down many carloads of cardboard and dozens and dozens of wheelbarrow loads of woodchips in this spot. It's about 60 feet by about 18 ...