Thursday, August 27, 2009

Caterpillars & Flowers & Fish

Even though that nasty porker (Swine flu) is spreading his cooties around St. Mary's, not all of the kids are sick. And yesterday, we got to take a few of them outside for some fresh air, a swing, and a stroll around the gardens. Part of our building & grounds includes 2 courtyards that were lovingly planted by volunteers. And our maintenance crew put in a koi pond a couple months ago. So, I took the opportunity to play with the aperture & macro settings on my camera when some new fish were put in the pond. Here are the results.

Keep in mind that I am NOT a gardener, and I don't know all the names of these plants. So don't ask.

And RAD, I need you to show me some things on this damn Adobe Photoshop Elements thingamajig, 'cause there are about 846 icons for editing. I figured out the crop one. The rest scare me.



There is a bush next to the pond that is full of monarch caterpillars happily munching away & destroying the bush. The maintenance manager is NOT happy about that, so he has been moving them over to the bushes next to the interstate. We are going to take some of them and grow butterflies. It's what we do. We have schoolchildren here.


But this guy was not happy when I put him on some flowers for a nice Kodak moment. I don't think they tasted good to him.
He definitely made a face at me. See?


The fish stayed in their plastic bags for a bit to let them get used to the temperature of the pond. It also gave the other fish time to come be nosy. Look at that great fish face.








Oooh, a bee!


And look - a fly!


I am easily amused.

This one isn't very clear, but there were droplets of water from the sprinkler that sparkled in the sun.




The pond has a switch inside the building by the picture windows that the kids can hit to listen to the fountains.
And there is an angel watching over us. All day. Every day. We need her (or him. Do angels have a gender?).




Our gardens were created with lots of 'ove'.
They are maintained with lots of 'ove'.
And the building is full of 'ove' every minute of every day.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bring your laptop, loaded with the program, and come on up to our house. We have a visitor suite downstairs. I don't have that program, so I have to play with it to show you about those "scary icons." Chances are there are free tutorials out there on the web. I'm not sure when I'll be back down there...
RAD

Kathy said...

You know, I started it up, and right there on the menu was "Online tutorials & videos". Whoo-hoo!