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Greetings, with a special welcome to a number of new “subscribers”, and to two of you who are enjoying your first “post retirement” Monday morning, and to two others who have just moved to Florida!

Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon was rather special for me.  A few weeks ago I was invited to provide some of my photographs to be used to decorate the lobby in our building.  A small group of people met with me and we selected some sixteen pictures, with the criterion that each of them was of a natural subject and must have been taken within the Lansdowne Woods campus.  I printed the chosen images to fit within the selected frames, and included a title on each print.  The group then put the pictures in the frames and enlisted the help of our building engineer to mount them in a beautiful arrangement around the walls of the lobby.  And yesterday afternoon they organized a very nice “Meet the Artist” wine and cheese reception, which a large number of our residents attended!  Our building has never had such an exhibit before, so I feel very honored.

Some of the pictures in the show have appeared in these weekly essays before but, partially at the request of a non-resident “subscriber”, I include this week some of the ones that have not appeared before (or at least not since the very early days of my essays).  Rather than put my usual Picasa Museum Matte border on them, I present them just as they appear in the physical frames, with the title.  These are images #1 thru #6, and since they feature titles, they hardly need any more explanation.

 

However, in order that those of you who attended the reception, or have seen the lobby pictures already, don’t get too bored, I include two brand new images.  Picture #7 shows a water lily at a nearby pond, but the thing that struck me when I first opened this image on the computer was that in addition to the lily, I had fortuitously captured a perfect image of the shadow of a dragonfly in flight (look on the left hand lily pad).

As most of you know, one of my themes is the surprising variety of wildlife we have on our campus.  Most of this wildlife is, not surprisingly, a subset of what can be found throughout the county, but we do have at least one rather unusual creature, and it is shown in #8.

This particular image was taken yesterday (Sunday) morning, but this parakeet (or budgerigar to most Brits and Aussies), which is obviously an escaped pet since it has a just-visible band on its left leg, has been living in the wild around the campus for at least two years, and still excites quite a lot of interest when people see her for the first time.  She hangs around with a flock of sparrows who seem to have fully accepted her, and has taken up residence in one of the birdhouses close by.

Have a great week!