Life, Photography

A Five Rattlesnake Week, Hummingbirds, Barre Class, Poolside Yoga, the Hawks, and Bisou is Recovering Nicely from Having Two Teeth Pulled

A couple of weeks in photos

This time of year, I spend a lot of my days outside, where I can hear the hawks on the hill calling to each other with that frantic urgency that hawks always seem to have in their voices. In the background, I can also hear the chirping of the Orioles and the chatter of Mrs. Squirrel warning the kitties not to get too close to her. She does think that she rules the yard!

I bring my laptop and journal and fountain pen and pad of paper out to the back porch, along with an assortment of cameras (because you never know what you will see!). Nature inspires so much of my creative life and being attuned to her rhythms feeds my soul in a necessary way.

I also like to take my yoga practice outside with me this time of year. There’s nothing like doing a standing back arch and looking up to see a hummingbird hovering overhead (they tend to do this because they are chasing the little insects hanging around the compost bins, which we keep for food and garden scraps, on the side of the house).

My husband came home the other day and caught me at the end of my practice with a camera in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

As some of you know, I taught yoga classes for over twenty years, but I stopped early on in the pandemic. I haven’t been to any sort of public classes in a couple of years now. But my best friend, Rebecca, kept telling me about this amazing Barre class she was going to with this teacher named Wil.

I can count on one hand the number of Barre classes I’ve been to, and they were not very “dancey.” Rebecca talked me into going with her and I think that I am now hooked! Wil is a dancer extraordinaire! He infuses his classes with grace and beauty and all sorts of dance moves. If any of you are local, check him out at EnergieBarre in Tustin.

The pool resurfacing project is finally finished, and the turtles at the bottom are swimming freely!

Little Bisou had to have two teeth pulled last week. The poor little guy was in a bit of pain from a weird thing that happens (apparently with some frequency) to cats. Two of his lower teeth were literally being reabsorbed by his body. It always terrifies me to have to put them “under” with anesthesia. But he did fine.

And he is extra happy because “his” chair is back! We had the two chairs on the sides reupholstered and we’ve been through three iterations of stuffing on the back pillow of the one that is his “throne.”

He sleeps here, watches TV from here, and can see all of the “goings-on” in the house from here. So just imagine his dismay when the new pillow would not stay upright or support his weight.

But all is well now. Order has been restored to the chair cushion, just in time for his recovery from his dental procedure.

He had a big week.

I’ve been out on my mountain bike quite a lot lately. The Matalija Poppies, often called “fried-egg” poppies, are exploding right now. Eight-foot tall stands of them sway in the breeze alongside the trail. You can see more pictures of these extraordinary flowers in my photo-essay if you like.

We took the bikes down to Newport Coast last Sunday. There’s one particular “monster hill” (it’s super steep and rutted and rocky) on the trail (it’s not in this photo) and I successfully scaled it for the first time. Yay!

I got a new pair of riding glasses. My husband laughs at me because I like to ride in my regular sunglasses and he says that I don’t look like a “real” biker in them. So I got a pair of Oakleys. I do really like the lens color for being able to see things better on the trail.

What do you think? Do I look more like a real biker?

It’s “rattlesnake season” on the trails right now and we have to be super careful. I have, literally, almost run over four of them in the last two weeks. I did not stop to take their photos.

But I came across this one, who looked like it had been caught by a hawk and dropped. He was most definitely not rattling anymore.

I’ve been playing around with my macro lenses a bit in the garden.

And taking hummingbird photos.

I’ve been doing a lot of photo-editing and trying to decide which ten photos to enter into the Orange County Fair photo competition. It’s such a hard decision. If you have any favorites from some of my past stories, I would love to hear your opinions.

I’ll leave you with a couple of photos of Uma, Freyja and Emerson, my little loves. I tell you, these kitties make my life complete. I just love them so much.

I hope that you all had lovely weeks.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

You might also enjoy this poem and series of photos about a Bald Eagle in Alaska:

or this poem and photos about the “Wild Places”:

or this photo-poem about an afternoon in the garden:

As always, I thank you Dennett for creating this “week in photos” challenge.

It’s so fun to share about the week and to read about so many other photographers’ weeks around the world.

You might want to check out a few of the others who participate:

Dennett /Anne Bonfert /Eileen Vorbach /Lisa Bolin /Tracy Aston /David Wade Chambers/Kim Zuch /Barbara Radisavljevic /LensAfield /Barbara Dalton /Sasha Meyer /Susan Alison /Diana Lotti /Barbara Dalton /K. Barrett /June Nguyen /Juan O. Aguilera /Ellie Jacobson /Shruthi Sundaram/ Pene Hodge /Tracy Aston/ Sandra Barrett/Jillian Amatt — Artistic Voyages (if I’ve missed any of the “week in photos” tribe, please let me know!)

Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.