E: Environment, Emerge and Eclose, Eagle, Egret, Eggs, Elephant, Exercise, Edits
Living Color Monthly A-Z Challenge: My E words
Environment. I am happiest when I am outside. I need to be both observing and participating in nature regularly. Biking is one of our outdoor activities. Here we are on the Upper Tampa Bay Bike Trail in January in Florida. We can ride, get exercise and observe nature as we ride in January in Florida. What could be better a better environment to live in?
Emerge/eclose. The monarch butterfly in the photo has just eclosed, which means it just emerged from its pupa. The grandkids and I sometimes bring in a caterpillar from our butterfly garden, feed it, watch it change into a pupa, then days later watch it eclose as a butterfly. It takes time for the newly emerged butterfly to spread out its wings and to dry them enough for it to fly away. The thrill is when we release the new butterfly back into the garden.
Eagle. This bald eagle was one of the wonderful animals we saw at the Tampa zoo on our first trip there with the grandkids. We also occasionally see bald eagles flying freely overhead when we are outside in the garden or when we are on bike rides.
Egret. The grandkids love our trips to the Upper Tampa Bay Nature Center. Here my granddaughter poses in front of the beach poster with an egret bird. We frequently see congregations of egrets wandering around our neighborhood by the pond and searching for insects in our garden. Traffic often has to stop to let them cross the roads near the house.
Eggs. Various mama Muscovy ducks have made nests in our garden over the years. It is fun to watch the eggs appear, one egg a day for 10–14 days. Then mama Muscovy plucks off her downy feathers to cover them. She spends most of the time in the next several days sitting on the nest of eggs. Controlling the temperature of the eggs with her body and the layer of downy feathers triggers all of them to start the final stages of development so that they all hatch on the same day.
Elephant. This wooden elephant is from Thailand. The family rule when our kids were young was that if you bought something when we were on a trip, you must carry it home. This was intended to stop the kids from asking us to buy them large-sized souvenirs when we were traveling. However, I loved this elephant when I saw it near Chiang Mai, Thailand about 35 years ago and wanted to bring it home. We were traveling by train, so I carried the elephant in my arms back to Singapore where we lived at the time. It has graced a shelf in our home each time we have moved since then. Right now it is sitting in the enclosed patio with the patio plants.
Exercise. I need to exercise every day. It keeps my brain working. Here I am working out on the Concept 2 machine in our local YMCA. When a young girl stretching on a mat near me paused for a moment, I asked her to take a photo of me. She nicely agreed.
Edits. I love to edit. All the photos included here have some edits.
- The first 4 photos were cropped and the color saturation was modified slightly.
- The elephant photo was cropped and I used the iColorama app to apply the Toon style to add more drama to the elephant.
- The last photo was cropped slightly, the color adjusted, and then I used the iColorama app to apply the Flow style to add movement to the image and to blur the faces of the people in the background.
That is all for the E’s for now. I’m thinking about the F list but that will wait for a while.