Photography, Life

Pomegranates, Satsumas, the New Laptop, a Toddler Birthday Party, All Decorated for the Holidays, Peacocks, and a Murder of Crows

A couple of weeks in photos

Stewing, brewing, looming in my mind…if only I had time to write them all down. So many little bits of poems are strewn about my house right now. I’ve been on a bit of a creative bent. But life has been so hectic that I haven’t published much of late. I’m gathering up the tidbits of essays and errant rhymes and starting to compile a book though. It’s rather exciting to have this project underway.

We’ve had a rather prolific few weeks in the garden. The pomegranates are beginning to split their skins, which means it’s time to pluck them from the tree. And the satsumas, my favorite little tangerines, are as ripe as candy. As you can see, Mr. Bisou really enjoys supervising the harvesting.

My new laptop has arrived as well. I love it so much — but, as with any new computer, the setting things up always takes so much time. For me, the trickiest bit has been getting Lightroom, for photo editing, all organized properly.

It’s really the reason I bought this computer, for photo editing. I completely ran out of hard drive on my old computer and kept getting the spinning wheel of death whenever I tried to do anything with my pictures. While I could have put all of my photos on an external hard drive (and they are backed up on one) I wanted to be able to access more of them right from my computer. So, those of you who follow along on my “week in photos,” might recall, I packed up all of my old camera gear and sold it to pay for a new laptop.

Oh, happy day, when you open that little box to see this message:

Our granddaughter turned two last week and we drove to Santa Barbara for her birthday party. Her mother has gotten rather crafty of late and made the cutest little decorations. I particularly loved these little bears with their party hats.

We came home from the party and decided to decorate the house. My sister was coming for Thanksgiving, and we thought it would be nice to start the Holidays a little early. We just do simple lights outside these days. But we were reminiscing about when we were younger and the kids were little and we used to have a bit of a “competition” with our neighbor across the street.

He died several years ago, and we just haven’t done as much since then. But, while we were putting up the lights, we heard his wife and her kids and grandkids talking in their driveway about our lights. She came over to talk to us and we did a little “remembering.” She said her kids were inspired by our lights and were going home to do theirs too.

When we were first married, I made a gold lamé tree skirt. I think that every cat we have ever had peed on that tree skirt over the years. Last year, I finally threw it away and started fresh with this new fluffy white one. It does look a bit like cat bed material, and the kitties seem to think that it was purchased just especially for them to lounge on. Here is Mr. Emerson taking in the light show.

The light in the afternoons when I’m out riding “Horseshoe Loop” on my mountain bike is just glorious. The slant of the sun backlights all of the grasses and, sometimes, I feel like I’m riding through heaven.

My husband got sick (he’s fine now) and we missed our Thanksgiving Day gathering, so I went for a bike ride and was the only person on the trail. It was pretty cool, but I do have to say that I was looking over my shoulder frequently just in case a mountain lion might think it was also fun to be wandering around in the hills with no one else around. I do wear a little device on my pack that I can pull on to make an incredibly loud screech, just in case.

But, in the end, all I saw was this murder of crows, which you can read a poem about here, if you like. There must have been at least a hundred, if not more, crows gathered in this little parking lot area. The Santa Ana winds had blown in and they were practicing their “hovering” skills.

The day after Thanksgiving, we took our granddaughter and her parents and my sister to Irvine Park to ride a pony, take the Christmas train around the park and to see the little local zoo. One of the coolest things about this park, which, by the way, is over a hundred years old, is that wild peacocks live there. If you’ve never heard a peacock call, they sound like a cross between a baby and a cat. It’s mating season right now, so the boys have their long tail-feathers on to impress the girls.

When I was in graduate school in Yoga Studies, about a decade ago, we spent a summer semester in India and there were peacocks wandering the grounds of the place I stayed in Jaipur. I will always remember the boys trying to put on a show for the girls. They fluff their feathers up and do a little circular dance. They don’t quite complete the full circle before they turn around in the other direction and do it again. Even the little guys try it out, although the girls don’t seem to pay them much attention.

I started a HUGE project while my sister was here. I have thousands and thousands of slides from childhood that need to be sorted through. They are taking up so much of my closet space and it seems silly to have them all and to never look at them, so I bought some of those boxes that you can fill up with slides to be scanned. But it is a laborious task to try to figure out which are the good ones. We got through about four years’ worth. I feel like it was a pretty good start.

And, finally, we are going to be the “Best Man and Woman” for our dear friends’ wedding next week. She is from Romania and she and her mother made this traditional meal for us, complete with potato salad embellished with bell pepper writing (it was delicious, by the way). I was asked to write a poem for the ceremony. I am both honored and a little intimidated.

I’ve been tagged in a few challenges of late — Anne Bonfert, I am thinking of you. I’m getting to them. If I could only bend time! All is coming….

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).

I hope that you all had lovely weeks. 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/ Mia Verita /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 and more… (if I’ve failed to mention your name, please let me know so that I can add it in future weeks).

I hope you enjoyed my photos and musings. You might also like:

Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.