Merganser and her babies

A friend and I were out kayaking the other day.. we came upon a merganser and about 20 or more babies... it was amazing to see.. so many babies.. I have never seen so many with one parent.  According to the Cornell Lab site " Broods often join together in groups of multiple females with 40 or more young".  Since we only saw 1 female, I wonder if that was the case here and something happened or perhaps another female was searching for food.  Mergansers apparently produce 6 to 17 eggs.
 We met them again when we kayaked down the Cockermouth River  from the northern end of  Newfound Lake and back.. on the way back , we ran into these water fowl.. and they would double time paddle with their feet... it looked kind of funny..I took these pictures with my iPhone.  I did try to crop the pictures and see that they are a little fuzzy as a result,  but you can see all the babies!!!!

Baby Canada Geese

One morning I was sitting on the dock, looked to my right and saw a pair of Canada Geese and babies and then looked again and saw another pair of Canada Geese & babies.

Zoom Bursts

Our assignment  this month for the Gilford Clicker Club was to " create radial, spiral, and motion blurs during your camera shot!"  Here is the video:  http://youtu.be/amy6659_5WM 
  Well let me tell you... when I first tried this effect of zoom burts.. I found with my bridge camera, I couldnt figure out how to make the zoom move at the same time I was taking the picture.. So I tried spinning the camera around.. it was not a burst but a mess.  Finally I borrowed a DSLR and after experimenting and viewing other peoples zoom bursts.. I sort of got the hang of it.  I had difficulty getting the one flower or object in good focus and then getting the burst.  It was an interesting challenge.
Below are the shots that I have decided post from all my practice shots:

When I edited the shot below, the blue seemed to jump right out..
                                  

Below is at the Mill downtown.. the water going over the dam with a reflection in the foreground.

Also down at the Mill downtown...

Gardens, small vegetable and flower gardens

So here are some shots of my gardens...

First:  my vegetable garden.. 2 types of tomatoes, one of which are sweet hundreds, pumpkins, lettuce, pickles, yellow squash, white egg plant, swiss chard, spinach, red cabbage, green onions, and I think bok choy.

For herbs: parsley, cilantro, chives, basal, thyme, and rosemary.  the herbs are at the far end.  There is an unplanted  area at the opposite end that gets a bit of shade.  May try to plant some more lettuce or shade tolerant plants.

I have to say that I thought I could organize this garden so that the trailing veggies, like pumpkins, cucumbers and squash would wind along the edge or wind through the tomato plants.  As the tomato plants and other plants are growing.. there is not as much room as I had envisioned :)  So it will be interesting to see what happens..  Hopefully I can avoid having the trailing plants going through the grass.... hmmm wonder if I can add a platform... something to think about... :)

Gardens in the front of the house, on either side of the stepsl

left side

right side

Side of the house

Back yard gardens, mostly shade

looking from the right side of the back garden

Looking from left to right starting with this large hosta

Looking from all the way over from the left to right, you can see that large hosta

Sunrises on Paugus Bay

Yes, I'm at it again.. sometimes the color in the morning just grabs me.... I stepped outside in my pjs and bathrobe and started taking pictures. They may be a little dark, but I liked the color.

The clouds were interesting to me, but did not do them justice in this photo.  

This morning, there was a little fog over the water.. got to taking the picture a little late, after most of the fog had burned off.... I liked the little bit of a bokeh effect that happened accidentally as well as the low perspective in the picture below.

I like seeing the reflections in the water.. still some fog on the water..

Creating rain drops

Our assignment for the Clicker Camera Club this month:Create Realistic Raindrops -- watch demo at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4J6prcTI14
4-5 flower or spring shots with "raindrops"

   This was a fun assignment:  of course I waited until the weekend before our meeting to finally take the pictures, I had to watch the video a couple of times, stop, take notes...to make sure I would be using the correct camera adjustments.  And guess what.. when I put my camera on closeups for macro pictures:  it adjusted all the settings.. all I had to do was concentrate on keeping the camera steady to take the pictures.. yippee...  oh and of course.. after I purchased my expensive 99 cent water bottle sprayer, add a little sugar to the water and spray away..    The only thing I didn't like about this affect was that  although the added sugar kept the water droplets longer on the flowers, it seemed like the water droplets were too uniform.. or something.. but I didn't experiment.. something I could do another time... I did enjoy the assignment..

This iris was in a nearby garden.. loved the deep purple

The picture above and the next picture were of flowers in the garden next to the church in downtown Laconia.. beautiful planiting by Ginger Kay Wells - Garden Artisans... The flowers are georgious!

The bottom 2 pictures are from my garden - one from a hanging fuschia which is going to a friends wedding..:)

Cat portraits with indoor light