Windows – Eyes of the Home

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
– Tom Lehrer –

Windows are the eyes of the home. From the inside looking out, they frame the view of the outside world.

Seen from the outside, the windows form part of the face of the house.

This is The Red House, through the eyes of The Wild Child.  Two eyes, a green nose (or maybe a nose/mouth combination, but clearly two  blue eyebrows!

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Wakehurst is the English country estate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.  This window on the side of the building is peeking out over a vine clad roof.

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This thatch roof home is in Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, England. I see two close-set eyes framed with a carefully groomed head of thatch hair! (Of course, I also see an X shaped handle bar moustache…)

How about your house – what kind of face does it present? Ask a child to draw it – how do they see your house’s face?

Great Horned Owl on Halloween

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.
– A.A. Milne –

The Owl
Just before the sun came up yesterday, I heard the hoot of an owl. It sounded very close, so I grabbed my camera and quietly slid the patio door open. I stepped out onto the deck. The owl hooted again, but it was several hoots later before my eyes adjusted to the dark. Then I spotted it at the top a very tall spruce tree near the house!  I took a number of pictures, some with flash, though I didn’t think the flash would be much use when the owl was over 30 feet away! The owl hooted a few more times. I looked down to check the setting on my camera and when I looked up the owl was gone – so quietly I hadn’t even heard it leave.

Can you see the owl in the photo? It is a side view, with the head on the right, the tail on the left. One of the tree branches obscures the owls right eye. I think you can see the ear tuft, which would say it was probably a Great Horned Owl.

Once the owl left, there was nothing left to do but watch the sunrise. It was a more successful photo!

2nd Anniversary of Blogging – Comments, Halloween

Comments
My post last week, Comments Etiquette – All or Some?, generated more comments than any other post I have written. The majority consensus was that it is just plain polite to reply to every comment on your blog. But it was acknowledged that very popular blogs might generate more comments than it is possible to respond to. As for leaving comments, some bloggers like to push the ‘Like Button’, especially when there are already lots of comments, and they have nothing new to add!

Halloween
The Car Guy did the shopping for Halloween this year – one box of 125 mini chocolate bars. I wasn’t surprised when we still had 125 mini chocolate bars at the end of the evening… okay, there were 121 bars left. We sampled a few ourselves.

Many thanks to all of you who read my Halloween Blog Post from last year. It was called Pumpkin Face, and it explained why I am unhappy with the commercialized, politically correct holiday that has replaced the Halloween of days gone by.

Blog Birthday
It has been two years since I wrote the first post for this blog. It was called H1N1 Flu. Like many of  my posts, it is a combination of useful information, social commentary, and humour. Since then I have added my photographs to my blog posts, and that has been the single biggest change in my life. Looking at life through the lens of a camera, rather than just through words, has been very exciting!

Thanks to all of you who visit these pages. I don’t know how enthusiastic I would be about blogging if no one ever viewed them!