In the  spring I lost my faithful minion Trip. Early this summer we added Peach to our menagerie.

Peach — typical goofy expression

As much as I love the big orange doofus, he’s just not minion material. (Also, he prefers Jim’s company to mine. Curr.)

So… to rectify the lack of a minion for the Magpie Center for World Domination. We have added a second cat.

Meet Diesel. Most often known as Izzy.

Diesel — pondering the great outdoors

Peach and izzyhave learned to get along, sort of. There’s a lot of chasing and stealing the best sleeping spots going on. Until they’re both tired, then they settle down together on the back of the couch.

stop following me already

A new toy.

The newest toy and our next project.

But before we can do anything about that…

We have to fix this.

Yeah, that’s pretty much half of the dash pulled out. Tomorrow night the other half comes out. All because I don’t like cold feet.

There are bits of this truck that are waaaay too far behind other bits.

(Update to the update — Jim got it all done and buttoned back up on Sunday. Good thing too, because there’s snow forecast for tonight.)

 A lazy cat.

Peach in his prefered winter spot.

Work — or not.

NaNoWriMo.

You can find it here.

I’m not actually signed up. Because I’m chicken shit and all that. Mostly because I don’t write novels. At least not with any success. I write short stories. And I plan to write 4 this month. It’s my own little version of NaNoWriMo.

We spent a little time down at the expensive toy store earlier this weekend. We came away with two new-to-us lenses.

The first is rather dull — it’s a straight across replacement for the 70–300 that we already had. The new one has VR, Nikon’s image stabilization/vibration reduction package. The longer the lens the more I appreciate VR.

The second lens is a bit more interesting. A 12–14 f4 aspherical. (Tokina.) We bought it because I want a wider lens for getting good shots of the crowded narrow streets and aisles in Mexico. So that I can get things like these pictures of the road to the farm.

our road

I’m considering using this one on the new Blackdog and Magpie website design. Doing some thing with a vertical image on the left side rather than the totally predictable header image.

looking down the road from the pasture

If you know my backyard well you’ll be able to see the amount of squashing in this picture. It’s actually a long way from the rock pile to the edge of the saw buck. You can also tell that the hood doesn’t fit  perfectly and that at 12mm there’s some interference with the edges of the image. Oh well, I’ll have to see what I can do about it.

the back side of the work yard

The other reason for getting a nice fat round lens is to be able to take good landscape pictures. Admittedly about the only thing we have around there this fall is green but it’s nice crisp detailed green.

why yes, we have a few ferns

And some more green things.

more foliage, up close this time

But best of all is the ability to get close and shallow on those days when the lilies look good but the patio furniture is a little dingy.

the last of the Stargazer lilies for this year

In this morning’s experimenting I found that the camera consistently over exposes shots if I let it have too much say in the exposure, especially if I let it choose a shutter speed. A little care in shooting and a  little nudge in Lightroom and I get those lovely water drops on the lily… happy.

This time next week I’ll be writing the first of the posts from Oaxaca and the Mexican bicentennial celebrations. Can’t wait!

I’ve been working on updates and upgrades and all around tidying to the web sties.

It is unsettling to know that of all the information provided on all my sites and blogs. The thing people most want to know about and to look at are:

the chicken pictures…

sigh.

It’s time for a dog tidy!

Before:

dee-dee before

c-c before

ivan — before

During:

ivan in process

After:

dee-dee and c-c, clean and outside to dry off

ivan smiling

Mizz Frizzle still has all 10 chicks. They’re growing bigger and bigger all the time.

frizzle and brood

as you can see at least a few of them are also ‘afflicted’ with frizzled feathers.

Mz. Frizzle and her brood of 10 are out and about every day now.

Mz. Frizzle and the 10 little Frizzles

The frizzled banty hen has managed to hide out and hatch a handful of chicks.

Jim caught this one out for a snack.

one black chicken, one black chick

Hopefully they will stay in the barn long enough to grow to be too big for the crows to terrorize.

Just for amusement value. This is what life looks like around here in the spring.

who me? no, I never overeat.

Click on the photo to embiggen. Really, it’s worth it. I’ll wait…

And here he is looking a little less goony.

still got hay everywhere

Each summer we have several nests of barn swallows.

Late last week I watched the first of the barn swallows fly across the pasture. This morning I had the first evidence that housekeeping has started.

One of the oldest/biggest nests is perched on top of the flood light over the feed room in the barn.

flood light over the feed room

As you can see it’s a tight fit.

here’s the nest perched on top of the light fizture

This morning I found this little mess on the floor directly underneath the nest. It’s made up of hay loosely joined with mud and a plush lining of chicken feathers.

barn swallow nest

chicken feathers used to line the nest

Usually they just build a new layer on top of last years nest. I suspect this last top layer had to be evicted because there is no more room to build up.

We should see the females arrive soon.