Category: humor

flowers, haiga, haiku, humor, photography, seasons

Last Song of Summer

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
<<<<<  To see this post as it SHOULD be seen, click on the [View original] button (displayed on a phone by a globe icon).  >>>>>


Flowers sing to bees,
who gather the last pollen.
A circle closes.


Some blogs I follow have excellent photos of bees and butterflies visiting zinnias and other flowers. The pollinators where I live usually move too fast for me.  (They seem to start each foraging trip with triple espressos.)  I just admire the local zinnias and their visitors as I walk slowly past them, without taking photos.  One day late in the 2026 zinnia season, my muse interrupted my walk when she whispered, “Pull your phone out.”  I complied while replying, “No post without a poem.”  She smirked and winked.

9
flowers, humor, photography, seasons

Pragmatism for Independence Day

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
This year, I put out almost the same patriotic decorations for Independence Day as for Memorial Day.  Bright diffuse light when I decorated for Memorial Day was good for photography, but I did not have time to cull and crop before posting for that day.  When I decorated for Independence Day, the heat and humidity were bad (and correctly predicted to soon be worse).  Anyway, the rhododendron blooms were long gone.  In the fading American tradition of pragmatism, I’ll post mostly anachronistic photos here.  In the beleaguered tradition of full disclosure, I’ll fess up to the discrepancies with nods to old songs.

Continue reading →

0
haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Not in Nature

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
IMG_8759_blem_crop.1_840x532

Cattle breed with swine,
just in someone’s playful mind.
Belted Galloway pigs!

 
 

Nature~ Pic and a Word Challenge #390

The farm near my house does raise Belted Galloway cattle; it does not raise any pigs.  My guess is that someone wanted to decorate the farm’s entrance with an outdoor sculpture of a Belted Galloway cow, then found one of a Hampshire pig at a flea market or garage sale.  Close enough: black-white-black (but  with white forelegs).  BTW, I found an image of a pig with black-white-black arranged just as on the cattle.  Nature can sometimes be playful, too.

 
– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
 

2
growing old, haiga, humor, life hacks, photography

Two Workarounds

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

§1: Tree to Stone to Tree to Stone

“I must grow.”
“I can’t move.  Sorry.”
“No problem.”

TreeRock_crop.2_sat-20_840x538

 

§2: Me to Knee and Up Again

Kneeling on one knee to capture the image for §1 was no problem for me, but my old legs stiffened in the time it took to get a few photos of the tree’s workaround for the stone.  To get up again, I depended on my own workaround.

After a few scares with stiffness from kneeling and balance on slopes earlier this year, I had bought a monopod and then replaced the monopod’s wrist lanyard with a clip that was intended for attaching a key ring to a belt loop.

Monopod_crop.1_840x571

Having taken the monopod on the walk leading to §1, I extended two of its four sections and used it to get up w/o drama.  When collapsed and clipped to a belt loop, the monopod leaves my hands free for wiping sweat or taking photos.  Like a good assistant, it’s there when I need it and unobtrusive when I don’t.  Remembering to take it when I go for a walk is the hard part.

 
 

Stone ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #387

 
– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
 

7
birds, haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Petrified

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

Nesting kestrel turns
to see whose approach it hears.
Medusa quits birding.

IMG_8348_crop.1_blem.1_eras.1_eclps+9_840x606

Long after making a small cairn from these three stones, I noticed a slight resemblance to a nesting kestrel.  Long after that, I recalled the old myth about what happened to people who looked at Medusa’s face.  Kudos to Medusa for seeing the effect of her hobby and changing course.  She switched to making stoneware pottery.

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
2
haiga, humor, language, photography, serendipity

Mother Nature’s Inner Child

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
IMG_5908_rot+3.6_crop.1_blem_crop.2_840x714
IMG_7972_840x1120

Her crayon goes from Sun to Earth,
thru a window and some glassware,
and then a little farther still.
She scribbles nonsense on a wall.

IMG_7969_dram+35_crop.sqr_840x840

Yes, using the category [ekphrastic poetry] would be more accurate than using the category [haiga].  The word [ekphrastic] is way too dysphonious for describing any kind of poetry I might like, so I pretend that the poem is a haiku.  Close enough?

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
2
flowers, humor, photography, seasons

Goldenrod

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
IMG_7945_crop.1_blem_840x659

Ah, such a cheery yellow graces the month of September.  Alas, ragweed flowers out of sight at the same time, giving goldenrod a bad rep among some people with hay fever.  While ragweed sheds pollen to the whims of the wind, goldenrod holds pollen that will be picked up and transported by insect pollinators.  You’re not likely to inhale any goldenrod pollen unless a bee crawls up your nose.

IMG_7963_crop.1_eclp+9_blem_840x998

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
2
birds, haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Teenager

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

Too old for childhood;

Look-Right-Blur_crop.1_840x831

too young for raising children.

Look-Left-Blur_crop.1_840x703

Blurry persona.

Frontal_crop.1_840x909

Like many juvenile birds, this male cardinal sat still and looked befuddled, then changed position a little, and then sat still and looked befuddled.  With his face centered in the focus frame and a moderately fast shutter speed, he should have been in focus.  My camera’s autofocus probably got distracted by the twigs all around him.  While my camera has good manual overrides for most of its automatic choices, its manual focusing is a lame joke.  So I made lemonade from lemons with the final line of my haiku.

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
5