Walk In The Field Part 1 - Purple

I walked in the field and took tons of pics of things in the grass. I didn't see one coneflower this year. I'm surprised by that. Previous years pics were in July, so I'll look again later.

I tried to identify the plants when I could.

Purple flowers:



Earlier in June I saw some that had mostly one color, a red purple. Now they are mulicolored and very pretty. They are like a clump here and there in the field.



I would put this one in the Fabaceae (The Bean Family) section. But I didn't see anything that really nailed it for sure. The flower petals part looks kinda like purple locoweed, which can be toxic to cattle, but a plant view doesn't look the same.

Here's my process for ND plant id.

MAP
Start Here
Plants
Prairie Wildflowers and Grasses of North Dakota
Spring Wildflowers
Purple locoweed

OR
Start Here
Plants
Native Wildflowers of the North Dakota Grasslands
Lists the Families here.
(Note: NATIVE. If it's an alien, it's not listed. More on that later.)

Under Fabaceae is
Purple Locoweed (Oxytropis lambertii)

Those two pics look totally different to me.
So, google it.

Now things start to look more like what I have...or not. lol

This one shows hairy texture and an ant.



This one shows some of the pretty bokeh I got straight out of the camera and cropped, no post-processing.



Zoom in a little from the full plant view:

Lisa Marie Presley - Now What - Music

So I was reading some of the stuff on Michael Jackson and came across
Lisa Marie Presley's post on myspace.

What she wrote about MJ reminded me of that movie, A River Runs Through It, because it had that similar theme of watching someone self-destruct and feeling powerless to stop it.
(See wikiquote.)

I ended up listening to LMP's songs while I was there and really liked
"Now What." A sad slow goodbye song.

It's been a l-o-n-g time since I've found a new song to listen to.



Song lyrics snippet:

"...When I left and I said goodbye
Did you know that I meant it that time?
And damn it if I didn't try to do
Everything that I was supposed to
And now - what do I do now?
Oh, I don't know
Oh, I'm leaving..."

Fog On The Forty

Morning walk on our land, about 10 minutes after official sunrise.


The mowed trail makes a pretty picture.
Even with the trail, I was sopping wet afterward anyway cuz lots of moisture, but I didn't care, as long as I can see where I'm going.

Look at those ears peeking up over the hills/grass:





Fog, deer -- all fairly common.

Boy, was that deer surprised. Like he couldn't believe what he was seeing out there on HIS turf, usually no humans. It was funny.





Looks like houses in the background on last pic, but that is all just fog winding up thru the valley crevices.

Alice In Wonderland March 2010

Hey, I didn't know there was an Alice In Wonderland movie coming out.
It looks good.



I found a bunch of links on the movie at slashfilm.com.

Here's one with
HUGE nice pics.
Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland Logo and High Resolution Photos/Concept Art



And here's one with a Glossary of Terms For Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

The images I posted here were cropped, layered, and lightened a lot to show more detail.

Discussion and scans of a magazine article about the movie at timburtoncollective forum.
Scans are as images and then as text further down in the thread.

Soap Bubble Photography

Wow.
These are beautiful.

akindofmagic.eu

Via ColourLovers.com

I adore the one that looks like a dolphin.

Butterfly Identification - North Dakota

I found a really good place for North Dakota butterfly info.

I know about the North Dakota State University Agriculture and University Extension (Fargo, ND)

I know about the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (Jamestown, ND)

However, navigating those sites and finding the info I want can be rather difficult. Often it's thru the back door (googling) that I find what I want at a specific site.

Butterfly Gardening in North Dakota

Download the pdf file, e1266.pdf at the top where it says:
"Click here for an Adobe Acrobat PDF file suitable for printing. (350KB)"
This has big color pics, calendar, names.

At npwrc:
Atlas of North Dakota Butterflies
Lists the Brush-footed butterflies.

Miller Moths

(Pic added Thur 25 Jun 09. Caught one in the screen door in all his ew-icky-yuckness.)

Miller moth season again. Yeah, they get in the house. They like my bright computer screen and sometimes fly in my face.
Ick, ew, yuck.

Googling it...(Colorado has a problem with miller moths, evidently.)

The thing about trying to identify is that all the pics/illustrations show moths with open wings. I never see them that way. When they aren't fluttering around they are sitting with their wings shut and look very dark to black. If I ever get the opportunity, I'll try getting a good pic of one.

Moths of North Dakota

six species:

"...six of the more common and economically important species of Noctuinae in the Dakotas."

1. Black cutworm
Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnegal 1766)
Common name: Ypsilon dart/ Black cutworm.

2. Dingy cutworm
Feltia jaculifera (Guenée 1852)
Common name: Dingy cutworm.

3. Army cutworm
Euxoa auxiliaris (Grote 1873)
Common name: Army cutworm

4. Pearly underwing
Peridroma saucia (Hübner 1808)
Common name: Variegated cutworm/ Pearly underwing.


(I created the image summary for my reference. Pic was cropped to fit my blog. See site for full pic.)

5. W[ell]-marked cutworm
Spaelotis clandestina (Harris 1862)
Common name: W[ell]-marked cutworm.


(I created the image summary for my reference. Pic was cropped to fit my blog. See site for full pic.)

6. Greater yellow underwing
Noctua pronuba (Linnaeus 1758)
Common name: Greater yellow underwing (Europe).

Longer List
Economically Important and Common Moths

Families of Moths

"...about 1,400 species of moths are known from the Dakotas."

One other reference relevant to North Dakota, dated 6 Jun 02.
ag.ndsu

My abbreviated notes from above link:

Miller Moths are the adult moths of cutworms, Family Noctuidae.

The main species flying around is the Army cutworm, which will migrate to the Rocky Mountains for the summer.

It then returns to the plains in the late summer to lay eggs in fields.

Several migratory moths are also arriving including:
Black cutworm
Variegated cutworm.
Striped cutworm (early Jul)
Red-backed cutworms (mid-Jul)
Dingy cutworms (Jul thru Aug)
Dark-sided cutworm and Bronzed cutworm (Aug-Sep)

Most adult cutworm moths will live about 21 days or more.

Family Noctuidae - Owlet Moths
Pronunciation:
nawk-TOO-ih-dee

Wheat Revisited

Wheat Pic



The blue looked kind of blah, gray, dull.
So subtle improvement with curves:


Curves setting:


How about something completely different:


I grayscaled it and layered it with this:



Just a cloud texture filter and a lens flare filter.
I like it.
Got the idea from a photo I saw on Flickr. Don't have a link, though.

Tinker Bell

So I was channel surfing and I found Tinker Bell on the Disney Channel and watched it for a while.



When it came to the part about the bird hatchling, that was just adorable! I loved it. I searched high and low and finally found a nice pic of the hatchling online at a blu-ray dvd review site. (Blu-ray 1920x1080 capture at site.)



More nice BIG movie pics at kidstvmovies.about.com.
Also review.

I tried to find out when/if the movie will air again but could not find that info anywhere online. I'd like to record it and/or maybe I'd buy it if I found a good price on it. It's a very pretty movie.

Three direct-to-DVD sequels to follow:
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (fall 2009)
Tinker Bell: A Midsummer Storm (working title, summer 2010)
Tinker Bell: A Winter Story (working title, winter 2011)

Currently at YouTube:
Tinker Bell Trailer
Lost Treasure Trailer (sequel 2)

Tinker Bell Part 1
(10 min.)

Tinker Bell Part 4
(Bird part starts at the end.)
Tinker Bell Part 5
(Bird part at the beginning.)

Video Screen Captures:

Fonts

Once in a while I'm going to post some fonts that I like and want to use. Because there are just so many of them the good ones get lost on my hard drive.

So I'm really liking this calligraphic font called
Kingthings-Exeter.

And the Flourishes.



kingthingsfonts creator's website.

I like Kfon too.




Bamboo. I rotated it, layer, stack, etc. Fun to play with. I should make a seamless pattern out of this one.

Some others: Leafy, bird.



The fish are kinda cute:



Aierbazzi is interesting. I usually see this kind of thing as a brush, not a font. Just type the letters and they make this bouquet.



Just a few:



Or add a single embellishment:



Made a seamless pattern from the Floralia font. (Free to snag.)



Pattern Creation Notes:
Used Simple Half Wrap filter and PSP Offset to create the seamless pattern.
Black (BG) font color with green outline (FG) on layer blend soft light at 36% opacity.
It looks nice embossed.
Can also add texture and/or colorize.

Cloud Putto

Cloud Putto:



Closeup of head:



Putto
(Plural putti)

The Eagle Has Landed

So it was cloud heaven out there on our land the other day and I was taking pics like crazy. I noticed when viewing the photos that I was getting some cool shadows on the ground and this one looks like an eagle. I can see the entire body outline - tail, wings, beak. I LOVE it!

It looks fab full size.
The clouds aren't all that good on this one compared to others I have.

Here's a better representation of the clouds:



And a little closer...

Eastern Kingbird2

I think this is another Eastern Kingbird.
On our land this time.
Better quality.
So I'm posting it.
I sharpened it some, but it still is a little soft.

In flight:


I know it's terribly blurry, but I like it.
I cloned out the fence.