I give you the moon!

Taking pictures of the moon are a challenge because you have to use manual mode to get the exposure correct. It is also easier to use manual focus to dial that in better. The other month I was surprised to see the moon out in the afternoon. I especially like the center picture that was taken about 4 in the afternoon. The top and bottom center pictures were taken tonight 3/31/09 and the remaining ones were taken in early February of this year. The nice thing about taking pictures when the moon is not full, is that at the border between light and dark, you can see the shadows from the moon craters and that adds to the picture.

Beavers Bend state park in Oklahoma

During spring break we stopped at Beavers Bend state park. As you can see from the collage there are lots of photo opportunities here. We hiked a trail that was about 3 miles and went up and down a number of peaks, it was a challenging hike. The photo showing Tyler, Tim, Tierney, Brayden and I is at the start of the hike. Amy, Dallas and Cady went on a train ride during our hike. The photos looking down on the river were taken on the trail after we climbed up one of the peaks. The views were awesome.

Robbers Cave state park in Oklahoma

We spent a few days at Robbers Cave state park in Oklahoma during spring break. The rock climbing was great and everyone had a lot of fun. The collage above shows a small sample of the pictures I took during this trip.

Sunset

The Texas sunsets from our property are beautiful. Here is the sunset from this evening.

The fight with the bees is over

Here is the aftermath of my fight to evict the bees. This is the end of the couch and the entire inside was honeycomb. I got all the honeycomb out and the couch is loaded up on the trailer ready to haul off. There are still a number of bees buzzing around all of the honeycomb pieces on the ground.

Spring is here

Now that spring is here, the leaves are coming back and everything is turning green. I noticed this cardinal sitting on a tree in my backyard and got a few pictures of him.

The bees part 2

Ok, I now have one end of the hive exposed and as you can see it is very large. The entire end of the couch is bees and honeycomb. The bees are not active this morning because it was only 46 degrees outside. I am still hoping they will find another place to live now that I have exposed their home to the outside. The top picture of a piece of the honeycomb shows some bees ready to come out and some that are still larva.

The Bees

Amy and I were loading the trailer with trash to take to the dump. We had an old couch and love seat that had been sitting outside. First up was the love seat. As soon as we picked it up, a 5 foot chicken (Texas rat) snake came out and crawled back into the love seat. Amy was screaming as I assured her it was a harmless snake. I was able to pull it back out of the love seat and let it go off in the woods. Sorry I did not get a picture. Next up was the couch. I moved it to get a better angle at loading it since it was heavy. I then went to go around to the other end to move it and realised I was about a foot away from a colony of agitated bees on the end of the couch. So now we have been trying to evict the bees so I can get the couch loaded into the trailer. I tied the couch to the trailer so I could pull it into the yard for better access to where the bees are. Working at dusk and dawn, I have been exposing the hive with the use of an axe and sledge hammer. Hopefully I can get the bees to leave on their own but they have not gone anywhere yet.