I'm naming it the 'Decade Garden'

As I mentioned in my previous crazy neighbors post, things are happening in the garden.

Fortunately, some of them are good things!

I bought my condo maybe 10 years ago now and I have been battling the crappy soil, demonic weeds, tenacious tree roots, grubs and slugs and snails and other creepy things ever since.

I've focused most of my attention on one spot near the driveway. The first year I whacked down weeds that were growing above my head, cleared it of construction debris, dug out old chunks of concrete buried in the ground, and cut down "weed trees"--those effing maples that grow anywhere and everywhere.

Every year since, I've pulled weeds, dug up roots, laid yards and yards of weed barrier and put down bag after bag after bag of new soil and enough mulch to fill a truck or two (lugged bag by bag weekend by weekend from Home Depot).

Over the years, my mom donated some healthy plants and rich soil from her own garden, supplemented with some plants I bought ... although none of them lasted and they're all dead and gone now.

RIP, good intentions.

It is a tiny space and yet it's been a huge job. But this spring I think I've (mostly) got the decade garden under control.

First, the before pictures from this year--I really wish I had thought to take before pictures starting that first year):

Pretty effing bleak.

I kind of skipped the fall clean-up last year. 

I split one of my hostas, which for some reason I thought would be a half hour job at most. Not so much--it took almost three hours and I broke my spade and nearly broke my back. The other one will have to wait till next spring to divide and multiply.

Here's the "during" photo at the start of day two.

Not a big fan of raking leaves--the mess on the left of the pic looks exactly the same four days later.
That's what next weekends are for.

Three bags of mulch--and it was barely enough for this small space.
Seriously--there's never enough effing mulch. 

Made a Home Depot run to replace the spade, buy mulch, gardening gloves, a heather plant and some other odds and ends. 

Will the heather live or die? Too soon to tell. 

Every time I go to Home Depot for a couple of things I end up spending $110--it's as bad as a trip to Target. 

I can't help it--I'm a good shopper. 

I got this bird bath (or feeder--it's pretty shallow) from a local  guy who makes them out of old dishes and  table legs.
Below it is one half of the split hosta.  

Got the little bluebird bird bath on Amazon last summer.
The birds have ignored it for a year but I saw one land on it today.
Yay!
And below it is the other half of the split hosta. 

Cement shell planter on the left was an estate sale score.
Solar lights from Target.
Slate in the foreground and mulch, mulch, mulch from Home Depot.

Wait, where was I before I started going on about shopping?

Ah, yes, my little "decade garden." Spring clean-up this year took me about four hours and half a vicodin on Saturday and another three-ish hours on Sunday (not counting the Home Depot run) to finish up.

Here are the after photos:

Well, mostly after ... if you ignore the leaves on the left and pretend I don't still have a couple of hours' worth of edging to do. :(
Also, it will look better when some of the plants fill in--but I'm still pretty pleased with myself.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of projects on my to-do list, none of them nearly as "easy" as this was.

Take my lawn ... please:

My entry into the World's Shittiest Lawn competition. Front, back, side--they all look like this.

Honest to God I have no freaking idea what is wrong with my lawn. I may have broken the rules and let Sadie pee on it a few times over the winter--but only when there was so much snow I didn't have any other choice but to shovel out a little square for her.

But that doesn't account for the fact that it's 72% weeds and crab grass. The rest is dirt. And grubs. I actually mow this shit! I wish I could just lay down new sod. It's pretty expensive, though, and not exactly a DIY project.

Some other areas in need of a little improvement:

In case there's any confusion, our house is not the one on the left, with the nice raised flower bed.
It's the one on the right with the nice strip of weeds. 

Um, it looks better in real life?

This one actually looks worse in real life.

I know--wah, wah, poor me. I guess I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it a little. Being out in the sun, getting some exercise, shopping, a sense of accomplishment, etc. These are all things I like. Honest. But I do get overwhelmed--I don't know how I will get it all done. (Does anyone know any nice, single landscapers?) 

But imagine how awesome it will look in 2023!

Other stuff:
I first met mulch in 2007. Our relationship has not matured since then: Look what the cat dragged in.

Still crazy after all these years

This year I'm celebrating seven years of crazy upstairs neighbor stories.

This special anniversary edition is brought to you by the latest tenants. For about a year I've suspected they were throwing cigarettes off their back porch and into the back yard, although they denied it.

I picked them up, threw them away, and told myself that maybe the squirrels were smoking in the trees. (I like to give people the benefit of the doubt--which my mom has recently informed me is my worst quality.)

When the snow melted, the sheer number of butts on the ground made it clear that if the squirrels were indeed smoking they would be dead from cancer by now:

Fun with Photoshop. Sadie is not amused.

The arrow points to a tree that blocks this area from the other yards.  The only way these got here was if saomeone walked into our back yard and deposited them there ... or if someone threw them off the back porch. As the woman next door said while we were chatting the other day, "It's not exactly a mystery."

Anyhoo ... I finally managed to catch the upstairs neighbor in the act--watched the lit cigarette sail off the upstairs porch and into the dry leaves and mulch in the ground. Freaking awesome.

I am such a good photographer! I managed to catch the burning cigarette and the inch-long ash and if you look closely you can actually see the smoke wafting off of it (to the left). The dry leaves on the right-hand side make the photo, though. Fine art!  

Seriously, WTF.

Ah, but apparently I am the liar. Even though I saw him do it, the faux-hawked asshat upstairs told the unit owners he is absolutely positively 100% innocent.

And so it continues.

I was going to make a list of all the previous installments of my upstairs neighbor stories, but there are way more than I even remembered--and I even skipped most of the stories from when the three boys lived upstairs--they were also big fans of flicking cigarettes all over the back lawn and had really classy girlfriends, such as the one who challenged me to a fight.

A search of "upstairs neighbor" on Gienna Writes returns a lot of horror stories. So here are some of the best of the worst:

In which my upstairs neighbor dies.
In which my upstairs neighbor comes back from the dead.
In which the bank spends all my money and I still don't get the gay boyfriends of my dreams (long).
In which I am scolded by the Keyspan lady.

Looking back at them, I realize that I've never had it so good.

And finally ... Famous last words from "Auntie A" in this comment on on of my earliest crazy upstairs neighbor posts from 2006.

Happy anniversary!

100 Strangers Project (Part 2)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am both intrigued by and terrified of the 100 Strangers Project, in which you not only walk up to perfect stranger and ask to take their photos but also engage them in conversation and tell their story.

I joined the 100 Strangers Group on Flickr and planned to start the project in Ireland, but was too scared to do it on the first half of the trip, even though I met so many lovely people and had such great conversations with them. I just couldn't bring myself to take that additional step of asking to take their photo.

As the days went by I became increasingly aware of all the opportunities I was missing.

And screwed up my courage enough to ask three people if I could take their picture.

It was only when I got home that I realized that I was so nervous that I not only forgot to record their stories but also in some cases didn't even get their names. And forgot to focus. Other than that, awesome.

So I won't be counting any of these as part of the 100 Strangers Project. But for the sake of learning from my mistakes, I figured I'd share them anyway.

Stranger #0 John O'Neill

This is John O'Neill, our guide on a day tour of Connemara. A funny, extremely flirty fellow who happens to be in love with Noreen, the equally funny and wonderful woman who owns the B&B where we stayed in Killarney. (I didn't take her photo either.)

He claims to have been married briefly, but I cannot imagine him as anything but a dedicated bachelor. Aside from the usual tour guide info, he talked a lot about the economy in Ireland and pointed out to us an entire development of beautiful houses that stand empty because the builder ran out of money.

He believes that putting your hat on the table is bad luck and, as a result, leaves many hats behind in restaurants, pubs and cafes. Luckily, he has lots of hats.

I could almost count this as my first "stranger" photo, except that by this point he was hardly a stranger. I had, in fact, kissed him several times (on the cheek). It was part of his bit: The last person on the bus at each stop had to kiss him. Unless the last person was a dude, in which case he'd steal a kiss from the nearest female.

Stranger #0 George Ralph

Like my photo of John O'Neill, this almost counts as a 100 Strangers Project photo, but falls short in one critical area. When I got home and looked at the photo, I realized that I remember absolutely nothing about him aside from the fact that he owns a fabulous antique store in Kilkenny. I didn't even remember his name. 

The point of the 100 strangers project is that you not only have to ask a stranger if you can take his or her photograph, but you also have to engage them, learn something about them, and include that information with your photo. It's not that I didn't talk to him--we chatted for at least 10 or 15 minutes. It's just that I was so nervous about asking to take his photo and then taking his photo that every detail of the encounter left my little brain the moment I walked out of his store.

Now, if I was going to cheat, I could pretend that I remembered that his name is George Ralph and he owns D&R Antiques on Rose Inn Street in Kilkenny, Ireland. But I'm an honest kind of gal, so I'll admit to you that I had to Google that.

Further evidence of how nervous I was--there is nothing in focus in this picture! Adding to the technical difficulties--he kept chatting while I was snapping and so in all the other photos his mouth is open. I swear to God, this "strangers" thing is even harder than I imagined.

Stranger #0 Klaus Hartmann

Yet another potential photo for the 100 Strangers Project that falls short in that I probably didn't talk to him long enough and also I bribed him to let me take his photo by buying about 50 Euros' worth of his gorgeous pottery.

And, again, I was so nervous I forgot to effing focus. Oh, and of course although I thought I got his name now I can't find it. So that's strike three.

Once again, I had to Google: His name is Klaus Hartmann. I met Klaus at his booth in a small market outside of Kilkenny Castle. He is a potter who lives about 10 miles outside of Kilkenny with his wife, who makes the baskets you see in the background of the photo.

Have I mentioned that this "strangers" thing is really hard?

100 Strangers Project (Part 1)

A little while before I left for Ireland, I discovered the 100 strangers group on Flickr.

From the group description:

The challenge: Take at least 100 photographs of 100 people you don't know. Approach anyone or a group of people, ask for permission to both take a photo of them and to post it to this group. Get to know your stranger/s. Who are they? What is their life like? Step out of your comfort zone and into a new level of portrait photography.

I was intrigued. And when I say intrigued, I mean terrified.

Listen, I have problems taking photos of people on the street when they don't know I'm taking their picture. I love to people-watch and once I get over my initial shyness I love to talk to people. And I also really love taking people's portraits:

Virginia: Not a stranger. 

Noelle: Also not a stranger.

Jesse: Not just not a stranger but also my cousin.

Audrey: Not only not a stranger but also married to my cousin.

But to strike up a conversation with a stranger AND ask to take his or her picture?

That's about a million miles outside of my comfort zone.

Still, I AM going to do it--and I kinda sorta started to do it in Ireland. (More on that in part 2.) In the meantime, I gather inspiration for the project, as usual, from the Flickr community.

One of my favorite Flickr friends, Kevin Day, has been doing the project with lovely results, of which these are just a few of my faves (please, please click to see the full size photos and the stories of each encounter and thanks, once again, to those Flickrites who enable sharing on their photos).

#1 By Kevin Day

#35 By Kevin Day

#37 By Kevin Day

#41 By Kevin Day

I am in awe and in envy.

And here are some others I really like:

#16 By Doodlecats by Beth Wilson

#1 By leesure (I love, love, love this photo--and yet the story behind it is even better.)

#1 By buiu

#202 By Al Fed

#97 By danny st.

Further reading:
Tips and suggestions for asking strangers to take their photos without your head exploding.
Advice for "extremely awkward and nervous" people.
How to shoot street portraits by Danny Santos II (danny st.) plus a description of his methods and freaking incredible examples of his street portraits.

3 or 4 not-very-deep thoughts about taking photos in Ireland

So I ended up--after a lot of culling--with about 700 photos from my Ireland trip. And I'm even happy with a few of them.

I'll post more photos and some deeper thoughts later, but for the moment, here are a few general take-aways on taking photos in Ireland.

First, it really did rain every day--and for all but two days it pretty much rained all day. Mill Girl was not pleased. Don't tell her, but I was ecstatic. Photos of sunny skies and green grass are boring. Grey cloudy threatening skies are so much moodier, dramatic.

And B, it's been a long time since I've done a lot of landscape photos. I just got bored with them. Not possible in Ireland. Holy crap--beautiful landscapes. I kind of don't even care (OK, I care a little) that most of the photos I took have been done a million times. They're still pretty, dammit.

Exhibit 1/B:

I'll be spending the next several months cloning out rain drop spots on photos. 

Third, I now feel really, really bad for all the photos of sheep I've trashed in the Flickr DeleteMe! group. Typical pithy comment from me (nasty comments are not only allowed but encouraged in the group): "Next time, get the sheep's face instead of its ass."

I am soooooo funny!

Well, I have returned from Ireland with at least one million photos of sheep ass and exactly two in which the sheep are looking at me.

And when I say looking at me, I mean STARING DIRECTLY AT ME AND FREAKING ME THE FUCK OUT.

Exhibits 2 and 3:

Dude, stop staring at me!

Even the baby is doing it! STOP LOOKING AT ME!

But these are indoor sheep who have just had babies. I have entered their farm/ranch/pasture turf and come into close proximity of their offspring. They stare because they do not love. Plus, you know, they don't have anywhere to run. In the fields, the sheep are very quick to flounce away, flicking their little tails and giving you a great shot of their soggy bums.

These photos, by the way, were taken at the Coolakay House Bed & Breakfast in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. It is a real live working sheep farm, and I have the customs form to prove it.  

What happens when you check "yes" on these two boxes on your customs form?

Exhibit 4:

I not only touched or handled livestock, I probably (definitely) stepped in their poo.

You get laughed at, that's what.

Customs guy: What kind of livestock?
Me: Sheep.
Customs guy: What kind of sheep were they?
Me: Um ... The cute kind?
Laughing customs guy: You can leave now.
Me: My friend touched way more sheep than me. Get ready; here she comes!

Mill Girl got her shoes cleaned by customs. Harrumph!

By the way, Mill Girl has already written several blog posts about our trip. This is a good thing, because I had (and have) no idea where we were 95% of the time. You have too many Ks, Ireland!

Here are her posts, conveniently organized in chronological order:

Dear Dublin
Dear Galway
Dear Connemara
Dear Dingle
Dear Killarney
Dear Killkenny
Dear Enniskerry

Does that list of links seem overwhelming? Go look anyway. She includes a lot of pictures and is as funny as shit. Follow her on her quest to touch a sheep! Listen to her rail against the weather! Join her in making fun of my driving and sleep-shouting! And for goodness' sake, check out the pic of the famous person she met!

What's in my camera bag -- The Ireland configuration

Did I mention Mill Girl and I are going to Ireland?

Although equipment wasn't really to blame for my shitty Paris pictures, I want to make sure I'm prepared for Ireland's photo ops.

I've had this Tamrac Photo Backpack for ages--it fits a ton of stuff (as you'll see below) and is very comfortable. 

I bought a sling version (Case Logic DCB-308 SLR Camera Sling bag) but it doesn't fit nearly as much and the design is super awkward. I had it loaded up and opened up so that the slide flap was facing up ... or so I thought until one of my lenses tumbled out. That was that for that--it's going back. So the old bag goes with me. 

What else? 

Here's what’s in my camera bag:

Camera (1)

Nikon D7000: My new baby. Bought for this trip several months ago so I’d have time to learn it. It has a lot of buttons. It fits in the top portion of the bag with room to spare for ID, a snack, a few small personal items. Water bottle goes in the side pocket.

I’m also bringing the camera manual. I can always look stuff up online, but a few extra ounces in your backpack is worth it when you need to figure out how to MAKE IT STOP BRACKETING RIGHT NOW.

Lenses (5)

The bottom half of the bag zips open and there's room to fit four lenses (the fifth is on the camera body in the top compartment) and a manual. I've long since lost the dividers that came with the bag. I usually use individual sleeves for my lenses. But since I have so much equipment for this trip, I saved some room by taking them out of their individual bags and using a couple strips of foams as cushion. The LensBaby is so light--it sits on top of my wide angle lens just fine. 

Nikon 50mm f/1.8: My absolute favorite lens. Beautiful for low light and for portraits—oh, the bokkeh!

Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 VR Zoom: Step up from a kit lens only in that it has vibration reduction. Good, functional, all-around lens.

Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR Zoom: Another new purchase. Haven’t played with it much, but I think it will be good for landscapes and rounds out my zoom range.

Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G Fisheye: This one almost didn’t make the cut. But for city scenes, in particular, it’s nice to have. And you can correct the fisheye effect in Photoshop if you like. (BTW, no WAY I paid that much for mine... it's either gone way up in price or I got a really good deal. Never, ever pay full price for cameras and lenses.)

Lensbaby Spark: I bought this specifically for this trip and I've been having fun with it. But I’m not *crazy* about it. It’s small and light, though, and so it got the last slot in my camera bag. Why not? More about the LensBaby in this previous post. 

Filters (3)

Tiffen 52mm Color Graduated Neutral Density 0.6 Filter: Half of the filter is ND, the rest is clear. You spin it to darken bright areas, such the sky in a landscape, without affecting the foreground exposure.

Tiffen 52mm Neutral Density 0.6 Filter: Allows you to slow down the shutter speed in bright light conditions so your photos don't look as washed out and so moving water looks creamier, for example. 

Tiffen 52mm Circular Polarizer: Brightens blue skies, cuts down on glare from reflective surfaces such as water and makes everything brighter and more crisp. And you can use the filter to enhance reflections, as well as reduce them. I like to take photos of reflective surfaces. So shiny!

I know some folks are filter snobs, but Tiffin has always worked just fine for me. 

Misc: 

Tabletop tripod: I did consider bringing the bigger telescoping tripod--it looks something like this one--and I'm still kind of considering it. Folded up, that one is about a foot long, maybe four or five inches thick. The little one fits right in the side pocket, there. But honestly, I'm not even sure it's worth it to bring the small one. It's adorable, but not incredibly effective. So it has a slot for now, but if there are going to be cuts, it's going to be the first to go. If I somehow end up with an extra 12x5 inches in my suitcase, I'll have to re-think the tripod sitch. 

Spare rechargeable Li-Ion battery: Yup, it was expensive—about $60 on sale on Amazon. But you can’t take pictures with a dead battery. And they always seem to die at the worst possible moment. I wouldn't go anywhere without it. 

A battery charger: Duh. 

A ton of memory cards: And not necessarily big ones. If you lose a card before backing it up, you don’t want it to be a card with 400 photos on it. The D700 has two memory card slots, so if one is full it switches to the second automatically. Nice. I’ll format them all before I go. 

Cloth lens cleaner: My lenses seem unusually susceptible to dust and smudges. It’s like Pigpen from the Peanuts up in here. Works for eyeglasses, cell phone, etc., too. 

But wait, there's more! (God, I write long.) 

What’s NOT in my camera bag (for this trip, anyway): 

A spare camera body: My previous cameras are all but dead—no sense lugging around an unreliable back-up camera. 

A point-and-shoot camera: With space at a premium, I’m not going to bother taking my crappy Cannon Powershot. If I drop my D700 off the Cliffs of Moher, I could always use my camera phone and/or buy a point-and-shoot at whatever version of WalMart they have in Ireland. 

My bounce flash: This was the toughest decision. It’s great for dimly-lit interiors (I suspect we’ll spend a lot of time in pubs, for example). But the thing is enormous. I can make do with the on-camera flash. 

A card reader: Remember when laptops didn’t have a memory card slot? The dark ages! I’ll back up my flash cards every night on my HP netbook. In Paris, I thought I lost one of my cards and although I did eventually find it, I learned my lesson, there. 

A skylight filter: When I shot film I had one on every lens to protect them from scratches, etc. You drop your camera, would you rather crack a filter or a lens? But … I’m convinced they do not work on DSLRs. When you shoot anything that has a point of light, such as a scene with a streetlamp in it, the light bounces off the filter and back into your camera, creating these weird and annoying blobby green spots or ghosts. That is the extent of my technical knowledge on lens flare and ghosting and it's probably not even accurate.

Photoshop has unexpectedly stopped making that model look thinner. Report problem?

Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign takes sweet, sweet revenge on art directors, graphic designers, and photo retouchers who use Photoshop for evil instead of for good.

I do love this campaign and their latest volley ... um, unless someone is fixing a photo of me. In which case, can you soften those wrinkles around my eyes just a tad, please? And clone out the weird bump on the side of my nose? And, uh, if you can do that trick shown in the video--the one with the arms and thighs--that would be sweet, too.

Thanks.


 

Meanwhile, there was a controversy several years ago that Dove had retouched the models in its own "Real Beauty" Campaign. But I just found another article in which Pascal Dangin, who claims he fixed the photos, says he didn't mean he altered the model's lumps and bumps ... he just did color correction and other minor fixes.

Here's the original AdAge story, Dove's 'Real Beauty' Pics Could Be Big Phonies
And the update, also from AdAge: Dove: 'Real Women' Ads Were not 'Digitally Altered'

Sláinte!

Mill Girl and Gienna Writes are going to Ireland!

New toy: Some test shots with the Lensbaby Spark

As I mentioned in my previous post, after pressing my nose up against the Lensbaby candy store window, I decided to take a small bite of the system with the LensBaby Spark.

It's the least expensive of the line ... in fact, the site calls it a "the perfect Lensbaby for young photo enthusiasts." And since I am secretly a nine-year-old (sometimes a little older, sometimes a little younger, depending) it seemed like a good fit.

Still Life With Toes

I took some test shots with the Spark and with my 50 mm f/1.8 lens. Unfortunately, the comparison isn't quite fair in these two sets of image because I didn't use the same in-camera settings. And for the 50 mm shots I changed the lighting a bit, as well. 

An aside: One of my goals is to learn how to batch edit in Photoshop so that the pictures are consistent--as opposed to editing levels on each photo individually, which makes it difficult to get consistent results, as you'll see below. It's especially noticeable in the second pair of images. 

Left: Lensbaby Spark
f/5.6 (fixed)
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/30th second
Levels adjusted in Photoshop

Right: 50 mm
f/1.8 (I should have used a larger aperture for a fair comparison)
ISO 640
Shutter speed 1/250th second (and a slower shutter speed)
Levels adjusted in Photoshop



Left: Lensbaby Spark

f/5.6 (fixed)
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/30th second
Levels adjusted (poorly) in Photoshop


Right: 50 mm
f/1.8
ISO 640
Shutter speed 1/400th second
Levels adjusted (poorly) in Photoshop

I tried more test shots this morning using comparable settings and lighting conditions on photos taken with both lenses; will post those here and on my Flickr page soon.

How to batch edit in PhotoShop
How to save actions in PhotoShop Elements

Bokeh for days: Lensbaby Lenses

So, I have been thinking about getting a Lensbaby for a while now, but a couple of things have held me back.

First of all, they're pretty expensive for novelty/specialty lenses. A Lensbaby Control Freak will set you back $350. Kind of like a fish eye lens--I have one, but rarely use it and with varying results. --->

Second--and this is going to sound overly dramatic--Lensbaby photos make me sick. Literally. I'm not saying I don't like them. I do. But the extreme blur makes me dizzy and if I look at them too long I start to feel nauseous. It's the same feeling as being car sick.

Then I saw the Lensbaby Spark for Nikon. It's much less expensive and because the aperture is fixed at f/5.6 the blur is not as dramatic ... as far as I can tell: I've only had the lens a few days and I'm still figuring it out. (I'll post some test shots soon.)

Meanwhile, here are some photos from other Flickr members that I like (so long as I don't look at them too long). They are all taken with the more expensive Lensbaby lenses, I think. I say "I think" because many photographers only tag their photos "Lensbaby" and don't always say which one they used. I searched Flickr looking for ones that were taken with the Spark that I like enough to share *and* that had the "share this" feature turned on ... no luck.

By the way, a lot of Flickr members have disabled the sharing feature on their photos, which means you cannot post them on blogs or other non-commercial sites even in the smallest sizes. Please click on the photos below to see the original size on the photographers' pages. A comment or fave is a nice way to thank these folks for sharing.

Which one is your favorite?

Totally works, even though *nothing* is in sharp focus. Salbjörg Rita Jónsdóttir, AKA Dalla*  

Yummy colors. Sweet 35. Dave King

Everyday objects elevated by John Baird.

Rick Hebenstreit, AKA Ricko always makes me smile. 

Lovely for portraits. Victoria Hederer Bell with an Edge80.