New Camera!

I have found a replacement camera!! What an exciting day! My casio is still barely snapping along, but has the tendency not to shut off anymore. So sad, I captured some very happy moments on that camera. I had a wonderfully lucky day with my new camera. One of my friends found it, on closeout, on sale!! It is the most perfect camera!! It is a Cannon Digital Elph SD1000, which cannon hasn't made for some time. It is wonderful, it is only 7.1 megapixels, so the battery lasts a lot longer than higher pixelated cameras! I don't take shots that would require a higher megapixel anyway.

Cannon cameras have this super cool feature where you can just focus on one color in a shot, then every color is recorded as black and white. I am having fun with that, as you can see.

It also made a good excuse to go to the beach! Where else can you find such complicated reflections to deal with. But the camera took them with ease, even managed to capture a giant wave a time or two!!

I am way excited to capture many new moments with my new cannon elph, especially the latest adventure we have coming up!! Oh Thursday!!!!!!.......can you come any faster! I can't wait!

Yay for Mushrooms

Beautiful mushroom flowers are growing all over a decomposing stump! Oh I love that fall is coming! This beautiful specimen, growing not too far from my office, is the first large bloom of the fall for me. It makes me wish I was a little elf that could jump around, climb, or hide on them. :)

A 10.5 shoe next to the biggest bloom for scale.

The most unfortunate end may come for this precious fruit, for they are growing almost exactly waist high, in a group area, 10 feet short of a bathroom (strangely for some, 10 feet from a bathroom is the best place to use the bathroom??). For those reasons, we did not harvest any. Daisy sniffed them a little, and I just admired their beauty. If they are here, they must be elsewhere.......

Olalla Reservoir

So far, two eagle scouts (and a lot of sponsors) have taken on the great challenge of building a trail around Olalla Reservoir. It had been quite some time since I had ventured out to see the progress, and what a nice day it turned out to be. I had originally chosen this location since it was a quick drive to and from, just in case I got soaking wet or something, as it did really look like rain.

There were just a few fisherman at the entrance, and around 10 or so cars in the parking lot.
This was one of the last sightings of the tennis ball....

We didn't go swimming, although it looked pretty inviting as the sun came out and the breeze slowed down.

Looks like the biggest snag ever in the right background!

That kinda reminded me of a pirate ship.

This was the very end of the trail. The plan is to finish a trail around the entire lake in the next 4 (or so) years.

So does this mean that fall is coming???

Pretty Flowers

Roses, of course....

African Violet

A rainbow of daisies....

And some carnations too!

Melon Mania

Finally! I have some growth on the watermelon plants! Although the watermelon have almost been completely engulfed by the giant pumpkin plants, they have still managed to produce.
This little guy here is a little bit smaller than my fist! Cute, right!! We are not expecting much from the watermelon anymore.

On the much more successful side, there are two special pumpkins that have grown to enormous size!! They are still as dark green as they come, so I am super curious as to how big and orange they will end up.

They are just beautiful though!

Harvested the first two orange guys today, (not nearly as big as these guys!) I can't wait for fall!!