I’m not here.

Lots of yard work today: ferns to prune, blackberries and weeds to pull, naps under the midday sun. I recall making blackberry pies in Illinois and paying $15 for the primary ingredient — here the blackberry is an invasive weed.

Our rhododendrons are in spectacular form with brilliant colors and buzzing with bees.

On the way to my yard waste pile I noticed out of the corner of my eye a slight movement. At first I thought it was a plastic bottle somehow stuck in the tree — instead it was a barred owl. I was pretty excited about it because I thought I had been hearing one in the mornings but hadn’t seen one.

I went back to the house, grabbed my camera and in the fading day light managed to get a couple of shots.

I love living here.

I open the window shade, lean over to my daughter and ask if she can see the mountain, “I can Daddy!” It’s the first flight she might remember and it’s just fantastic to see her enthusiasm for “flying taller than Daddy.”

I don’t actually enjoy flying, I’d rather take a train, but since I need to fly on occasion I’m making the best of it. Virgin America’s engines are an awesome red — really striking against the blues and whites in the sky.

The Olympics, Space Needle, Bainbridge … almost home! Some day I might do a post on the post-processing required for shooting out of plane windows. This photo is in my top ten for what-it-looks-now-compared-to-where-we-started.

I couldn’t get the exposure on this photo to work out as well as I’d like but it’s pretty neat nonetheless with the cityscape, Elliott Bay and Rainier all framed by the wing.

Back home in more comfortable surroundings, photographing mushrooms. One of my favorite snag trees on our property fell in the wind storm a couple of weeks ago and landed right between two cedars. I borrowed a chain-saw to clear it and noticed these little mushrooms — after dropping the snag I went back for the camera.

One of the special joys of living on Bainbridge is access to farms and animals. My daughter loves animals, though she saves a particular dislike for raccoons.

She’s really into a horse phase so after dinner we take her to visit some horses.

Luke and Blaze are two retired mountain horses currently spending quality time enjoying the sights, smells and sounds of Johnson Farm. On arrival, mud be damned, my daughter bursts forth from the car “Luke & Blaze, Luke & Blaze, we have carrots for you!”

While my wife, who loves horses (they make me nervous), and my daughter pet and feed them carrots saved from dinner, I check out the apple trees. I love apple trees.

The cherry trees on the island shower us with pink and white blossoms for weeks on end in the spring, a truly magical sight.

The apple trees match them blossom for blossom.

We had some concerns about the health of some of the rhododendron in the yard after this winter’s heavy snows. Fear not, color have we!