Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder

"Nothing but Mesquite" and "Not a Woman in Sight/Side" 1,2
Midland, Texas and Odessa, Texas

Today's Happy Bit:

Been a long time since I entered the weekly 2 Things Challenge. This week is "Ugly/Pretty." For fun, I'm not saying which I think is which.

Anyone can join. Any medium welcomed. A challenge and a hoot.

Shadows and Patterns

"Shadows and Patterns"
Midland Air Terminal, Texas
2 Thing Challenge for March 1, 2009

It's been a while since I've done a 2 Things Challenge. (Everyone is invited, check it out.) When the two things were "Shadows / Patterns" for this week, I went on special alert. Yesterday when I came across this, I knew things had all come together neatly. I had been meaning to take a photo of one of these for at least a year. I'm curious, can you tell what it is?


Thank you to Janet for the challenge and opportunity.

Two Things Challenge for 2008-10-19 (late)

"Cleo in the Window"
At home in West Odessa, Texas

A belated entry for the Two Thing Challenge for this week's "black / white." The above picture, in spite of how it may seem, was not taken in black and white.

This picture, though, is a color picture of black-and-white Cleo, eyes closed, still experiencing an a open-window morning reverie, as only a cat can do.

Links:
Join in the fun for the weekly Two Thing Challenge. Next week is "big / little. " You may interpret with a photo, a poem, a drawing, a collage, or any creative way you wish. Publish to your blog by next Sunday.

Two Thing Weekly Challenge

"Twilight"
West Odessa, Texas

My entry for this week's Two Things Weekly Challenge "Solid / Pattern"

KUDOS and THANKS to Janet for keeping us challenged.

Two Thing Weekly Challenge

....
Three views of new Autumn
Odessa, Texas

I sincerely hope Janet at DC Confidential doesn't fall out of her computer chair, but at long last I'm submitting some entries again for this week's Two Things Weekly Photo Challenge:
Blue, Green, and even -- gasp -- a third, Blue & Green.

I liked the beautiful simplicity of the challenge, and it inspired me to submit simple compositions.

Oh, how funny! I'm suddenly reminded of one of my all time favorite songs, "Simplicity is Beautiful" by electric-guitar-jammin' Juliana Hatfield.

Blues...soul...rock... country
Red...green...blue...yellow
Morning...laughing...talking...walking
Bread...rice...water...fruit

Simple feeling...simple feeling
Hold...feel...save...me
Baby...brother...sister...parent

And that's it. That's the song. I can't find a good recording on the net for you to listen to, except this hour long dj mix that includes a nice selection of slow tempo songs, Hatfield's being the second to the last song. (I can't figure how to play just that song with Windows Media Player. Can you?)

Old Garden

Old Garden

This is my entry this week's Two Things Challenge for "Old / New." Not a great, or even good, piece of photography. However, I wanted to document how my neglected vegetable garden plot looked in its "old" (aka "before") state and there wasn't much I could do to make it look good.

(Yes, those are weeds, and some are as tall as me.)

This is what I'll be doing each afternoon for the next couple of weeks: Clearing out those weeds, recovering lost gloves, spades, and perhaps even my old wheelbarrow. Building new raised beds. Laying down hay, re-routing soaker hoses, and heaping on mulch. And I'll be dreaming.

I'll be dreaming of the sound of tapping new seed packets. Dreaming of new little lime green sprouts in April. Dreaming of the humid smell after a watering in June's hot summer days. Dreaming of tomatoes outgrowing their cages, zucchini outgrowing its beds, and the risk of losing gloves and spades in August's fecundity.

Hard to imagine that now. But that's the beauty of a garden, even an old neglected garden. The dream is always new.

Oilfield #1 or #2

"Oilfield #1" Pumpjack, West Odessa, Texas

"Oilfield #2" Pumpjack, West Odessa, Texas

What a week! I'm sorry to have worried anyone. All's well here, just lots and lots of work that I'm trying to catch up on.

I've not even had time to get out to take pictures. But I did make time yesterday to fulfill my mom's request of "Oilfield" -- easy enough to do, just a couple of miles from home. (Not inspiring, but easy.)

I am, however, getting out tomorrow by going on a photo safari to Big Spring with my dear friend Nelda. And then hope -- yet again -- to catch up with y'all on Sunday.

Plain / Peanut

"Plain" Harvested grain field near Bula, Texas

"Peanut" Birdsong Peanuts plant Brownfield, Texas

These are my entries for this week's Two Things Challenge for "Plain / Peanut."

I guess you can imagine my excitement when, on our safari in Bailey County yesterday, we passed by this peanut processing plant. Not only is it perfect for the challenge, but it also is informational. 13 vitamins and 26 minerals. Crunch, crunch, who -- crunch -- knew?

And lucky for me, we were also in the big middle of the Llano Estacado yesterday, the "staked plains." The written history of these plains go back to 1541 when Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who gave the area its name, described it this way in a letter to the king of Spain,

"I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues . . . with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea . . . . there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by."

Nearing 500 years later, things are a little different now. Water is drawn up from underground aquifers, electric lines and a few planted trees jut up from the horizon, the danger of Apaches and Comanches is all gone, and and the native grass has been crowded out by cotton, grain, and peanuts. Still, every now and then, like in this picture maybe, you get a sensation of what it might have been like for Coronado and his men.

2 Things Challenge for 2008-01-06, Home

I've gone overboard for the "Home" part of this week's 2 Thing Challenge, but I thought it would be fun especially for those that live far, far away from here.

Where I live, West Odessa is not a town. It's a hodge-podge community outside the city of Odessa. I myself live 6 miles from the city limits. Where Odessa has a population of about 100,000, we -- Out West, we call it -- have about 16,000.

Since we aren't officially a town, we are not governed by city ordinances, including ordinances that make you get a permit before building any structure, which typically keep homes in neighborhoods not too wildly different from one another and thus keeps property values steady with one another.

Not so in West Odessa. We have no laws governing us except county laws and, well, I don't know what the county laws are, but there seems very few. None about what you can and can't build, or grow (with certain exceptions you realize), or raise. (Today I noticed a new pig farm, thankfully small.) That is part of the appeal of West Odessa. And its, um, well, its unappealing aspect, too.

Now that you know all that, I can tell you about today's entry for "Home." Actually, homes with an "s." These pictures are of twenty homes near me, roughly within a mile's radius. Although you've probably seen plenty of American homes in movies, I thought it might be fun to see real American, western-style homes. And a great variety of them, too!

For those of you with little ones at home, you could even play I Spy with these pictures. Click to make the pictures bigger and play. I spy:

a wishing well, hubcaps, kittens, a white dog, wash drying on the line, a horse trailer, a tractor, a monster (yes, a Frankenstein monster), a wagon wheel, a "swamp" cooler, a red roof, a rocking horse, several bird baths, a swing set, a windmill (a real one and a little decoration one), a star, rocking chairs on porches, benches on porches, a pumpkin on a porch, TV antennas, direct TV satellite, a palm tree, big windows, little windows, empty yards, cute yards, junky yards, a steer head, several chain link fences, a cement block fence, a picket fence, a hummingbird feeder, a couple of houses with more than one story, a lot of houses with just one story, very new houses, very old houses, big houses, little houses, and even a little house that is not lived in any more. And lots (I didn't count but wonder how many) mailboxes.

Oh yes, I spy my home. Do you?

2 Things Challenge for 2008-01-06, Health

Healthy Photographer Food
Stars Drive Inn
West Odessa, Texas

This is my tongue-in-cheek entry for this week's 2 Thing Challenge. I took this quick shot for the "Health" entry after spending several hours this evening taking pictures for the other half of the challenge, "Home."

Yes, that is a large (they call it "regular") sized ice cream, an "Avalanche." It's loaded with chunks of Butterfinger candy bar in it. What's your point?

This waitress was very sweet and looked like the picture of health to me. She told me she hoped I'd "win" the challenge. ;)

Tidy / Ends #1 or #2

"Tidy / Ends Challenge #1" Cotton field Martin County, Texas

"Tidy / Ends Challenge #2" Fairhaven Cemetery Martin County, Texas

These are my entries for this week's Two Things Challenge for "Tidy / Ends." Going through my Martin County pictures taken yesterday, I was struck how each of these photos could be said to convey either "tidy" or "ends" or both.

More than apart, I like these two together. I like the repeating color of the earth, the starkly flat horizons, the same angle and shape of the cotton and plot. I like, while they are not exactly tidy, that they both have been tidied. (Much like life.) I like how both were once living things, now at their predictable ends. I also thought how the man in the plot very well might have once been dependent on cotton for a living.

You might remember other of my cotton pictures, when budding and green in September, and when perfectly ripe in November. Now the cotton is picked, sitting in the fields in these huge, packed bricks, ready to go to the gin. At the gin, they will be cleaned, the fibers sold to be made into household linens and next year's fashions. Even the separated seed will be used. From it they produce either oil or bagged and sold as stock feed (called "cottonseed meal"). To the consternation of the know-it-all guys at the Ranch Supply store, I use the meal to sprinkle on my lawn as slow-release, non-chemical fertilizer.

Another cycle, picture #2, is the human life cycle at its end. This rural plot was tidy and well tended, even though the person died in the 60s. This small cemetery is still segregated between Anglos and Hispanics. Probably at one time that was by rule, and now likely it is by choice, reflecting the persistent division of cultures. I've noticed in Texas cemeteries that Anglo plots seem to convey piety and dignity for a person's life hereafter. Whereas Hispanic plots seem to prefer a colorful, home-hewn quality conveying on-going adoration by the living. A sad notation, though, in rural cemeteries the Hispanic plots are relegated to the rear.

I am quite the explainer today, excited (and now well-rested) after returning from the glorious day of outdoor adventure and photo-taking with Donna. Which photo do you prefer? Or if you prefer, in your opinion how could these photos be improved?

Double Exposures #1 or #2

"Double Exposure #1" Electric switching station & Castle Apartments

"Double Exposure #2" rust.seldom.sleeps & Rusty Star

"Wonder what this does?"

That simple question is how I began a long journey into night. Like Pandora's box, I opened a whole new world for my photographs: the Double Exposure. I'm talking about Photoshop's Apply Image feature. I stayed up until 2 a.m. playing with a dozen pictures and every imaginable tweaking of drop down boxes.

Just seconds after my mind wrapped around the possibilities, though, I knew I would be doing what eventually became image #2. It is my homage to a new blog and artist I've found, typos.daylight.fate. (I'm sorry, John, you'll possibly get a few more admirers now.) His digital collages (using MS Paint) have gotten under my skin big time.

Turn about is fair play. John honored a couple of my photos in a few of his recent collages, and I wanted to do the same. But how to use his collages in my photography? I was reminded of the quote attributed to Elvis Costello, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do."

Well, it was something stupid I wanted to do. And that quick visit to Serendip lead me by the hand to double exposures.

I'm reminded of another quote. "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." (Dorothy Parker, American poet, writer, caustic wit, 1893-1967)

Which double exposure do you prefer?

Sweet and Star

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2 Things Challenge for 2007-12-23

I decided to go with these because they were the least literal of the pictures I took for this week's challenge: Sweet birds sitting in a tree, and a micro universe of Star(s). In case you haven't joined in yet, please consider this your invitation. The last 2 Things Challenge of the year will be posted tomorrow, giving you a week to find or create your interpretation and post it to your blog by 12-30. Then we start anew in 2008!

And although this looks like This or That, you don't have to choose. Just relax. Imagine the sounds of the birds chirping, gaze into the grassy stars, and remember to breathe deeply.

2 Things Challenge for 2007-12-16

After much consideration, and looking through my photos, and thinking of photos I could take, I decided this recent picture best depicts for me this week's 2 Things Challenge of "hold" and "value."

As regular readers know, this is my friend Donna, who recently had one of her photos featured in an International Photography exhibition called "High and Dry." This is her with her photo, "Jack."

What you might not know is that our friendship goes back a long way, to our youthful college days. You might not know that we went missing from each other's lives for a long stretch. I'm figuring you do have an idea, though, how much we mean to each other since reuniting* without my getting all mushy here.

I thought we were just "two old birds," but Donna calls us "secondhand lions." Together we are becoming Cates and Chafin and have made some special photography plans for 2008.

*Double-checking my diary just now, I am dumbfounded. Today, quite coincidentally, is one year since we first reunited! I guess this is the perfect entry for Hold / Value, afterall.

Colo{u}rful / Words

Click to see much larger for reading

So rather than a photo entry for this week's 2 Things Challenge, I decided to roll the two things into one and do a scan of my colorful recipe cards (including splatters) of favorite words. These represent more than words invoking wonderful food, but of names I like to recall, too. Some of these women only passed through my life, but on these cards they live on in my memory and my kitchen.

I suppose every one -- all over the world -- does this in some form or fashion. Do you have a stash of recipes, with names or written in another hand? These four represent only a few of my absolute favorite tried-and-true recipes, almost always gathered first hand from a friend.

In the case of "Jeanette's Chicken," looking at the card I actually remember making it the first time myself with Mom in my kitchen, writing it down on that card as we went. It was a recipe she couldn't tell me since she just knew by eye how much to put in. This one is also the oldest recipe -- it goes back to our days in the 70s in Lebanon when everything was made with simple ingredients from scratch. My brothers and I loved this dish, eaten without cutlery, but instead with fingers and fresh Lebanese pita bread. It also is a nice memory because it recalls a friend of my mom's, Jeanette, who taught a young mother ways to cope and thrive, living for the first time overseas.

And no, none of these are diet food. Except maybe the salsa, but only if you don't eat it with chips. Um. For non-Americans, that would be "crisps," I believe. Ha! That brings us full circle back to the multi-national inspiration of the colo{u}rful words part of this challenge. Aren't I clever?

Forsaken and Foundling

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2 Things Challenge

Yay, I got my two things done and before the last day, too!

Forsaken, aka "Three Things a Bird Will Leave Behind" and Foundling, aka "Hiding Behind the Leaves"

P.S. Hope the forsaken one isn't too gross. I do know, though, it somewhat gross.

Brash and Luster

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2 Things Challenge

"Brash" is an old tattoo shop here that's been around forever, even before tattoos were cool again. I would say guess that when getting a tattoo, one wouldn't want to be brash about it.

"Luster" is a little beetle caught in a sudden gust of wind while hanging on to some luster-y, bluster-y grass.

And here's something extra today. A mini-tutorial. Lisa from New Zealand asked how I do my "calendar" and it's not hard, really.

After posting your daily post, doing my calendar format means every day you have to edit the calendar. You replace that day's date box with a thumbnail and then link the thumbnail to that day's post.

In order for the calendar to show at the top, you have to change the date and time of the calendar so it's at least a minute later than your latest post. You go to "Edit Posts," select your calendar post, and at the bottom select "Post Options" where you can fiddle with the date and time for the calendar.

Ok, so what does the calendar look like? Well, it took some time playing, but the best fit for my blogger template was 80X80 (pixels) box for each day. I used Photoshop* to create 32 individual images (white boxes with a black border), entered the numbers 1 through 31 in them, and left one blank. You'll upload all those boxes, arrange them properly for that month's calendar, and using the blank boxes to fill in around the beginning and end of the month .

Here's one more pointer, probably a really helpful one -- I copied the calendar post before I used it, saving it as an unposted post. Each new month I open that unused calendar, copy it, and then paste it into a new post for the upcoming month, re-arranging the weeks as necessary.

And there you have it. It's not magic, just a bit of trickery really. And it's a willingness to do two things for each post: post your post and edit the calendar. Feel free to use my technique, or any modification of it, if you like.


*You'll need some software to create your numeric boxes and to make your daily thumbnails. If you don't have Photoshop, there are several free alternatives. For creating the boxes I found myimager.com that allows you to start with a blank image, add text, etc. For editing photos and making thumbnails, I suggest picnik.com. Both are free (some of picnik's advanced features are pay-for), both work with Wins or Macs, and you don't have to sign up to use either of them.

Intricate and Interlace

Left: Coral Vine fading seed pods Right: stem of volunteer cantaloupe

Next to our local recycle center, the Master Gardeners have built a show garden. Although it is quite small, it is a pleasure to meander through, which I try to do at various times of the year. Each plant has a little marker, which helps promote more planting of these well-adapted plants as well. I couldn't have been happier that I got both 2 Things Challenge images while there yesterday.

The Coral Vine is nearing the end of the season, and what you see are the "intricate" veins of the fading seed pod encasements. This is the in-between stage -- in between when they are plump, pink clusters, and before they dry to thin papery brown pendants.

The picture on the right is a close-up of the "interlaced" markings of a volunteer cantaloupe! It was growing next to one of the demonstration compost bins. One summer I had a volunteer watermelon growing from my compost heap and thought it was remarkable. I guess happy gardening accidents from an untended compost pile are not all that rare an occurrence.

Two Things for 2007-08-19

Two Things, "Substance" & "Style"

I'm immersed in the bathroom spiff-up, so it won't come as a surprise that my Two Things come from that project. The goop on the left is Joint Compound, stuff they use when installing dry wall to make the joints between the pieces. I have no idea if this is what you are supposed to use for creating wall texture, but it's what I'm using and have used before. The picture on the right is the texture (before painting) that I created with the compound and a paint roller.