 This is my son's second grade teacher, Mrs. Wharton. She's retiring this year. I'm not sure how long she's been teaching but since she was teaching second grade when I was in that grade, it's been quite a long time. After giving out awards to the second grade students at a ceremony this morning, she was given these flowers by her colleagues. How much this all means to her is written all over her face.
She will be deeply missed at the school. My son took to her right away and had far and away the best year of school he's ever had. He's not a natural for the school environment but she did a wonderful job of drawing him out and engaging him. It's been a great joy to watch this year. So while I am grateful to her, I'm also sad for the next batch of second graders, who won't get that experience.
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 Mom was deadly phobic about spiders. Just pictures of them would give her a horrible screaming case of the heebie-jeebies. I was trained, nearly from birth to exterminate spiders on sight. And yet despite all of this, I couldn't resist picking this creepy shot. This little guy (girl?) was hanging out by the front door. Far from the fearsome fanged beast you see here, this spider is pretty small. Maybe a quarter inch long at most. Without the macro lens, I couldn't even tell that it was red and speckled.
This may not have been the best shot I took today. Chances are that this shot was better. Or maybe even this one or this one. But the spider shot is the one that made my son start yelling "Ewwww!" And I just couldn't pass up that sort of warm fuzzy feeling to share with you all. You're welcome.
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 I don't know what it is. I spotted it a few days ago, growing on the side of a hill above a marshy area. It's big, probably about six feet tall. This shot is from about thirty feet away and only shows the very top of the plant.
The hardest part of this shot was keeping still, since my dog was with me. Walks are the high point of her day so she races about like mad, trying to sniff everything imaginable. Which means I'm trying to keep still while a seventeen pound missile on the end of a line careens recklessly around me. I pretty much had to sit on her to get her to stay still for a minute. This is exactly why I don't usually take the dog and the camera out at the same time.
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 Nothing worked yesterday. None of the shots I attempted turned out worth a damn. I had high hopes for some spectacular sunset shots but when I loaded them up on the computer, they all sucked. Just a heaping pile of crap. So I'm giving you this shot, which isn't great but was kind of a cool effect that I stumbled upon accidentally.
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 No, not a top secret unreleased phone. This is the edible sort of blackberry. These aren't ripe yet, obviously. They grow in prodigious numbers in my yard. It might not be accurate to call them wild since I do actively encourage them growing there. But I didn't actually plant them. So let's just call their wild status a bit ambiguous.
Whatever. They are delicious. A couple years ago my wife found blackberries at the grocery store and bought me some, knowing how much I love them. These were the farmed variety and were much bigger than my wild ones. And they were awful. The wild ones have a much more intense flavor. Admittedly, the wild ones are pretty seedy but it's a small price to pay for the taste.
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 These are wild grapes that grow on the fence at the edge of my property. I have no idea if they're edible or not. They are very small grapes that just showed up on their own. I never planted them. But they do serve a purpose. They grow so densely along the fence that it provides nice privacy.
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 Sometimes the mistake is more interesting than the intended photo. This is a long exposure shot, with the camera in the street. And then a car was coming, so I had to pull it, causing all the light streaks. It turned out that this was more interesting than what I was trying for. That's not to say that this is a great photo. It's just more interesting than the one that was shot "correctly." This is messy and chaotic, but interesting.
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 The truth is, I'm not really a big fan of this sort of thing. Big parties for advancing one step in school and endless awards for minor achievements are overly coddling our kids. I actually like the idea of competition and giving the rewards to the victors. But you look at this picture and you have to admit, that's a pretty happy group of kids. It may be silly but they did enjoy themselves immensely.
I'll just go stand in the corner being a curmudgeon while they enjoy their day.
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 Photographing food is brutal work. You have to arrange the food in a pretty way, shuffling the parts around to get the best look. Then, of course, light it for best effect, making sure it's clear and visible. And then when you're done, eat it. This is a dessert we're talking about here. I can't put it in the freezer, that whipped cream won't hold up. And then my strawberries are frozen. And this was shot long before dinner, so I can't leave it out either, the whole thing will melt. No, there was no alternative. I had to eat it.
Yup, tough work. I can only hope that I'm not called upon again to handle this task with brownies. Or cookies. That's just too much to bear.
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 By now you are probably aware that this blog will never feature the accurate identification of plants and flowers. Today is no exception. Let's call it a wild flower. They grow in bunches, stick close to the ground and are probably more accurately known as weeds.
In other words, it was an easy thing to take a picture of. Today did not feature much energy or gumption on my part. So I grabbed the low hanging lying growing fruit flower.
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 This was taken because I was struck by the way the light filtered into this room in the afternoon. And then there is the snake eating its own tail nature of it, including a framed photo of an earlier photo in this blog.
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