Aye, eye all around

The weather has been quite wet and rainy most of the week, March getting an early start on April showers, no doubt. The garden is moving along slowly to the promised May flowers and birds and critters are busy making a living.

Not a great week for photo walks so I did a bit of Spring clean up of my photo files and came up with this week's offering. A few of these may have been shown before, if so I apologize ahead of time.

This week the theme is about eyes again, but eyes in nature and in verse this time. The young mallard above, from last summer, was darting around the pond in front of the Planetarium, but keeping a little dark eye on me and my camera. The rooster below was very busy watching the hens, the other roosters and me.

"The eye is the jewel of the body."

Henry David Thoreau

"The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream." 

Henry Theodore Tuckerman

This Redwing Blackbird looks ready to chastize me for venturing too close to his territory. I liked how the reeds glowed in the afternoon sunshine.  The Anna's Hummingbird below reflects the red glow from the feeder. I may fill the feeders, but the hummingbirds still chitter at me and buzz me if I get too close at any other time. I once picked up a feeder to take it inside to clean and fill and surprised myself and the hummingbird sitting on the other side of the feeder; after a bit of a stare down the bird flew off.

I love the bright red Towhee eyes, I think it makes them look a bit comical though.

"With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things."

William Wordsworth

The female Redwing Blackbird, is so unlike the male, and this one was watching me carefully, I think I may have been close to her nest, which they build in in the reeds above the pond. A Sparrow stops foraging briefly to see that I am no threat.

"A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every other part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more than that the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself."  

Joseph Addison

There are quite a few rabbits in the park, they forage in the grass and eat the leaves of the blackberry bushes, but they also have a very faithful group that supplies them with seeds, grains, pellets, carrots and vegetable bits.

"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Groucho Marx

I don't know what this squirrel was carrying, maybe his purse, but this struck me as a funny pose.

"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." Mark Twain

The compound eyes of a hover fly on an Echinacea flower (above) and below the "eye like" pattern on the wing of a butterfly. The butterfly picture was taken in a tent like structure that was very warm and humid, an atmosphere that the butterflies thrived in; I tended to wilt and went outside ocassionally to be revived in the cool air outside. This one seemed to be enjoying the fruit.

"Men trust their ears less than their eyes." Herodotus

The sheep and donkey are from a farm on Gabriola Island.

"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition."

W H Auden

The billy goat and horse I saw when I was visiting a local nursery, the horse was in a field close to where I parked.

This mama goat was having trouble with the "kids", they kept escaping under the fence.  Each day the owner would mend the fence and put them back inside and the next day they would be back outside again.

Well that is my spring cleaning offering.  It is fun to look through and air out the "photo closets" from time to time.

I have been rather lazy recently, partly to give my eye time to recover and partly because I got the cold/cough thing that has been making the rounds. Thank you to everyone for the good wishes following my surgery, I really appreciated it. I hope to be more perky and imaginative next week.



I did start on a couple of paintings but sadly nothing got finished; there is always next week.



Happy Whimsy Wednesday, until next week .............