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 .............

Eye see

I had my first eye surgery (for cataracts) at the end of last week and I can see better out of my left eye now than I have for over 50 years. Yes, I have been very short sighted for a very long time, that is when you have difficulty seeing your hand in front of your face and don't even ask about the distance. My standard answer to someone who asks me how far down the eye chart can you read is, what chart? Even so, glasses and contact lens have allowed me to see quite well for most of that time.

I needed surgery because my eyesight had been deteriorating so quickly that practically speaking it was no longer correctable: by the time I got a new prescription filled my eyes were slipping again. So I was over the moon when I found out that there was not only an explantion but also a solution.

The first day after my surgery, I got up, took the protective patch off and I could see well enough
with the one eye to have my breakfast and read the newspaper without corrective lenses. I was thrilled. To top it off the day was bright and beautiful, so I put a contact lens in the other eye (better balance when both eyes see) and went out with my camera.

Everyone that I knew that had had cataract surgery said, you will be amazed, it is as if your colours come back. I thought that my colour perception was pretty good still, but the difference for me was light!

Yes light and depth,  things are definitely not just two dimensional any more, the shadows, the shapes, the perspective have all changed dramatically.

My walk took me to a nearby park, where I was overwhelmed by the beauty and light. In some ways it was as if I was seeing it for the first time.

The cherry trees were blooming and I took picture after picture of the blossoms and drank in the subtle perfume.

Here is a little background on what a cataract is from Wikipedia:

"Cataract surgery is the removal of the natural lens of the eye (also called "crystalline lens") that has developed an opacification, which is referred to as a cataract. Metabolic changes of the crystalline lens fibers over time lead to the development of the cataract and loss of transparency, causing impairment or loss of vision. Many patients' first symptoms are strong glare from lights and small light sources at night, along with reduced acuity at low light levels. During cataract surgery, a patient's cloudy natural lens is removed and replaced with a synthetic lens to restore the lens's transparency."

"Following surgical removal of the natural lens, an artificial intraocular lens implant is inserted (eye surgeons say that the lens is "implanted"). Cataract surgery is generally performed by an ophthalmologist (eye surgeon) in an ambulatory (rather than inpatient) setting, in a surgical center or hospital, using local anesthesia (either topical, peribulbar, or retrobulbar), usually causing little or no discomfort to the patient. Well over 90% of operations are successful in restoring useful vision, with a low complication rate. Day care, high volume, minimally invasive, small incision phacoemulsification with quick post-op recovery has become the standard of care in cataract surgery all over the world."

Here is my rather unscientific explanation of myopia, as I understand it when a person is myopic, or short sighted, the eyeball instead of being round is instead oblong, so when the light or image enters the eye it doesn't focus on the retina (the eye's "big screen" at the back) instead it focuses somewhere in front of it and things look blurry. This can be corrected with either glasses or contact lenses that are thinner in the middle, and thicker at the edges (think Coke bottle maybe) which lenghtens the focal length so the light or image reaches the retina, or close to it, an the image is sharper.

In cataract surgery since the natural lens is being replaced anyway it is an opportunity to replace it with one that also corrects vision. Yipee!

We have three fields of vision, close, middle and distance. When we get older most of us start having problems seeing closeup, and as a result wear glasses for close work or reading. When vision is corrected with a replacement lens, as I understand it, you can have your vision corrected for close and middle or for middle and distance. I have chosen to have one eye corrected for close and middle and the other for middle and distance and hope to be able to have the two work together to see almost everything clearly. That's the plan anyway.

So to get back to walking in the park, the trees, the blossoms, the birds it was wonderful to see things more clearly, and should be even better when my second eye surgery is complete.

Being very short sighted has another odd complication and that is that after one eye is corrected with an implanted lens the image size that I see with that eye is different than the size of the other eye with the contact lens on the surface of the eye. At first I wasn't walking in a straight line at all, but I am getting more used to the sensation; for this reason the surgeon tries to do the surgeries fairly close together.

Enough said? Come and enjoy the blossoms with me.

"You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle."

Paulo Coelho

Somehow I don't think I am going to take seeing well for granted, it is a wonderful gift and I am most grateful to have it.

I did manage to finish off the painting I started last week and I have been working on a couple of new ones. Here is the finished watercolour "Spring Tulips":

"Spring Tulips"

That's all for today, thanks for dropping by, Happy Whimsy Wednesday, until next week.............

Spring at last, a magic time!

Crocuses all in a row

Today I celebrate the arrival of Spring: spring sightings, magic and storytelling are on the agenda.

It is Spring at last; in fact today's Whimsy Wednesday is coming to you on the first full day of Spring. Spring officially started March 20 at 1:14 am EDT, this is called the Vernal Equinox (from "ver" meaning spring).

Forsythia

The start of Spring is marked by the equinox. Equinox is derived from a Latin word meaning "equal night", or equal daylight and night hours. The Spring and Fall equinoxes are the only dates of equal day and night and mark the time that the sun crosses the celestial equator, but it happens at a point in time and not actually on a particular "day". Here is an explanation from Wikipedia:

"At an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points: classically, the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may denote an equinoctial point.

An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days), when there is a location (the subsolar point) on the Earth's equator, where the center of the Sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20 and September 22 each year.

Although the word equinox is often understood to mean "equal [day and] night", this is not strictly true. For most locations on earth, there are two distinct identifiable days per year when the length of day and night are closest to being equal; those days are referred to as the "equiluxes" to distinguish them from the equinoxes. Equinoxes are points in time, but equiluxes are days. By convention, equiluxes are the days where sunrise and sunset are closest to being exactly 12 hours apart."

Spring flowers, warmer temperatures and longer daylight hours, bring it on. In the past few days I have noticed several people cutting their lawns, the smell of fresh cut grass brought memories of summer days rushing back to me.

Spring sights are all around me. There is new growth on the trees, a bright yellow green.

The Weeping Willows are budding, which makes them appear to be wearing lovely light yellow shawls draped over their branches. First a picture of the tree followed by detail of one of the branches.

Weeping Willow in bud

The perennials are starting to spout, the rhubarb is unfurling, the salmon berries have their first leaves and flowers and the pussy willows are popping open, these too are sure signs of Spring.

First Rhubarb shouts and leaves

Pussy Willows

And there are flowers. Colours popping up everywhere.

Cherry Blossoms

Camillia in bloom

Forsythia

Spring blooms in the park

Early daisies in the grass at the park

The birds are very busy eating, pairing off and getting ready to nest.

American Robin

Sparrows (above and below)

All this is happening at this time of year. But I referred to magic at the beginning of this post and that had to do with an egg. Here is a picture of a raw egg, balanced on its end. Why and how you may ask, well read on.

A raw egg balanced on my kitchen counter

According to folklore at the equinox it is possible to stand an egg on its end. Now this is something that I thought needed some investigation, and I do try to take my research seriously! So I have tried this out, starting on March 16, I was able to stand two different eggs (out of 5) on their ends, one stayed for about 20 minutes the other until the counter that it was standing on was jolted; sad story here, you remember the Humpty Dumpty tale, well Humpty ended up in the garbage after rolling to the edge of the kitchen counter and diving onto the kitchen floor.

I tried this out a few times and then on March 20, I was able to stand five eggs on end. I did not wait until the exact start of Spring, that being in the early morning hours here, a time meant for sleeping; after all we lost that hour last week with the change to DST. Spring magic or not here they are standing on end:

This may have nothing to do with the equinox but it I thought it made a good story and segue into the next topic.

The Spring equinox is also cause for celebration as "World Storytelling Day":

"World Storytelling Day, is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.

The significance in the event lies in the fact that it is the first global celebration of storytelling of its kind, and has been important in forging links between storytellers often working far apart from each other. It has also been significant in drawing public and media attention to storytelling as an art form." (Wikipedia)

At this point you will have to decide here whether I have been telling you a tale about the eggs or not.

Storytelling is a wonderful tradition, at times it seems to be a dying art form, so I was thrilled to discover that first there is a "World Storytelling Day" and second it is celebrated at the Spring Equinox.

As a blogger and a blog follower I delight in stories, I know that these are written and not oral, but I often feel I can "hear" the author telling me his/her story. On this first day of Spring, at the Vernal Equinox and on "World Storytelling Day" I want to thank all those who follow my blog, and thanks to all those wonderful bloggers out there whose blogs delight me daily.

So on this first day of Spring, take time to look at the flowers and watch the birds, tell someone a story and maybe even try to balance an egg. Oh-oh I see omelettes on the menu.

Here's a song to celebrate Spring: Morning has Broken - Cat Stephens

I have been busy painting again, this week flowers, in watercolour of course. I finished this one of tulips, called Pink Sunshine. I am almost finished another one of red tulips, but that will have to wait until next week.

Pink Sunshine

 

Happy Whimsy Wednesday, thanks for stopping by, until next week..............