Ah, store bought flowers in a vase and best of all inside with the air conditioning. Add a little spritz of glycerine and water for an even more cooling effect.
monos en theos ††† jas L
Ah yes, along with the oppressive heat comes the ear piercing cry of the cicada. More info than you probably want or need:
Although only males produce the cicadas’ distinctive sound, both sexes have tympana, membranous structures by which they detect sounds. They are the cicadas’ equivalent of ears. Males disable their own tympana while calling, thereby preventing damage to their hearing this is necessary partly because some cicadas produce sounds up to 120 dB (SPL), among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. The song is loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss in humans should the cicada sing just outside the listener’s ear. In contrast, some small species have songs so high in pitch that the noise is inaudible to humans
To the human ear, it often is difficult to tell where a cicada song is coming from; the pitch is nearly constant, the song sounds continuous to the human ear, and cicadas sing in scattered groups. If a singing male becomes alarmed on the approach of a possible enemy, it softens its song so that the attention of the listener gets distracted to neighbouring louder singers, creating a confusing ventriloqual effect.
In addition to the mating song, many species have a distinct distress call, usually a broken and erratic sound that the insect emits when seized or panicked; at the same time it is likely to squirt waste liquid from the sap that it had been sucking, possibly distracting certain classes of attacker. Some species also have courtship songs, generally quieter, and produced after a female has been drawn by the calling song. Males also produce encounter calls, whether in courtship or to maintain personal space within choruses.
A pray for cool and quiet! monos en theos†††jas L
“To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly”
SIDONIE-GABRIELLE COLETTE
I perhaps in a vain attempt to stay young, am astonished every time I open files of images any bug, flower or object of mother nature. Maybe it is the little boy in me but I am wowed with the beauty that exists in small things.
I know that bugs give some of us the yuck factor, but I am always amazed.
Stay young or die trying!…monos en theos…..james L work
I am always reading about and wanting to see things in a different way. Yet, like most photographers I expect to see the open wings of a butterfly. I often find myself waiting on a butterfly, thinking, “I wish he would open his wings.” Heck, the butterfly is sitting there almost yelling at me “hey, I got a face too you know!” So in the interest of trying to see things as they come to me, and to not judge by how I want things to be, here is the face side of the afore posted butterfly. Introduce yourself properly and enjoy the view you are presented. Find something nice to say, like “my what a nice shade of purple your eyes are!” monos en theos †††† james L
“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.” ~Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858
A lovely store-bought magenta daisy. I try to buy my wife a bouquet of flowers every Monday. It warms her heart, makes me feel like a man and it gives me a photo subject that always poses nicely in the cool of our home.
I applied an oil paint effect to this image. It is such fun to play in PS and pretend I can draw or paint. I can’t even draw a straight line, but who in the hell would want to anyway!
monos en theos †††† james L
Oh brother is it HOT. Dog days of summer and all that. Did get out and walk the dogs early this morning it was a nice 72 degrees. Now my mercury sets at 105 in the shade, and I don’t even want to know what the humidity is. This desert boy is dying in this damp heat. In West Texas, we always got to say it was a dry heat. It was true, you could go for the shade and it was very comfortable even in the high 90’s.
In addition to the damp heat, the difference of East Texas culture gets to me. In dry heat, men wore long sleeves and pants. Not so here. I have almost bolted and run at the number of middle age, out of shape men that think nothing of strolling the aisles of the grocery store without a shirt on.
And I thought the heat and humidity was bad, but that is enough to make you run for the air conditioned comfort of home and draw the shades.
I digress, I did manage to find this young katydid out in the heat amongst the honeysuckle. He was shirtless, but looked good none the less……monos en theos †††james
Yes you do! As scary and unlawful as it may be!
And yes my dog Grace’s eyes are that blue. She is also gifted with total deafness. So unlike my wife, she doesn’t even have to pretend she can’t hear me. But they both have me wrapped around their pinkees!
Do dogs have pinkees? Or you can just roll with the urban dictionary of pinkee: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pinkee
monos en theos †† jim/james/jas/jimbo/jimmy jam/gymbo/jimber or kozmic kowboy…….a guy of many handles and still searching for who I am!
I am having fun working in my Kelly Rae Roberts e-course on mixed media and collages. I still have not really dove into the mixed media part of the class. Some of it is fear and some of it is just the comfort of working in a familiar tool: Photoshop. Plus it gives me a venue to see some of my old images in a new way. Or hell, maybe it is just being lazy. Anyhow, my latest effort was done just for fun. Plus I got to discover and read a little of J Cole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Cole Not someone I had ever known and works in a genre that I would not normally put my ear to. Warning, not all his lyrics are this calm and nice.
monos en theos ††† james work
where words and watercolor soar together
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