Paddling Diaries, #4: The Neighborhood Lake

At the end of our street is a lovely little lake of the sort that dot the whole state of Florida. The lakefront area is the neighborhood's common property, sort of our own little private park that serves as our gathering place for the annual homeowner's association meeting and the neighborhood events and festivals we host now and then. The girls love to go down there to run around and look for critters--grasshoppers, minnows in the lake, tadpoles if there are puddles, dragonflies and wading birds in the stormwater retention pond that's also down there, other things on occasion. I've also hauled the kayak down there a few times now, since it's not too tough with the wheels. I haven't really posted about those kayak trips because I don't consider them true expeditions, and I usually don't even bring the camera so there's not much to post anyway. There usually are some interesting things to see, various waterbirds on the lake and other birds flying overhead looking for fish--but since I haven't been brave enough to take one of my proper telephoto lenses on the kayak, I wouldn't get good photos anyway.

But this past weekend was a little different! Saturday after dinner (it's nice that we're getting a bit more daylight now, and even more so in a week or two when the spring time change comes) I thought it would be fun to tote the kayak down to the lake. Heather's sister Stef was visiting, so it was even an opportunity for Heather to come out on the boat with me--usually she has to stay on shore to watch the kids, of course. So I took Hermione out for a short trip first, and then I went back out with Heather and Amy. And what should we see but a gorgeous bald eagle, swooping down over the lake maybe 100 feet ahead of us. It landed on a grassy part of the shoreline, where it hung out for a bit and got some drinks of water from the lake. I happened to have brought my camera this time, thinking I'd try my old manual-focus Tamron 35-210mm f/3.5-4.2 lens, which I realized is actually a pretty good lens for kayaking in terms of focal length range, plus it has a not-too-shabby 1:3.8 macro mode for when I'm close up to shore. The manual focusing presents a challenge, especially in fading light and on a moving boat, but still, I'll have to keep it in mind for future trips!

So I paddled slowly in the eagle's direction, snapping off lots of shots as we approached, hoping I might get a couple in focus. This one was pretty close:



As we got too close for the eagle's comfort, of course, it took off and headed for the pine trees along the shore, but I got a lucky shot (almost sharp!) as he did:




Aunt Stef and the other girls on the shoreline as we headed back.

I must say, it's nice to have the lake so close when I feel like taking a quick paddle and don't want to deal with loading up the van. Especially now that the evenings will be getting longer before dark falls, I'll have to do this more often. And the water is calm so I should start feeling confident enough to bring the good lenses. :)

Look who's 3!

Amy! Though man-oh-man, you'd never have known she wasn't in the full grip of her Terrible Twos despite turning 3 yesterday. Heck, she even argued about it when we told her it was her birthday and she was turning 3! "It's NOT my birthday, it's YOUR birthday, and I'M TWO." Oy. I think it was a lack of sleep, but aside from a couple hours of her being good, she was pretty much a nightmare all day. She's just so stubborn when she gets something in her head. She'll misplace a toy or book, come ask us to find it for her, and then go nuclear when we can't find it or refuse to look. Or she'll get it into her head that she wants to do something, and raise the ceiling if we want her to do something else. And heaven help us if we ask her to do something she DOESN'T want to do. Sheesh. I'm glad these phases pass in time, but I'm pretty sure she's been the worst with this stuff. Hermione was perfect, always eager to please and not a complainer. Hallie was a little more vocal, but easy enough to distract or redirect or coerce somehow. Amy just will. not. have. it. I guess she'll be our Type A kid. ;)

Anyway, weekend was good otherwise. Heather's sister Stef came over Friday night, and we had fun watching some old home videos with her. Saturday we headed up to the zoo in Sanford, where they've recently added giraffes (though the feeding station for them doesn't open for a few more weeks). It's not a great zoo, but our main goal was to get our pass there since it's relatively cheap, and then we can use that to get discounted admission at lots of other zoos and aquariums. And the animals they have are pretty cool, though their enclosures tend to be on the small side which makes me feel bad for some of the critters.

After the zoo we got lunch and then headed home, and then I stayed home with Amy while everyone else went ice skating. Hallie finally got past a hurdle so she got a lot better, and Heather's apparently decided that rather than just take Hallie to her lesson and sitting around each week, she's going to sign up for lessons too. She already skates okay--well enough to stay upright, anyway--but she wouldn't mind getting better.

After the ice skating was dinner and then our walk and paddle down at the lake that I posted about before.

Sunday Stef headed home in the morning, which left us the day. I'd been wanting to head out to the big plant nursery we like to get some stuff, so we decided to make an outing of that, lunch, and checking out a city park we hadn't been to before. The park was first, and it wasn't as nice as I'd expected, but the girls had fun. Then we couldn't find a place for lunch, which caused some drama. And then the nursery, which hopefully redeemed the trip. I got a bunch of milkweed plants, and some dill and fennel, and a porterweed, all for the butterfly garden. Got some azaleas to replace a couple that died over the winter. And Heather was looking at the fruit trees and couldn't resist getting a peach tree, which will hopefully do well. The girls and I planted all of that when we got home, which is always fun.

Then I tried changing the oil on my car again. I'd tried a couple weeks ago and was frustrated because I couldn't get the damn drain plug out. It was clearly overtightened by whoever changed it last, and my tools weren't quite the right size so I ended up rounding the edges of the bolt a bit. Not good. Since then I got some new tools to hopefully fit better, but even so all I did was round off the bolt even more. Gonna have to take it in somewhere and hope they can get that off--I did order a new plug to replace that one, but first the old one's got to come off! Not happy about it, changing oil is not supposed to be an ordeal!

I also worked on my photography website a little. The home page has always been my blog, but I wanted to switch to a setup where there's an actual home/landing page, and a menu link to the blog instead. Finally got that working, though I still have work to do on the landing page, as well as my portfolio images which haven't been updated for a year or two. And I'm sure there are other changes I want to make to the text here and there. I'm always saying I'm happy as a part-timer and don't want too much business, but lately I've been getting hardly anything and it makes me feel out of practice, which is bad.

Oh, and I ordered my new lens, which should arrive around Thursday. Looking forward to playing with that! At the nursery I saw a guy who had that very lens on his Canon, so I asked him about it a little. He frankly seemed a bit clueless for a guy who dropped $1300 on a lens, but he said he mainly got it for video since it's stabilized and has been happy with it. We'll see!

Okay, enough rambling. Have some more photos instead.
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