
106° Again Today; Took a Walk at the Cemetery

I entered one of my photos (the one in the sidebar here on my site, with the female Carpenter Bee among the dark pink flowers) into the ABBYY Mobile App Photo Contest. Please vote for it if you can! If the image doesn’t come up in the first grouping, scroll down and “Load More”, then open up the image by clicking on it, and “Vote” for it. THANKS!
Ugh. Hot weekend! I got up at 6:00 am and headed out with Sergeant Margie to the WPA Rock Garden, hoping to beat the heat for our walk. Even that early it was already almost 80° outside (with 30% humidity). We got a lot of flower photos, and I saw quite a few orb spiders, a tiny praying mantis, a damselfly, and a juvenile katydid among the plants. There is also a Maypop passion flower vine growing in there and it was covered with blossoms but none of them were open yet. (Waah.) I love those flowers; they’re so “over worldly” looking. Right next door to the garden, the stage has been set up for the Shakespeare in the Park series of plays, and there are porta-potties hogging up some of the parking spaces. Sergeant Margie and I walked around there for about 90 minutes, and then went around the duck pond behind the garden before heading back to the car.
In other news, my coworker, Charlotte, got us a private tour of the UC Davis Raptor Center in July. Wow, I can’t wait to see that!
Yesterday, after work, I decided to take Sergeant Margie over to the American River Bend Park for a short walk. It was about 77° outside — but it felt oppressive with the super-high humidity. It was like stepping out of the car into a sauna. We only walked for about an hour; there was so much moisture in the air that I actually had a little trouble breathing. Didn’t get a lot of photos, but the exercise was good.
I got an email from Fotovisura that noted that “IPA” (Int’l Photography Awards) was having an open call for submissions for their 2013 award program… and they allow submissions from non-professional and student photographers. Prizes start around $2500. So I submitted some of my photos from “The Chubby Woman’s Walkabout”™ site. Never hurts to try!
We went over to the WPA Rock Garden and walked around there for about 2 hours. There was no one there when we got there, but by the time we were ready to leave, the parking lot was full of cars. We got to see lots of pretty flowers, and I got a great face-shot of a female Carpenter Bee… We also walked around the duck pond behind the garden and saw a couple of mama ducks with their babies. It was overcast all day which kept the temperature down. It’s supposed to be Super Moon Sunday, but with the clouds, I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the moon tonight or not…