Planting Time

It doesn't matter what day it is to a farmer.  If work needs done, a field plowed or a crop planted that's the priority.  So on Mother's Day this field that sits not 600 feet from us had several tractors come through it.  The first tractor came through with a harrow on it then another tractor came in with a disc harrow behind it.  The first was to break the ground and weeds that had started and the next was to pulverize the soil and weeds to a more fine texture.  These two rigs were followed by a tractor pulling the planters.  They carry the seed and fertilizer.  In this picture he's pulling the disc harrow through the field.

Here he is planting corn for this year.  Last year was soybeans.

You can't really tell here but the guy in the black shirt is old enough to drive on the road, i.e.. the pickup truck and the other two individuals are very young, maybe his brothers.  They drove the rigs here, did the work and I assume the older brother brought them something to eat.  He runs along in-front of them as they traverse the roads in the area.  The planter rig was over the hill in another field at this point. They were done so they ate and moved on to the next field.  All this on Mother's Day.  It rained right after they left giving their seed a starting chance.

The New Generation Is Arriving

Do we call these newbies Millennials since they were born after the year 2000 and they will reach adulthood within a few months?  Naw, we'll just call them ducks. They started out with 10 but are now down to 4.  Not sure if the local hawk is getting them or a turtle that makes the pond its home.  I only say that because someone told me that a snapping turtle was found in the road and placed in the pond and I've heard that they will pull small ducks or geese under.  I've never looked into that story.  At any rate, here they are and I'm pretty sure the last 4 will make it as they have tripled in size.

New Family Moved In

Well, it's spring and we officially have a new family that has moved in.  With mother there are 11 but that soon changes.  Maybe it's the hawk that is visiting on a regular basis or maybe it's the turtle.  I believe the turtle is a box turtle but a neighbor told me she found a snapping turtle so she put it in the pond.  At any rate, as of today we only have 4 ducklings.

Upside Down Feeding....or Not.

This little guy must be hungry because there's obviously nothing in the suet holder and yet there he hangs upside down picking away.  Soon afterwords there was a new cake present but he wasn't around.  This appears to me to be a small or young woodpecker.  It has all the markings on the wings and head of the red headed one that showed up shortly after the new cake went in minus the red head markings, but then I'm not knowledgable all that much on birds.

Spring Time!

It finally bloomed, the Cherry tree that we moved because of the winds beating it to death.  That and the fact that the winter wasn't as bad this year as the last couple made a difference in a lot of plants.  We did have a hard frost and freeze so if I allowed it you would see some of the damage but that's not going to happen so enjoy.

April Snow Showers? Bring May Flowers?

Here we are, 8 days into April in southern Ohio and instead of it being in the 60's we are about 36 degrees below that normal.  A lot of plants got an early start in mid-March and then January hit again.  This is what we awoke to this morning.  Did sleep through the real spring, summer and fall or was March just a dream?

Same Picture...Different Editing...FREE Program

Not too long ago I would always hear people talking about a program for photography editing that was mainly for black and white, or so it seemed.  Recently I received an email newsletter about the program called Nik Collection and it said it was a free download.  You say free and I'm there.

First I had to look it up and I found that Google bought NIK in 2012 for their mobile apps.  Nik was selling the programs for around $500.  There are 7 programs in the collection...Nik's Analog Efex Pro, Color EfexPro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveca, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine.  Google was selling it for $149.  This program is awesome in that it works with Aperture, Photoshop and Lightroom, Elements and on either Mac's or PC's.  I downloaded both as I have an older PC laptop and a newer MacBook Pro.  The download was fast on both machines and so simple that I thought this must be a loser of a program.  It works great on either machine and in some ways is not only more simple to use but faster as well.  You may stumble through the first 30 minute to an hour, depending on how well you are with editing software but if this is your first experience with editing the hour is all you will need to be really up to speed.  It launches from any other software as a plug-in and gives you tons of options.  I thought ON 1 10 was good but it kind of puts them to shame in speed and options.

 I have two edits of the same image here.  The black and white was my first attempt at editing a color image conversion with Nik and was done in Silver Efex Pro 2,  the color was done in Color Efex Pro 4.  Both had LR edits first and then Nik and then resized to .jpg.

Click on images to enlarge.