Thursday, January 15, 2009

F&FFF: Where The Grass Is Greener

A Feline and Furball with Feathers Friday Extra!

From my brand new Picasa album Miko's Corner


Perhaps it's just as well that I forgot to blog this afternoon, being busy studying my FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) course (okay, I watched a Doctor Who episode too, but work with me on this) and being bereft of ideas anyway. I remembered as I drove to the dog park. When I arrived, I suddenly had something to blog about.

You can see it in the photo above: a major change has taken place at Miko's Corner Playground overnight. Never mind the cool FX on the trees and sky, which I did with the negative and solarization options on my cheap photo editing software. The colors on the ground are accurate. On the left: verdant greenery, a carpet of two month old grass. On the right, a little surviving grass, pounded into the dirt and covered with still more dirt. The difference from yesterday? On Wednesday, there was a fence separating the two. Humans and dogs had no access to the green side. Today, the entire dog park is open! (I should explain that the city blocks off each half of the dog park for a few months each year to reseed the grass and give it a chance to grow.)


Pepper and the grass line at sunset.


Pepper in the fire of the sun.

Most of my pictures from today aren't very good, due to a combination of my camera's limitations in low light and my own inattention to settings at times. But some of them are rather interesting, including these two of Pepper bathed in the almost-setting sun.


Cayenne and Pepper on the green, green grass.

And this one, which I saturated a little.


As seen by my SONY CyberShot.

This one is completely unedited, except to resize and sharpen lightly.


Pepper doesn't mind the dirt.

Of course, the other half of the dog park is in about as bad shape as it gets, having had the entire dog population concentrated there for two months, and also having had extra dirt put down to reduce flooding. The dogs don't seem to mind being on the brown end of the park. In fact, I stopped Cayenne from digging at a hole, an opportunity she does not have where the grass dominates. The humans, however, clearly prefer the green end of the park.


Dogs doing what dogs do.

As I said in yesterday's entry, be sure to check in with Steven each Friday for links to the week's pet pictures. I'll be back later tonight with the Weekend Assignment. This week: a guest "professor" will be handing out the assignment, so stay tuned!

Karen

2 comments:

Suzanne R said...

It's nice that you and the dogs are able to go onto the green portion now. Seems to me like it should always have been so.

Karen Funk Blocher said...

Suzanne - I forgot to explain, because I've written about it before. Each half is blocked off for a few months of the year so they can reseed and water it and give the new grass time to grow and take hold. It's very hard to keep a good carpet of grass alive in Tucson, especially with hundreds of dogs running around on it each day, doing what dogs do. I've updated the entry.