Backyard

I recently moved to a new apartment, which looks out on trees and bushes (and the backyards of the apartments behind mine, but mostly trees and things) instead of a wall. Since moving in I've really enjoyed watching the various animals that live out there.

This cardinal has gone bald because of molting or mites. I feel bad for it, but at the same time it looks like a Skeksis which makes it very, very creepy.

A much cuter visitor is the rabbit that seems to live in the bushes behind my apartment. I see it fairly often and the kitties are big fans.

This is the one that surprised me the most. I looked out of my bedroom window one morning and saw this bat climbing up a tree. It settled in this position and napped for at least a couple of hours.

Mammoth Cave

A year ago Clay and I took a camping trip to Mammoth Cave to celebrate the end of the semester.

We walked to the Sand Cave, which can't actually be accessed except for by a walkway with signs telling Floyd Collins's story. At the end of the walkway the entrance to the Sand Cave can be seen from above. There was some graffiti carved into the handrails, like this which says, "RIP Floyd."

The Sand Cave

We drove over to the Mammoth Cave Baptist Church to see Floyd's grave. (And listened to the Cast Recording in the car on the way over)

We had some time to kill before our cave tour so we took the River Styx Spring Trail down to where the River Styx empties into the Green River. On the way down to the spring we saw several deer, including a family of four that pretty much ignored us while they ate next to the trail.

It was overcast and drizzly so the light was terrible and only a couple of my pictures came out.

This was right after it had flooded in the area and the line where the water had been was over our heads.

We also took the Violet City Lantern Tour of the cave, which was awesome, but taking pictures in the cave is very difficult because flash photography is not allowed and the light is very, very low.

A Nice Thing About Living in Bowling Green

I put up a bird feeder last fall to see if I could attract birds for the cats' entertainment. This spring our porch has become very popular with a variety of birds, including a pair of doves. (These pictures were taken through the window so they're a little fuzzy)

You can see the second one in the background

They are nice enough to eat the food that the little birds knock on the ground

This one reminds me of the illustrations in the Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus books

This is what they generally do when I approach the window

Light at the End of the Tunnel

In honor of the fact that I turned in three term papers this week I'm posting a few picture of Desie enjoying what we like to call "Kitty Sun Time" in my office.

Pisticci

Clay at Pisticci when we were in New York in November.

Georgia Aquarium

My screen saver is a random slideshow of the pictures on my computer. The middle picture just came up and I remembered that I never posted any of the pictures from my trip to the Georgia Aquarium with Mom this summer. That's because I'm not a huge fan of any of them, but I think these three are pretty.

Blah, blah, blah grad school, busy, tired, etc...

See title for introduction.

I don't have much in the way of pictures from my long period of silence, but I'm going to try to post what I do have. These are from a trip to Cades Cove with Mom over Christmas.

The Mill

Carter Shields Cabin

This one is my current desktop image

I guess I have a bit of a thing for mossy branches.

Schmapped Again

Another of my pictures was chosen for the Schmap online guide. You can see it here. It's in the entry for The Cloisters. It's still silly, but it still makes me very happy.

Fishes!

For years I have been talking about getting an aquarium so I can have goldfish. We had several growing up and I always enjoyed watching them swim around and be fishy. Our apartment in Bowling Green is the first that has had enough room, so I promised myself that I could finally have one. On Sunday afternoon Clay and I went to the store an picked out four fish to go in our new aquarium. Fish move a lot so they are very hard to photograph!

Donna

Rose

Jack

Martha
It took several tries to get a clear shot of Martha, but her's came out the best.

Oh No!

Yes, George and Desie have already found them and pretty much accepted that they can't get the fish through glass. They still enjoy looking though.

Unpacking

We've been in Bowling Green for one week today. We've made a large dent in the enormous piles of boxes, but the first order of business was to unpack and organize our books. 16 boxes of books came with us from New York and 5 came out of storage. The only possible way to make sense of them was to unpack and stack them by subject.

Piles and piles of books

There were many that I had not seen in a long time.

This is a portion of the "Sara's School Stuff" pile.

So many books!

Yes, I was an English major.

Knoxville Zoo

We went to the Knoxville Zoo for Amy's birthday.

Prairie Dog

We spent a long time watching the meerkats, which are Amy's favorite.

Meerkats are wacky.

Red Panda
I think the spots from the fence look kind of cool.

Dragonfly

Dragonfly in Cades Cove

Goodbye New York

This will probably be the last New York picture for a while. Hopefully Bowling Green will provide some good picture taking opportunities.

New York Public Library

Three days before we moved I finally got down to NYPL with my camera.

The Rose Reading Room

Museum of Natural History

The Whale... check!

MoMA

We finally made it to MoMA thanks to Sheila, who let us use her membership pass, and Katie, who said "I want to go to MoMA."

I always feel a little weird about photographing art in museums, but I made a few exceptions because they were awesome.

White Light by Jackson Pollock

Grandcamp, Evening by Georges-Pierre Seurat

This was the first time I'd seen a Seurat in person, they were stunning.

Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor by Georges-Pierre Seurat

Both paintings even have a painted border

I don't know this woman, but she was nice enough to stay still while I took pictures of her.