[Norma Photos]

I have always enjoyed photography but still haven't mastered the digital camera. It is a new technology poorly served by the contents of my brain. I still think in terms of ASA ratings, calculating f-stops, shutter speeds and a leather bag of interchangeable lenses. My brain is 62 years old and built in winter so these obsoletisms are frozen in. Norma, however, is a year younger and born in summer, so her brain is more facile.

She is our photo-chronicler now. Best I have managed is figuring out how to type all over pictures on this machine. That was yesterday. Yesterday also delivered a series of her pictures from her computer to mine. They are of good quality because the two machines are only 20 feet apart. So Norma is my portal into summer. These scenes detail the early bleaching and crisping that go on here this time of year.

The path to the woody end takes one past relics from our early days on this prairie, like the cement-mixer --now a monument slowly sinking into it. I remember all the days and nights of shoveling worlds into and out of this machine. I do not like the cement-mixer but it has my sympathy.


One also encounters the odd disused dove's nest. Doves build flimsy nests and return each year to add new materials that make them even flimsier. They are untidy too. Here is a typical example, newly vacated by its family. They will not be getting their cleaning deposit back.


The woody end is an olio of orphan seedlings pulled up from borders and beds throughout my gardening years. Rather than throw them out, I brought them home in a bucket and stuck them out here. They were, after all, volunteers and eager to live --much like humans after morning coffee.


They are grateful too. They sometimes reach gently out as one nears. They have learned appreciation and responsibility. They like having a family.

In keeping with longstanding family tradition, they are happy to welcome new nuts into it:

As past-plenipotentiary of this family's photojournal, I am pleased to pass the mantle to Norma. Unlike me, she is not intimidated or confusticated by this new century and its brash technology. She has gained a high degree of mastery over it. She is sensitive and alert to detail and, as evidenced by yesterday's final photo at the woody end, capable of achieving grapeness: