We have this one room. A "living room" that's quite deep and quite tall.
Light comes in from three sets of French doors on one side, which faces
West, and windows on the East side. The sectional sofa is a wonderful
place for an afternoon nap. In the heat of Summer the ceiling fans make
the big room a lot more comfortable.
Yeah. I still get up and go to swim practice at least five days a week, six days if the weather holds and the pool is operational. Still keep up with friends and colleagues. This week a friend and I helped out a fellow photographer who suffered a broken ankle and won't be out shooting for at least a month. I read the news. I go for long walks with my adorable, romantic partner. And I take photo walks which seem to have one unexpected side effect; that of boring people with my choice of locales in which to snap the photos. And I blog too much.
But what I'm really noticing is that I'm becoming a homebody. More domestic. Reading and experimenting with things like the deep watering of trees. Cooking or preparing more meals at home than ever in the last 40 years. But mostly reading all the stuff that catches my attention or holds out the promise of either more useful knowledge or more entertainment and fun. More late afternoon naps (never more than half an hour...) and more time playing around with photographs from yesterday and from 50 years ago.
I was sitting in a chair reading Robert Adams's book of essays when I noticed how the light in the late afternoon bounces around the interior of the house. I got up, walked into the studio and grabbed a camera and a convenient 50mm lens and walked around for a few minutes and snapped some images. Just for the heck of it. Then I finished the essay I had been reading and came out here to look at the photos and to share them with you.
I was afraid of retiring from work in the beginning but now I'm enjoying the unstructured time to do all those things which take time... like reading wonderful books. That's it. Oh! And we're spending more time and money exploring restaurants we never had time for during the work years. Yum.
Reading, re-reading and read. Fiction, poetry, and essays about photography.
The chair is a magnet for readers...
Wooden blinds blocking late afternoon sun.
My corner of the bedroom. French doors out onto a small porch, to the right, surrounded by
sweet olive bushes and watched over by the large, leafy branch of a live oak.
My little corner is Perennially Messy.
Today I was catching up on a couple of essays I'd read years ago in
Robert Adams's book, "Why People Photograph." Even after reading them
I still am not sure anyone really knows why people photograph.
A robe hanging near the doorway of the bathroom.
This photograph is really about the pot in the far part of the screened in porch. The one
with the tall succulents rising up. The table only seats six. There are only a few months out of each year that are temperate enough to enjoy the porch fully. A longer season if you use it at breakfast.
It faces West, into a veritable forest or tangle of trees and greenery.
I had coffee on the porch at 7:15 this morning and the family of cardinals who seem to think they own the property were already up and scrounging for breakfast.
They are delightful. In the Summer, when things get
really dry and hot I turn on a small sprinkler in the late afternoon and the yard fills up
with all kinds of small birds.
Wings flapping and water drops flying. Flitting in and out of the streams. And then taking
refuge in the sweet olive bushes to check the perimeter before swooping through
water again and again. Gotta watch out for hawks... They're fast.
some family members call this area the "kitchen" but I call it the coffee preparation area.
The knit blanket lives on the chair. It's there for those days when the air conditioning is too cold and I'm too lazy to get up and change the setting. Or those days in the winter when everything just seems colder for no good reason. If your feet are warm everything follows.
Married couples should have their own, separate bathrooms. Mine is strewn with big swim towels drying on the rod that holds up the shower curtain. Swim suits hanging off the shower head.
Goggles soaking in a mild vinegar solution in the sink. I try to keep it neat and clean. I really do.
Best intentions...
And the view out through a set of doors from the dining room.
A week ago I was sitting down for breakfast and saw a big shadow outside.
A fully grown adult, male deer (huge horns) had managed to jump over the fence that surrounds the
property but couldn't figure out how to get back out. When he was far enough away, trying to decide if he was going to chance it getting over the tall, wooden fence,
I got up and opened the gates on either side of the house. I went back in side hoping he'd figure it out. He did. I'm glad not to have gotten closer because his antlers seemed enormous and he was already a bit
frustrated by his self-inflicted, but very short term, imprisonment.
Just a few images around the house on a lazy, already too hot day in a house in Austin.
Camera: SL2
Lens: 50mm APO Summicron.
