SUMMER IS REALLY HERE!

It's been another adventure-filled, action-packed, work-focused week. (Are those real words?) The highlights, as always, were the weekend activities.


Last night we went to hear the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform one of its free "Symphony in the Park" programs. Featured selections ranged from famous classics to contributions by modern composers (John Williams' Raiders of the Lost Ark). After the concert there were fireworks to end the evening. That means it is "officially" summer despite the upcoming summer solstice three weeks hence!


The thermometer outside is certainly not having a problem with its declaration of the arrival of the dreaded arid season. We are now consistently in the middle or upper 90s and the morning lows never budge below the 80 degree mark. The water in the pool is already 85 degrees and by the end of the summer heat will be more bath-like than refreshing cool.


The photo below was taken during the symphonic event. Listening to live classical music has never ceased to conjure a memory from my days in elementary school art class. My absolute favorite activity in art class was "free art" when the teacher would play a classical selection and we were instructed to draw what we were hearing in the music. This memory is so completely burned into my mind that no matter when I attend the symphony I am reminded of the pleasure it afforded me in my girlhood days.

But alas, the only artistic media available during last night's performance was that of my camera lens and what God was "painting" to the music. Here is a photo of the colors swirling in the sky as we listened to Valse from Swan Lake, Opus 20 by Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer.

And speaking of the camera lens, I've been playing again. Several weeks ago I was taking photos of rose buds and other spring flowers. The bud shown below was in Harry's backyard and was positively perfect (the bud; not my picture-taking ability).

Next to taking pictures and the on-going quest to capture the perfect photographic moment, I've been playing with photo editing software. I experimented with some of the features and edited the same photo shown above until it became this photo. First I made the entire photo into a black&white version, then "painted" the color back into the petals only. Interesting results.



Until the next time...