30 Jul 19 Along with the gardens which Jan remembers as being arranged by climate zones and she is likely correct, another feature in the Humboldt Botanical Gardens was a butterfly display. Depending on your personal choice, you might find the butterfly display to be more interesting than the botanical specimens. It was sort of a toss up for me as the garden area was large and the butterfly display just a single tent. But the display was well done with a docent available to not only answer all your questions but one who was eager to point out things you might otherwise miss such as the butterfly eggs and larvae (caterpillars) both of which almost required a microscope to see. As far as I could determine there were only two species in the display, Monarch and Swallowtail. Virtually every Swallowtail had it wing tips broken off and one could almost imagine they had decided to clip their wings, so to speak. We spent maybe 30 minutes watching the critters and I snapped few shots. Today's submission is one of them and you can easily visualize the busted wings. This is a little on the dark side as I've tried to simulate a tapestry of the kind you might have found in the more upper class homes a century ago. I've cropped the original a fair amount to get rid of useless material and converted it to the tapestry look (Topaz Impression 2 ). Tapestry-Like; Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 9.
25 Jul 19 We spent days 3 and 4 in Eureka making several side trips to see the local sights. One of these was to the historic Victorian village of Ferndale, a community nestled between the Lost Coast and the California Redwoods. Its main attraction is the Victorian architecture featured on all its buildings. We spent a couple hours wandering around the downtown streets while I attempted to get some architectural shots but pretty much failed in that effort as that's definitely not my forte. But it was fun to see all the buildings. As it turned out there were several more such buildings a few blocks walk from our motel in Eureka and I had much better luck shooting those. One in particular caught our eye, the Carson Mansion, so we put in an offer for it. Waiting to hear back. The home was built for William Carson, a lumber baron in the height of the San Francisco lumbering days. We thought it might be the perfect location for a winter retreat from the grays of Puget Sound and just the right size for entertaining. We had a lovely Victorian home in PA during our second tour there and this one sorta reminded us of it. I was thinking of removing that annoying shingle in front but didn't have enough information to reasonably attempt it. I had to straighten the original some and, as it is Theatrical Thursday, I elected to add a couple clouds into the boring blue sky. Our New Abode Nikon D500; 12 -24; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 4.
