I dropped my son off at a church function a few weeks ago and I noticed that the lowering sun, the dark clouds, and the rain had the making of a decent image so I captured it on my cell phone.
We took a whirlwind trip out to western Oklahoma earlier this month. I captured this sunrise while walking the dog at the motel early in the morning. I love the western Oklahoma skies.
Nearby Broken Arrow, Oklahoma at its Veterans Park has a memorial to veterans who took their own lives when they got out of the service. Their are about a dozen silhouettes of actual people who are now gone. They call it the “War at Home Memorial.” It’s one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen.
Captured this image of the sky over the neighborhood elementary school on a dog walk.
This is an image from Tulsa’s Woodward Park earlier this month while it was still warm.
https://flic.kr/p/2ouJFDQ
And a shot over my back fence to a sunrise last week.
Early in April, Heather and I ventured over to Bentonville, Arkansas for a little weekend getaway. Bentonville is of course the headquarters of Walmart. A gigantic company by anybody’s standard. It is also home to the amazing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by a Walmart heir. Bentonville is also in an area of incredible natural beauty, woods, hills, lakes, ravines, streams. It is gorgeous.
High rises are going up in once sleepy little Bentonville
You couple that with Walmart’s reported insistence that companies that do business with them have a local presence.
A painting from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa at Crystal Springs as the Gilcrease is being rebuilt.
So out of this mish mash stew, an amazing city has sprouted up. Great restaurants, coffee bars, brew pubs. As people all over the country have converged on the city and transformed it.
A high definition video of an oilfield worker, on display.
The art museum has ballooned all over town and is building an addition that will add 60% more space to the main museum.
A Frank Lloyd Wright designed house bought by the museum and reassembled on the museum grounds. – No interior photos allowed.
Talk about a fun place to visit. Just a couple hours from Tulsa.
An oilfield paintingl
And the main part is all walkable. We rented a condo just a couple blocks off downtown. We were able to walk to the museum over some beautiful trails. We walked to restaurants, coffee places, and bars and went for long walks in the woods.
Talk about edgy, pink here there and everywhere.
We saw some incredible edgy art that I don’t quite understand. I think art should take you to your limits. That is where growth happens.
A night time installation of flowing letters that assemble into words and sentences.
The dividing line between art, museums, town, and nature are very blurred in Bentonville.
Seen on the trail from the town square to the museum
We had a great time. We celebrated my birthday. Another trip around the sun.
Another seen on the trail to the museum
It is a rejuvenating place. It almost has a Santa Fe vibe about it.
I went on another bike ride the other day on the Arkansas River Trails here in Tulsa and saw this bird way out on the River. INaturalist is not certain but they think it is a bald eagle. Is it a teenage bald eagle maybe. Help me out fellow bloggers, please!
I saw these birds snoozing. I think they are tired white pelicans.
I took my camera with a macro lens to a nearby park to take pictures of tulips. While there I saw this little guy and took his photo with the macro lens.
I found a Koi Pond. I love Koi ponds talk about chill. Nothing like watching koi swim around makes me very chill.
And here is our little chocolate Pomeranian Kodi at puppy class. He’s a regular champ. So smart, he spends the downtime watching the other dogs and when it is his turn to do things he does great. He’s six pounds of fearlessness and smarts.
I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Lots of great posts from bloggers all over the place. Check it out.
About a week ago the RiverParks folks here in Tulsa announced that conditions were finally right and resources available to proceed with a long planned controlled burn on Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Park. They closed the park and their partners, the Oklahoma Forest Service executed the prescribed burn. They asked everybody to stay I did. I did cuz I am a rule follower, most of the time, but I went for a bike ride on the adjoining bike trails and took a few photos. And you could see a fire was going and the smoke was dispersing and I could just barely smell the smoke.
They reopened the mountain the next day and of course I had to go check it out and it was interesting. As advertised it was apparently a “cool fire” that just went along the ground burning dead grass, leaves, and underbrush.
I think that the area was only about 12 acres or so. None of the standing trees were damaged from what I can see and they were able to keep the fire contained tightly. They have to have the right combination of temperature, humidity, winds, and other factors to minimize the risk of the fire getting away from them especially in an urban area.
There was a lot of smoldering going on but the RiverParks people said that they were not worried about it as long as it was in the original burned area. The place smelled like Boy Scout campout.
The burns are done to clear out the understory and get rid of invasive species. It reduces the risk of unwanted forest fires by getting rid of “ladder species” vegetation that a wildfire can crawl to get the tree canopy. It’ll open the forest and provide better grazing for deer and opportunities for native trees like oaks to thrive. It’s all part of the Turkey Mountain Master Plan.
So I have heard of prescribed burns before but Turkey Mountain has another tool they are using. It is called “Mastication.” This is where they used machinery called brush shredders to mulch the underbrush and invasive species. I had never heard of this term before but they masticated a small area of Turkey Mountain a few weeks ago. I visited it right afterward when they reopened the area after the work was done. It really opened up the forest. I love the effect.
And with the reopening you could see how the old trails were not well designed and were just kind of drainage ditches. I think they are going to be working on new, more sustainable trails in the area soon.
I had never seen brush cutters in action before but I found this video. It’s kind of a fearsome process to watch but it sure yields great results.
The RiverParks people say that the effect on wildlife is minimal. Both controlled burns and mastication are slow enough that the animals can evade the area. Long term it will provide better habitat for them.
I think they are going to be doing more of these projects as time goes by. Yes, I’m losing some of the fun jungly areas of Turkey Mountain but it will be replaced by a more natural, wildlife friendly vegetation and trees.
My wife and I made a little trip earlier this month to nearby Bentonville, Arkansas for a little getaway and also to check out Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. They have a special exhibition of the art of Mexican artist, Diego Rivera.
Rivera was a controversial figure. He was dedicated to his fellow Mexicans and their struggles and was attracted to communism. He was a great artist by any measure. I knew him by his murals but he also painted a great deal.
My favorite work. The staggered man under the weight of the flowers, the colors. Everything about this seems perfect.
I love how he uses colors. The figures are very solemn and wooden. I think he did a great job portraying the culture of rural Mexico.
This painting struck me. It is a portrait of Francis Ford Seymour and Frances De Villers Brokaw. Seymour was a wife of Henry Fonda and the mother of Jane and Peter Fonda. Brokaw is a daughter from another marriage. Rivera spent much time living and working in California.
They had some interesting HD video of some of Rivera’s murals. They were startling because these works of art are at street level and every once in a while somebody will walk by.
There are 120 works of Riveras on display and at the end Heather and I were worn out. We tried to look at the rest of Crystal Bridges but we gave up and came back the next day.
I went on a bike ride the other day on Tulsa’s RiverParks trails. I’m in the habit of taking my Canon SuperZoom along nowadays in case I see anything interesting. It’s a lightweight camera than can really zoom in on things. So this is what I found on my ride.
I found two eagles about a 100 feet apart. I’m guessing that they are fishing for their dinner.
I found this old log with a bunch of turtles and some sort of bird. The setting reminded me of a song that goes “Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right.” Or something like that. Thank you to Eileen who Id’d the bird as a Double Crested Cormorant.
Inaturalist is not sure what kind of bird it is and suggests it is part of the cormorant family. Eileen ID’d it as a Double Crested Cormorant.
I also got fuzzy pictures of some sort of ducks, or ducklike animal. Eileen id’d these as Northern Shovelers.
Most of these photos were at the very limits of my camera. It would help if the critters would come closer to shore but I don’t think they care about me or my needs.
And then way on across the river I found these white pelicans and some sort of white waterfowl.
Pelicans are such unlikely creatures. So comical on the ground and graceful in the air.
So that was the highlight of my bike ride. I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.
I got a new launchpad for my drone. You don’t need one if you are launching from a hard surface but if you are on grass dirt it helps to have one to avoid damage to the drone’s propellers. Mine is about 24 inches square which is plenty big. The few times I have launched out in the wild it is hard to get away from grass, twigs, pebbles, and dirt.
From about 20 meters up.
So I checked it out in the backyard. Usually I launch from the patio but the metal in the furniture messed with the drone’s gps so I was always having to calibrate it.
at 40 meters, my usual flying distance.
I almost always fly from my backyard in “periscope mode.” I go straight up and then look around. I don’t fly around looking at stuff. Legally I can do it but in a subdivision I don’t think it is too neighborly to fly over somebody else’s property.
The view to the southwest. That’s the neighborhood elementary school to the left.
