PrettyTiny Film Company Pic-A-Week **2022** (#52, Dec. 29)

[Alliecat]

I definitely am not a ray of sunshine in the mornings either.

After waiting many months for her goal of posing with butterflies, Poppy is a lil bummed that our first hatchling of the season was ready to fly right out of the box and took off immediately.  She had to settle for a caterpillar.
And I am colossally bummed that the mosquitoes have ex!ploded to plague proportions overnight, after a couple of damp days, and doing anything in the yard right now is completely impossible without getting swarmed.
So a quick pic on the porch and that was the end of that!

[dargosmydaddy]

Poppy looks adorable with the caterpillar. Maybe the butterfly had pressing butterfly adventures that couldn't wait...

Ugh, I hate mosquitoes! Hope they go swarm your noisy construction neighbors and leave you alone.

[Alliecat]

Sadly, the mosquito plague continues.  One minute outside is literally all it takes to get swarmed and bitten.  Not just me; a fellow down the road said he didn't think he'd ever seen them so bad, and he's out on the point where there's a breeze.  Ugh 

I was going to do "butterflies make happiness happen" for the Dal House challenge, but he flew away too.  So Samantha & Red are just doing a besties-hanging-out pic for this week.

[davidd]

I love the "butterfly orange" caterpillar pic!

Sadly, I read just this week that migratory Monarch butterflies have been declared an internationally endangered species.

Clever little "ancient tome" the girls are perusing. Or is that just a prop so they look like they're studying if the headmaster happens by? Because it looks more like snack time than study time.

Did you make the book?

[Alliecat]

Sadly, I read just this week that migratory Monarch butterflies have been declared an internationally endangered species.

Well.... >cough<  If people hadn't been so busy trashing habitat everywhere 20 years ago, we might not have got to this point.  A community group where I used to live tried to stop the wrecking of a pond & field that had tons of milkweed plants & caterpillars; scummy developer did some underhanded things and of course won approval to build... one of our arguments was that it was Monarch habitat and they countered that, well, they're not endangered so it doesn't really matter. 
Just one example.  Things don't fall apart overnight.  Stupidity and carelessness leads to trouble well down the road.

Did you make the book?

Goodness no 
Study?  In the summer?  This crew???? 
Ha.



Rally & I are on the road.  I love paper maps -- always have enjoyed even just looking at them.  And needed the "back roads atlas" here.  But, what a wondrous device GPS is -- especially at night!  I had a funny moment where I imagined whoever first came up with the concept looking at their paper map and thinking "wouldn't it be great if there was a dot on this thing to show me where I am". 
If I had taken Sunsette, which I considered, I could've got a cute photo of her with the Airbnb soap dish, which was a fabulous 1:12 vintage bathtub. 
Anyway, here's Rally figuring out where we are.

[davidd]

Back roads road-tripping! Can't beat that!
I love the spiral-bound map books.
For me, GPS is most useful when passing through cities. Even small cities are so huge and convoluted anymore, I don't know how anyone finds their way around other than by listening for the audible GPS prompts and hoping the digital maps are up to date.

[Alliecat]

I haven't updated her.  I just cross my fingers.    The only glitch was when she told me I had 6-8 minutes to spare to make the ferry, but she had calculated to the other side of the crossing and included that time as if I would be driving it.  I wonder what the auto speed limit on the Bay of Fundy is....?
I was also amused to find that she responds to Rally's paws, not just fingers.  I'll have to put him to work again next time 

It's Dolls With Butterflies season.  Far too late when I should've been in bed, I took Janice & Alice's pic with a couple of butterflies whose circadian clocks were also a bit screwed up.  Nighttime hatching is not the best idea, but some do.  The pic does double duty for the Dal House poetry challenge.



butterfly: teach us
how to dissolve our old lives
into something new

[davidd]

I like the atmospheric lighting of the late-nite butterfly hatching pic.
Looks like there's one more getting close right behind the girls, and another relatively fresh chrysalis.

I have not seen a single Monarch here this season. Last year I saw three or four. But there's been a drought, and wildflowers have been in short supply. Even the hummingbirds were scarce until late summer when we finally got some rain and some late-season flowers. Weather has gone from 90-degree (32C) heat to 65-degrees (18C) in less than a week. Looks like the hummers are migrating; large groups of them fuel up in the morning, there's little activity most of the day, then another frantic group congregates around the feeders in the late-afternoon and early evening.

I was recently regretting selling my Pullip Classical Alice that I owned briefly. Something triggered that, I'm not sure what. I looked online, and Classical Alice is too rich for my budget now. I should have kept her to finance my retirement. Or a beach house. Sometimes the "Little" version shows up at a more reasonable price; other times she costs more than the full-size version.

[fishy]

That stuffed kitty and your dolls are so cute.

(Don't give up hope on the butterflies- I've NEVER seen so many here as I have this year. Scads of monarchs and swallowtails. It's been so hot and humid, the flowers this year have been like the garden of Eden.)

[Alliecat]

Thank you fishy!  I'm glad to hear you're seeing lots of butterflies -- and Eden-worthy flowers sound lovely.

davidd, hope your drought relents.  My hummers are gone, I guess.  I'm always so delighted to see them in May, and so sad to realize they've disappeared in September   
I can't believe a whole summer went by and I didn't try to get a pic of Victoria in her red outfit with one of them -- I'd hoped to pose her and wait to see if any approached.  Just one more thing I didn't get done through my dysfunctional days. 

One fun unphotographable thing happened with my hummers though: I released 14 Monarchs one day -- 9 from that day plus a rain backlog -- and 3 or 4 of them drew much attention from the hummingbirds.  3 hummers zoomed around the butterflies on their maiden flights, followed them to the trees and hovered nearby -- clearly checking them out.  I thought that was such an amazingly cool moment.

Mini Alice is really hard to find, and sometimes mini prices, for any of them, are ridiculous.

----------------

Here's another Dal House poetry entry.



It's cloudy, damp and cool today,
We wanted to go out and play
But sitting on the backyard deck --
Summer's gone... what the heck?
We weren't ready, now it's done
We haven't yet had all our fun!
Keep your sweaters and pumpkin spice.
We think summer heat is nice.
Months of cold now lie ahead
And soon the flowers will be dead.
It always makes us shed a tear;
We really hate this time of year.

[davidd]

What the heck, indeed! This summer vanished! Vanished in the blink of an eye! Today (22nd) is actually the Autumn Equinox already! The darkest half of the year has begun!

Are the girls trying to top each other's dares? Who is going to jump off the ledge on the bicycle, and who is going to go for big air on the board?

[dargosmydaddy]

Love your butterfly haiku, and can definitely commiserate with poem number two.

Hoping you haven't been hit with Fiona.

[Alliecat]

Are the girls trying to top each other's dares? Who is going to jump off the ledge on the bicycle, and who is going to go for big air on the board?

The crew are no strangers to stunt falls...   We were VERY careful.
Samantha got her big air skateboard shoot a whole YEAR ago; I can't believe it's been that long.  I should do some more, I guess.

Love your butterfly haiku, and can definitely commiserate with poem number two.
Hoping you haven't been hit with Fiona.

Thank you.
Some rain & wind; 45 kt forecast but don't know if we got that much...  and a northerly/NW direction which is much better than our winter easterlies.  I didn't even hear of cancelled ferry trips.  Storms typically miss this area on one side or the other, so we were very lucky.  It's a horrible mess elsewhere: houses in Nfld washed out to sea 

-----------------------------------------------

Dolls With Butterflies continued...

My 4th-last butterfly... the light hasn't been very good to do many pictures.  Yesterday's shoot was in a few little patches of the very last sunlight in the yard.

[davidd]

The lower level of light leads to more saturated colors. The oranges are really intense!
It's quite wonderful that you were able to get one with a Monarch theme!

I'm impressed that you still have butterflies this late in the season.

[dargosmydaddy]

Poppy looks very proud. I love all the colors in her hair.