me·di·o·cre
1.of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate.
2.rather poor or inferior
This is how I feel my photos are. I decided to try and fix them up a little for the calendar so I imported them into my "starter" in other words free, version of Adobe Photoshop 3.2 and used the auto color fixer. It did change the pictures but I am not happy with the limited effects. I cannot afford the expensive Photoshop software so I guess I will have to make do. Here are some of my before and afters.
My apple trees before, the after auto color fix did some weird color changes but I kinda like it.
After, you can definitely see the apples better and it kinda looks painted.
Here is our pond before and after . Not a lot of change but a little more dramatic.
I like the after but it could be so much better. Over at Pioneer Woman's blog she does the coolest stuff with her photos. Oh well, next year maybe I can afford the fancy stuff.
Here is a picture of a Praying Mantis that I took in our pear tree. I am using it for the calendar too. I'm afraid my mom will hate it, she despises all things creepy. She will not even look at pictures of alligators or lizards. Me, on the other hand, will not let almost any animal pass without touching it or holding it. We found salamanders in our backyard, I picked them up, and at the zoo when I was 8 or 9, I reached through the fence to pet the buffaloes, at the marina I touched the sharks and all the other things I could get my hands on.
The only thing that completely grosses me out is MAGGOTS! Yuck, the worst thing in the world is to kick over a dead squirrel and see it crawling with maggots. (I will put them on my fish hook if I have to, I won't like it but I will.) Now, you may be thinking,"Why in the world is she kicking over a dead animal? Well, because it is an animal and I have to see it, have to examine it, can't help myself. A friend brought his beautiful snake (I think a python?) into work and my hands were dying to hold it. Her name was Baby and she was so calm and I LOVED holding her!
Anyway, Kevin always calls me to come see when he finds a praying mantis. I love it! We have seen quite a few on the property. I took about 50 shots to get this one good one.
Here are a couple of mediocre ones.
These guys are quick suckers and not too happy to pose. It's funny cause I would have been happy with the second photo had I not gotten the first. Usually you never get to see the bad shots only the good ones. I can only imagine what professional photographers go through to get their one "money" shot! They are probably really happy with digital cameras, no more loading film and developing, dark rooms and so forth. 
Our turkeys started roosting on top of our chicken house which did not make us very happy. We spent a lot of money on the roofing and we really did not want it covered with poop. We have a large crab apple tree in their fenced in area and we were hoping that they would fly up and roost in it. Kevin cleaned off a couple of lower, larger branches to make it easier for them to get up there. At first they weren't interested but he put a chicken up there a couple times hoping the turkeys would copy. The turkeys were very watchful and got kinda excited when they saw the chicken up there and it didn't take them very long, after a couple of trial and errors, to get up there and now they roost up there every night.
We had originally ordered the Broad Breasted bronze turkeys as well as the Royal Palms but they obviously sent us the wrong ones. After one of the bronze turkeys took off and flew about 50 feet across our yard and then 30 feet up into our pine tree we knew we had the wrong turkeys! Last year our Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys could barely walk normally let alone fly so we decided to keep the ones we got this year and maybe we'll get some baby turkeys in the spring. We think they are the Standard Bronze, which are the ones that are much smaller but they have a normal body and can reproduce. Here they are up in their tree.
They just love it up there and will stay up there even if it's raining, snowing or whatever. They go up at dusk and stay up until dawn. We feel like they are really safe up there. In the photos you can see the branch that Kevin cleaned off for them but they prefer the brushy branches up higher.
We have them close to the house so we can enjoy them and most people that stop over enjoy them too. Although one evening someone stopped over and they were afraid to get out of their car because they couldn't tell what was up in our tree. It was funny!
Almost everyday we have a truck in our driveway bring our gifts that we have ordered online (free shipping is great!) and yesterday a delivery guy kept insisting to Kevin's mom that the dark ones were the babies and the light ones were the moms and dads, she didn't argue, just smiled and nodded. I love this season with the holidays but I am having a really hard time waiting for spring! Right now I need to get busy and get some things done for Christmas, also we went to Walmart yesterday and got a dehydrator and so today I am finally going to get to make some venison jerky. I am going to thaw out a turkey and try some turkey jerky too. That reminds me... I better go and get the meat out of the freezer!
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