The full name is Panasonic Lumix G Vario 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 II ASPH Power O.I.S. It is our new lens, equivalent to full frame 28mm to 280 mm and unless otherwise stated, all of this week’s photos will have been taken with this lens.
June 11th The weather smiled on us today so we took the opportunity for that long walk and the video from the fourth turn off to the fifth. Of course the first subjects Huan found for me were lizards, the first one before we got fifty metres from the house.
I had to try the good lady herself but she will insist on hiding her face under her hat.
Now for a different perspective of the road out of the city.
We found out where the cows that you see in the river come from, somewhere near Camelot. The top photo is from Huan’s phone.
The next three were taken in a small park just over the bridge. It used to be just natural, now it’s been gentrified for us oldies. The second photo is one of two ‘twins’. Unfortunately the other twin had something else growing in front of it.
More beasties, one not too far away, the others quite a way off.
During our long cut we had no shortage of scenery of course, although not so many photos were taken of it. Remember, it was a video day.
Huan tried a shot with her phone; this is a huge crop from the result.
This skink was also taken with her phone. I was busy running after it trying to catch it on the video. It’s there, but hardly worth it, the FOV is so wide and the sensor is so small. While Huan’s may not be perfect it beats what I filmed.
Remember the cows? On our way back I used the zoom and took a snap of them in the river.
Yet another lizard found by Huan, “Look at that” she said. I took my cue and obeyed!
Birdies singing are mine.
SWMBO almost drove me mad with this one. Have you ever tried taking photographs of a squirrel that is acting like Speedy Gonzalez in the trees? Huan was pointing and I couldn’t see a thing so I just aimed the camera as best as I could. Far too many photos were taken, mostly to be binned when we got home. Only two remain.
I tried taking a photo of “Eh!” through his cage instead. I’m almost sure that when he sees us two he starts with his “eh’ calls. Maybe he recognises us.
On our way home I found an unusual three wheeler. It had a very broad fairing on the front, as wide as the back of the vehicle in fact. Huan was ahead of me and I was too wet otherwise I may have tried it out for size.
Let’s finish our day with another lizard. Huan would have preferred to find more birds but that was not to be I’m afraid.
If you want to see the video we made, it’s here https://youtu.be/-ZMsosZX2YY
I was the duty chef again today, no recipe, just using stuff up again. We had three cans of kidney beans so I thought I would use one with the sausages we had left and do a sausage thingy with rice. I added celery and spring onions, some lovely sauce that I made up last night and then forgot all about the kidney beans. Not to worry, it worked very well.
June 12th An easy day was on the cards today, partly because we had walked so far yesterday and partly because I needed some shopping. I’m still trying to get the hang of this new lens, quite a few of today’s shots went straight into the bin. This one didn’t though.
These two are to show the power of the lens again, one at 14mm and one at 140mm.
Huan was hoping for birds today so here’s one.
This one deserves two all to himself.
Meanwhile work goes on at the riverside. They told us that they are raising the level of the walkways. By the looks of it the height will not be much more than it is now.
At least lizards still like to pose!
Two different stories are shown here. The first is a decal on a moped, “Nice Day.” The second one is the actual weather which, as you can see, was not such a nice day. At least the rain only dampened us and never turned torrential.
“How was the rest of our day?” Well, it was a Taobao day for me, one with a 50% success rate. The shorts I ordered were much longer than described and came below my knees. They were sent back this evening. Despite being a size 5XL the shirt was not such a good fit either. No doubt Huan will be able to modify it for her use. Those two items were the ‘failures’. The other half, the ‘successes’, were two pairs of shoes that fit very well and a whole bundle of socks that were actually as described and suitable for big foreign feet.
June 13th The plan of the day was Huan’s, mostly, and it was to be a bus and walk. We took the bus to Nansheng and got off just out of the other side. Check out the zoom!
Just down the road we saw one of those weird chickens again and it suddenly came to me what it looks like. Apart from the colour it could be a chicken posing as the ‘Roadrunner’ (beep beep).
We call this route the ‘
A regular attendee in our Blog is
“
We took a slightly different route to start with, different scenery too. Unfortunately, it was a long diversion from where we should have been.
After taking the road that led nowhere we took another one that we were told would lead us to the ‘big water lily’ place. That was half right, the place does exist but it is not yet ready to receive tourists. It will be nice when they are all done.
Huan went and did it again!
Soon we were passing through the ‘heroes’ walk thus letting us know that we were no longer lost. All the heroes have been moved, if you want to know about them then you will have to search through all the posts since 2015. The information is in there somewhere.
The old bases are quite spread out but the roads between them are lovely to walk along.
Going through the next base, which is partly in use, we spotted these beautiful birds. Only one photo is here, it’s all you need to marvel at them. It is an Eurasian hoopoe.
We had to change our route after this because it would have taken us far too long to reach what should have been our final destination. Instead we headed back to Nansheng and the bus stop. There were two stops, the first one a very brief butterfly photo.
The second one had us diverting
into an apartment complex called å”雀城, KÇ’ngquè chéng –
There was obviously a mix up in communication somewhere. A resident told us that there were no lakes and no black swans. He was wrong about the lakes but not the swans. First though we found the peacocks. I was not happy to see them in a cage, at least to start with.
Check the second photo above and you will see that the cage door is in fact open. I guess it is where they all sleep at night and there were a lot of them. We found them all over the place.
There was a lovely pond and island, all in good working order.
Next up two more peacocks, sharing the little island, a white one and a more normal one.
At the edge of the property we discovered the non-existent lake. How could you possible not know it was there? Swans were absent, black or white, but ducks were present.
Walking back through the centre of the property we found even more peacocks. Unfortunately, none of them put a display on for us today, maybe another time.
The swimming pool was empty because it was being repaired but even there, sitting at the side, was a peachick. Did you know they were called peachicks? Do you wonder, as we did, if he is taking an interest in the work going on around him?
By the time we got to the bus stop I was really ready for it, after a nice cool bottle of water of course. I did tell Huan that if I had been alone I would probably have had a cold coffee and a fag. She told me to go ahead but I resisted the temptation.
After lunch there was no nap for me what with having over one hundred and sixty photos to sort through and edit or bin as necessary. Huan may have dozed off on the sofa although she tells me that she didn’t!
Chef duties called again, an easy one today, fried pork. The first job was to boil the potatoes, carrots and garlic. Together with butter they would make the mash. Onions were then fried, the pork added until it was also done, and then some home made tomato paste. Last but not least, a bowl of peas was microwaved with a little butter. Huan’s looked so good on the plate that she thought it deserved a photo. I’m sorry, I couldn’t be bothered, I just wanted to eat it. Yummy!
June 14th Two still rather worn out souls decided not to leave the city limits today. Our daily portfolio starts with a little art, reflections (?), two photos taken through the kitchen balcony windows. It’s a regular occurrence but I do like it.
As soon as were out of the house ‘Eagle Eyes’ leapt into action.
In our previous posts you may well have seen snaps of our bedroom side from the bridge over the little island river. Here’s the same view with the new lens.
Sometimes photos just ask to be taken.
Having the bigger lens means Huan is now continuously pestering me to take photos of birds. Her little granny finger is pointing here there and everywhere.
Back to art, a reluctant Huan through a sewer pipe.
Even more art, a rather lonely riverside gazebo with no visible means of access anymore.
The granny finger got busy again, the subject was not so near, but I tried.
The old granny finger was extremely busy today; some kind of beetle was next. The Chinese name, the one that Huan knows, makes no sense at all when it’s translated. Google was no help either so let’s just call it a long horned beetle.
Not content with that she then found three more birds and a beautiful posey.
And then, right before we entered our building, she finished off her streak with another lizard.
June 15th Market day again, doesn’t time fly when you least expect it to. It certainly flies faster as you get older or perhaps that is just a temporal illusion.
Photos are very scarce today, just one of each of us. Huan is showing tomorrow’s lunch, small multi-coloured sweet corn cobs. Huan took the second photo with her phone; I am proving that just like humans, dogs also smile.
Is there anything else to report? Well yes, there is. Take a look at this screen shot. Maybe you can explain how someone can misuse Facebook by going too fast. I certainly don’t understand and my submissions to Facebook support have so far been ignored.
June 16th A longer walk was
needed today so I made one of those executive decisions and told her that we
would do the
With the camera and Huan’s phone we ended up with over two hundred photos today. I took far too many so that Huan could see the difference in perspective of a lot of our normal views when zoomed in a bit more than with the old lens.
Obviously not all those photos will appear in this post, that would definitely be overkill. In today’s ration though how about this one. A real tree is eating a stone tree!
And now for some more creatures, the first is what appears to be a baby lizard. The second photo shows two millipedes getting rather amorous with the intention of making babies.
With all those photos we will still have to have a few more perspective shots.
But we will fit in creatures when we can.
These next two come from the commander’s phone. Near the bridge a lady was sitting busy with her embroidery. I didn’t have a ‘paint by numbers picture of Huan with me’ so we couldn’t ask her to embroider Huan for us. Her fish were pretty good though.
From people we go back to perspectives. Well, it is the halfway bridge after all, from two angles and with a little birdie in the middle.
The next one is neither perspective nor creatures. In fact we have no idea what it is and we were too lazy to climb up the hill. Maybe one you out there can enlighten us.
For this next photo we need a drum roll, RRLLRRLLRRLL et voila! Ladies and gentlemen, we give you possibly our best birdie picture yet, an owl. However, I can’t be specific about the type of owl. Is it an Asian Barred Owl, a Collared Owlet or some other variation? Do tell us!
Snowbirds were not very common today, we did spot one or two on our journey. Students were out in force though! They were clearing rubbish off the mountain paths. What’s more they were very happy doing it and well pleased when I told them what a good job they were doing.
SWMBO found lizards again! (Between the two lizards there in fact a lot more perspective shots but I guess lizards are more photogenic!)
At least I found some more flora. We’ve seen the larger orange coloured flowers before but we’ve never seen the solitary yellow in the middle. At first I thought it was loose and had fallen there from elsewhere. I was wrong; it was part of the same flower.
As this post has now broken the one hundred photo mark I won’t put any more perspectives from today up at all. Instead we’ll give you some rushing water.
An enjoyable walk was had by both, one of whom had to have an afternoon nap. I would have enjoyed one too but there was far too much sorting and editing to do!
June 17th “It’s just another manic Monday” but I don’t wish it was Sunday because I’m retired and never have to work on any day! We do of course have to go shopping on Mondays, an easy enough job. After lunch Huan had a sleep and I had a sneak out for a walk, a little extra shopping and a coffee and fag break! I had my break at the gate while I called Huan. Sitting there I spotted, to the left of the notice board, a little lizard on the wall. I got as close as I could before taking a photo. Both the lizard and the scene were taken with my phone.
Well what a week it’s been, over five hundred photos taken with the new lens, at least. To be honest it could be even more. Two hundred and some have been saved to my computer here and one hundred are included in this post. I hope they will as pleasing to your eyes as they are to mine. Stay tuned for more, although maybe not quite as many as this week!
PS Fingers crossed, I think Facebook is back to normal for me. My error submissions have not been answered of course and I have no idea what I am supposed to have done wrong. Perhaps I should scroll more slowly in the future!
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