Saying Goodbye…Sort of

The time has come to say goodbye – oh, don’t worry, the blog will still be here, but I won’t be updating it any longer. Over the last couple of months I’ve had to sit down and re-assess where I’m going and what I’m doing, and how much time I spend doing it. Currently I maintain something like 15 blogs and three websites, and I simply no longer have the time to keep up with them all, so I’ve decided to stop updating some of the ones that have similar contents, like this one.

I’ve had a blog on Blogger for some time that also has free stock photos, and I’ve decided to (gasp) keep that one and update it more often. The reason is simple…Blogger offers me more functionality in being able to edit the blog design, and in search functions, and uses Picasa Web Albums to store the photos when I need to. WordPress offers not so much in the way of being able to edit the template unless you pay for it (and I haven’t been all that pleased with the new templates and sorely miss the Cutline one), and the storage facilities aren’t as good. Blogger also allows me to purchase a domain name and set it up for meager fee – $10 a year. WordPress allows you to set up a domain, but it costs more money, and you pay for the mapping.

Blogger also allows me to place ads – and although that isn’t the only reason I chose to stick with the Blogger blog, it was the icing on the cake.  I can use affiliate links to my stock sites where I sell my commercial images, and if I want, I can use AdSense or other ads. Even if I only come up with $100  a year in advertising earnings (you need that much to get paid with AdSense, but less with other advertisers) it will pay for the cost of domain name registrations each year, and perhaps upgrading the storage amount if I run out.

Not that I intend to place a big pile of ads on my site – there’s nothing worse than a site loaded with so many ads you can’t find the contents. But even one unobtrusive text link unit will be helpful.

I have no problems with providing free content to people – if you don’t like the ad, turn on an adblocker when you visit – that isn’t going to bother me much. If I can pay for the upcoming domain name (haven’t bought that yet, but will…very soon) then I’m happy with that.

So, for any of you who’ve been using images from this blog, you’ll find them all ported over to Gracey’s Free Stock Photos. It’s a simple place – no dancing, blinking, bouncing ads, no fancy gewgaws, much like this place here.

If you aren’t happy with that, you can still get full size images over on Free-3D-Textures.com, and always will be able to. So, wordpress fans, it’s bee a slice, but this girl’s cake is just gettin’ too tired to frost anymore. Thanks for everything guys – happy blogging, wherever you go.

A Little Fall Colour

 

Thanksgiving Weekend - Rural Colours

 

We’re moving into the cooler weather now…not cold, except overnight where it dips down to minus 1 celcius already, but we’ve had a pretty wet fall. Most of September was rather wet with much cooler temperatures than we generally see in September. It was a little disappointing, really…we look at September as the last blast of summer, but this year it felt much more like the omen of a bad winter to come than the end of summer. We saw temperatures dipping down to almost freezing even at the end of August during the night, making for an early show of autumn colour. Normally the leaves

 

Thanksgiving Trees

 

don’t begin to show the change of season until sometime in late September/early October, but 2010 brought the colour change while we were still counting off the days of August.

I really love the autumn…it’s blaze of colour makes our country surroundings beautiful, especially during the early periods of fall when the grass and some of the trees are still the bright strident green you see after a rainfall. The heavy night dews give the autumn grass and lawn a deep green we don’t see at other times of the year. Spring grass has a light fresh green colour, and summer grass has a

 

Langman Sanctuary in Autumn - Orillia, Ont.

 

slightly dry and sometimes dull green from the hot days and little rain, but in fall it’s simply that colour we call green – grass green. The bright yellows, reds, oranges and sometimes brown or melon of the leaves contrasting with that lovely green is a jaw-dropping blast in our part of the world. I love it. Crisp days of sunshine, blue sky, and even bluer water.

During the summer the water tends to get a little greenish here – that’s a sign of all the activity on our lakes – boaters, swimmers and more boaters, but in the autumn the lakes change to a deep blue. Probably because the waters are cooling a little, and probably partly because the boaters are gone for the season and the algae that gets churned up in the summer settles back down to the bottom. The colours of autumn reflect of the blue of the

 

Reflecting Colours at Langman Sanctuary

 

stiller waters like they were reflecting off a mirror -  peaceful and gorgeous.

In Canada, we’re celebrating our Thanksgiving holiday this weekend.  We sort of look at this as the last official long weekend for things like camping, and summer cottages. Our area has many cottages that are winterized, but those whose cottages aren’t, close them up over the Thanksgiving weekend and tuck them in for a long winter. Boaters winterize their boats and put them into storage, classic car enthusiasts tuck their beauties into garages to keep themout of the winter snows and life slows down again for a little while. Tourists are mostly gone and we have our town back, stores have Halloween decorations one one side of the aisle and Christmas on the other side, kids are back in school, and the holidays are finished. At least until Christmas. Monday is our Thanksgiving (Oct 10), and we’ve spent the weekend working in the gardens getting them ready to survive the long cold winter ahead; we also usually spend time driving about the rural roads trying to record the lovely autumn colors.

 

Pumpkins for Pie

 

Autumn is short here – at least most of the time. You never really know when the colours will be gone. You can get up one day and see a glorious countryside full of colours you can’t even describe, and get up the next morning to trees that have shed through the night. At this time of year all it takes is a rainy, windy night and it’s over. The colours of fall lay strewn across field and pavement and lake, like so many pieces of confetti.

As is always the case, I’m not looking forward to winter at all. I hate the cold. I hate being cold.

 

 

 

 

More Photos from the Weekend

 

Colours of Fall - Rural Roadside

 

 

Local Farm in Autumn

 

 

Rural Autumn Laneway & Fields

 

 

Workhorses in October Field

 

 

Geese in Flight - Langman Sanctuary

 

 

Trumpeter Swan at Langman Sanctuary - October

 

 

Langman Sanctuary - Trumpeter Swan

 

Anybody looking for images specifically for Thanksgiving and Halloween can find some more over in the royalty free stock photo section (did I mention, they’re free to use) on Free-3D-Textures.com. Don’t forget to check the graphics and .png sections too – they each have a few related images.