Bye-Bye Tree and Glen Oak Park

I have had a dead tree in my back yard for a couple of years now. Well, over the Winter, it fell. Luckily, it didn't take out the garage, fence, or neighbor's shed. It couldn't have fallen any better, actually. When it fell, Connie and I cleaned up what we could by hand and left the main branches and trunk. A couple weekends ago, Jeff U. brought his chainsaw over and we had it knocked out in no time! It was cut and stacked within about half an hour!! The yard looks so much more open now. You wouldn't think a dead tree laying in your yard would take up so much (perceived) space. But, it really does. So, a bit shout out to Jeff!! Thanks, man!!!

This past weekend, I had to work a "midnight" outage in Peoria. Actually, I had to meet a vendor that does the preventative maintenance on our battery backup system. And it wasn't exactly midnight.... we met at about 1:30am Saturday. That sucked!! Then, I had a class outing to Glen Oak park at 6:30am!! Short night! Oh, and the weather was kinda crappy again! It started off looking like it would be a nice sunny morning with a few scattered clouds (can make for interesting light/shadows). About the time the sun was creeping above the treeline, all of a sudden, there was a significant blanket of cloud cover. That would have been pretty great for portraits, but, fairly boring flat light for landscapes.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots from lower Glen Oak:





As you can see, everything is put back together. They had been doing some work on it last year (not sure how long they worked on it), but, it's nice and clean and put back together. Again, the radial beams on top can make some cool shadow patterns...just not that day. :-)

I have a couple more I might post to my flickr site if you check in over there (link to the right).

Class is almost over, there's only a couple more times we meet. So, there won't be a whole lot more of these class outing posts. But, still planning the occasional outing with flickr friends. :-)