Pictures! (No, not of us yet)

So I've been playing with the camera, and discovered the purple haze stuff they were talking about. As long as it's not on people or specific things, it doesn't bother me too much for the time being. It's a hand-me-down, not gonna complain xP

Starting with the yard (which has haze) :



The plant on the side of the house here is actually really interesting, and we may have to trim/remove parts of it before too long as it may start tearing away at the walls. It actually has grown around the corner and is - I believe - rooted just around the corner of the house at the far end there. It's f'ing huge. During the spring and summer, it blossoms with purple/pink flower-like leaves. It's absolutely gorgeous. Only sad part is, can't go on the terrace because I'm terrified of the bees it attracts. I've never been stung, and I don't ever wanna be stung.



This one kinda looks like crap. The purple haze + shivering (it's below 0 Celsius out here atm) made it kinda difficult to get a good shot here. The tree with the branches hanging down is kind of a willow tree, and when it grows the leaves back, I've seen Aglaé, and the dogs (while they're here) curl up under it for shade. I'll try to take good care of the camera so I can take pictures when these trees start really blooming in a few months. Nana and Papa got nothin' on this yard. 'Cept maybe the tire swing, that was fun. *coughs*



This one was more me experimenting on the big tree in the first picture. I thought it came out kind of artistically. Might just be my lack of art-sense, though.


Kittens (No haze, but they suck at posing) :



This is Aglaé, she's somewhere around 15 years old, and they got her from a farm when she was just itsy bitsy. She's grown really attached to me since coming here, and will at times curl up on my knee (I usually have my computer at the couch and am sitting cross-legged) and just hang out. However, she really hates the flash and it took me 10 tries to get an even somewhat-decent picture of her. Our plan to get good pictures is to eventually get both cats out in the yard during the daylight. They were actually in a picture-worthy position last week, but I didn't know there was a camera lying around then.



This is Alfred, we presume he's a he, though we're not sure yet. Aglaé started inviting him over about two and a half months ago, and he more or less lives here at least half the time now. We can pet him, but we haven't been able to check his gender. His name comes from how when he first came here, he had a collar with a bell. Martin and I both feel this is animal cruelty, so about a week and a half ago, we removed the collar entirely (Alfred Nobel). Partly as an experiment to see if his real owners replaced it or not, in which case, we'd know he's only here half the time. So far, he's still collar-less. Alfred doesn't seem to mind the flash from the camera at all, so I took a bit of an advantage with that. The lights in the house tend to be of a slight orange-ish nature, as you can tell with Aglaé's photo, but during the day there is a lot of outside lighting. So I just have to take pictures during the day.

Anyway, that's it for now, just me playing with the camera. Sorry no photos of us at this point. I'm still easing into learning how to work one of these things (took me half an hour to figure out how to turn OFF the flash).

Edit : I had to change the template AGAIN because the pictures got cut in half. Stupid Blogger.