You may have noticed that my posts have been sporadic recently and that I haven’t posted much at all this week. That is thanks to the fine, fine internet service we have out here in the country and the fine service being provided by AT&T lately (if I was speaking you would hear a great deal of sarcasm in my voice here). Over the past two years our service has gone from reasonable to awful, and AT&T has simply abandoned us (although they are still quite happty to take our money for services we get only intermittently). Our power company is putting in a fiber optic network, which is wonderful (we have it already at our office), and they are working like crazy to get what was originally laid out as a five year program done in less than four years. I’m hopeful that our area will have it before the end of 2024, but until then we are stuck with AT&T. The past few days my service has been exceptionally awful and I haven’t been able to open my web page, let alone upload images. Tonight, though, the internet is working great, and we are just a few hours from a hurricane hitting. In fact, as near as I can tell, the storm is about 100 miles west of us, out in the Gulf of Mexico right now! It’s raining pretty hard, the wind is gusting from time to time, and the internet is running perfectly. I just don’t get it!

But, even though I haven’t been posting much, I have been working. In fact, I’ve spent some of the extra time I’ve had getting creative. These are two art works that I did from one of many photos that I took of a great egret (Ardea alba) that was fishing in a retention pond not far from my house. The pond was pretty still except for the movements of the bird, and that resulted in some really nice reflections. There is a light version (above) and a dark version (below), both of which I like for different reasons, but I want to know what you guys think. Which one do you prefer and why?