Limiting myself to six...

No, not six French fries or six glasses of wine. I'm talking about pictures. Ones taken with the new camera. The limit is not on taking just six, it means just posting just six. Today.

Yesterday we had a bright sunny afternoon. I took the dog out for a walk in the vineyard about 4:00 p.m.

You can click on the pictures to enlarge them on your screen.

A dog's-eye view of a walk in the vineyard

Even in bright sunlight, using the LCD screen on the back of the camera to frame pictures is okay. It had better be, since the camera has no other viewfinder. Only once or twice did I have a hard time seeing what I was taking a picture of because of bright sun on the screen or too many reflections.

Grapes in autumn colors

Callie was bound to notice the grapes sooner or later. I keep stopping to take pictures of the beautiful clusters hanging off the grape vines. I don't want her to eat any. First of all, the grapes belong to somebody else and will be used to make Touraine wines. And secondly, grapes and raisins can make dogs very sick, according to what I've read.

Did I forget to mention that today is Callie's six-month birthday? She was born February 22.

"What are these things he keeps pointing that silver box at?"

I want you to know what a strict limit six pictures is. I spent about 45 minutes out in the vineyard with the dog and in that amount of time I took... this is embarrassing... 120 pictures. About 25 of those are ones I would consider posting on the blog. There are a lot of near-duplicates in the full batch, where I took extra shots from a slightly different angle or with slightly different camera settings. So it's not a bad as it seems. But still...

More autumn colors: a grape leaf

Obviously, the pictures I take with this camera have good color and clarity. And it is so light to carry around compared to the other camera I used to use on my walks in the vineyard.

When I got back to the house, I looked out the kitchen window and saw that Maryvonne across the street had company. They were sitting outside, enjoying the afternoon sun. I snapped this telephoto picture through the window. I don't think they noticed me taking their picture.

Catching the last rays of afternoon sun

I'm more than happy with the TZ3's zoom, and the macro seems to work well too. The TZ3 is the new Panasonic Lumix digital camera I got last week. It has a 10x zoom.

Our vegetable garden isn't doing great. The weather has been too damp and cold for tomatoes and aubergines. It was raining again during the night, and I think the forecast for today is not good. But we planted a pumpkin patch out back, on top of what used to be the compost pile. We had moved the pile to a different location, and wanted to plant something to fill in that spot.

Pumpkins

I think we are going to have a ton of pumpkins this year. That might seem obvious, since each pumpkin will weigh about a ton when it's fully grown. I see lots of pumpkin soup and pumpkin pies in our future.

Okay, that's it for today.