The Man Who Planted Trees

I was blown away by the beauty, simplicity and earnestness of The Man Who Planted Trees by Frédéric Back, a Canadian animator who won his second Adademy Award for this short film in 1987. The half-hour short can be seen on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and our library had a couple of copies as well.

This is probably another one that Steve told me a decade ago that I *had* to watch ASAP. Just for the beauty of the animation alone it's worth watching, but the story is inspiring as well.

Little 'berts

Yes, the kids look exactly the same as the last time I did a post like this. Yet I've taken some flack recently for only pointing my camera at inanimate objects, so this is partly pandering. They've been spending more time outside again, which makes for better photo ops. We try to go for a couple of walks each week, usually at our favourite spots: Sunoka, Ornamental Gardens, Peach Orchard (including the bird sanctuary and creek walk), etc...so some of these are from those excursions. Oh, and I still do get the occasional photo of my beautiful wife too.

In milestone news, Ezra is wearing big-boy undies full-time now. Yes, I just cursed the entire process by saying that out loud.

Happy Birthday Uncle Mark

Tannis's bro is gallivanting all over the world right now and we're missing him. I'm not sure how old he is today, but his main man Roel had the cool idea to pass along the kids' birthday wishes in a quick video -- of course they loved the idea:

Creativity Update

Remember those creative resolutions? Well, I promptly failed on the photo-a-day project. My 365 stalled permanently at 31, even after being quoted in the Penticton Herald saying that I was planning to complete a year's worth of photos. Sigh.

However, I did find a bargain on a good macro lens, and the guy threw in an old bellows kit for a pittance. So I've been playing with that and much enjoying seeing the world from a bug's eye view: Eye of Providence, funky grass fuzz, and the wispy seed strands at the top of this post. The lens is a 100mm f/2.8 macro, and it's been fun to explore too: colourful lichen (just for Plett), spring buds, scrap metal coil, and of course my go-to subject, ice. Yes, the set of ice photos is still growing every week. My folks got me a nice tripod for my birthday too, which has been helpful.

On the music front, I'm seeing that my recording goals were likely too optimistic, but I'm plugging away. Ivy and I performed a fiddle-tune duet at a couple of recitals, which was really fun. I've been composing a bit too. Last summer I wrote a classical solo violin piece, and over the last few weeks I worked out a harmonized duet part for it -- our violin teacher has agreed to learn it and accompany me at our recital in June. The sound quality and synchronization of the playing is not very good, but I think this rough recording gives a sense of where I'm at right now: Vienna (both parts) (2mb mp3).