Municipal Meandering

Spring was in the air including some mild funk that had blown in with the wind as it passed over the feedlots outside of town. The stank was tolerable, so the Missus and I decided to take a lunch hour stroll to Kinsmen Park in town and back. I had been waiting for an opportunity to use a camera on the Strathmore Municipal Building on a nice day.

My camera of choice was the Bonzart Ziegel I purchased last month. I haven’t had it out for a couple of weeks, so it felt right to put it back into circulation. The Ziegel is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type camera. Every shot in this entry came straight off it with no Photoshopping at all – just resizing. Knowing that I can’t tweak things after the fact forces me to put more work into the original image and composition because that is what I am stuck with.

I used the built-in frames on most of the images because I just love the look of them and how they mess with me while I’m composing the image. The ones I took without borders had them added in ON1 Photo Effects after the fact because borders.

The Healing Garden is a feature that was added to Kinsmen Park next to the Municipal Building after the discovery of the graves of children at former residential schools. Strathmore is a stone’s throw away from Siksika Nation, a very large indigenous community and we do our best to be good neighbours with them (they return the favour). I find the Healing Garden to be very tastefully done and restful to sit and look at when it is use during warmer times of the year. I think it is an important part of the park now.

Kinsmen Lake is still mostly iced over and the trees are still bare, but there was the promise of spring in the air today. We saw are our first ducks swimming on the irrigation canal as we walked down Thomas Drive to the park (they were out of the Ziegel’s range). We could hear the honking of newly returned geese. Buds are now visible on most of the trees. There is no buzzing of insects yet, but it won’t be long.

The wait for the arrival of growing things is making me crazy, but it is nice to find distractions to hold me over until they arrive. The Municipal Building had enough geometric shapes and lines to do that today.

A series of quilts painted around town is a local arts project, and one is installed at Kinsmen Park. I have been meaning to photograph them all, but haven’t yet. I guess this is one down with many to go.

Jennifer and I found ourselves walking into the wind as we rounded Kinsmen Lake, and the spring air still had some bite to it in the wind chill. It was making our noses run, and we lacked sufficient supplies to cope, so it was time to head back.

Lambert Park, which is across the street from Kinsmen Park, got a friendly nod from us as we headed home. We are both looking forward to enjoying the flowers the town plants there every spring. We also enjoyed the mare’s tails visible in the sky as we walked home. Life is returning to the skies as well. The drab, anemic winter skies are almost done for the season.

Spring isn’t here yet, but it’s close.

All images in this diary entry were created with a turquoise coloured Bonzart Ziegel toy camera. I did not buy the hot pink Ziegel as it would have been too much.