Ode to my Lens

I have to give my camera lens credit for some pretty dreamy out of focus blur today..... Here is a shot of Arctic Cotton grass enjoying the wind and sunshine just as much as me. The tundra and its plants leave me in awe of how they manage it and also how much detail there is to the land scape even when the plants are mostly shorter than a hand span. It was cool trying to figure out by the colour of the plants whether I'd be hopping from hummock to hummock trying to keep my feet dry or if it would be flat. I discovered that the larger willows grew in ravines and that yellow-green grass (arctic cotton grass mixed with others.... usually meant wet feet, while reds (Bearberry) and oranges (dwarf birch) and dark greens (heather) were safer as were visible outcrops of rocks. The distribution of plants in finely divided microhabitats was fascinating - which plants grew on rocks, between rocks on top of hummocks, on their sides, in moist places - it was so complex and neat. So, keep an eye out, I starred 138/585 pictures as being likable, so hopefully it'll keep my blog in pictures for the next few days.

In other notes, my blog made it onto stumble upon, which boosted my stats for a couple of days and meant for the first time I've noticed that a higher percentage of Americans had viewed my blog than Canadians, although that may be that most of the folks I know personally view my blog from locations other than my url and thus don't end up on the stats. Another stats related note, my map resets in early August and so the numbers from that are in and my count is about 2000 hits less than the year before but both years were higher than 10,000 visits. I've already had nearly 1000 hits this month... so this year could be an uptick. I guess it depends if I keep it going or not quite keep it updated... So far, I'm doing much better.