Dipping my pen again into the very deep well that was November's visit to the Seifuso Villa (清風荘) in Kyoto, today's post has a bit more from early on in the visit first seen in "Entrance Foyer to the Seifuso Villa in Kyoto".

I vacillate on whether the photo above is of interest. I've deleted it (and then undeleted it) several times.

I showed the garden's formal tea house in "Approaching the Tea House at Kyoto’s Seifuso Villa". Near it are a few small buildings loosely connected with shared outside passageways.... one building being a prep room for the staff, [...]

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I'm finally back in Kyoto.

My blog posts about my transpacific trips are normally simple affairs, such as (for example) this Kyoto-to-Ohio post from 2007, but the return trip from my trip to Ohio this year has been quite the ordeal, covered so far with:

Doh! Got to the Airport a Day Early to Find my Flight Delayed Four Days Finally Got My Return Flight Rescheduled Continuing Saga of My Return to Japan: Flight Canceled Again To No One’s Surprise, United Blames My Non-Weather Cancellations on Weather Halfway Home: Overnighting in San Francisco

The first four posts were of dread [...]

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Here are some more frost patterns from arctic Ohio, following up from the one I posted the other day. It was -10°F (-23°C) with strong biting wind when I took these, by hand, outside in the wind, up hill both ways. According to the image data, I lasted two minutes 10 seconds before I couldn't stand the pain in my fingers any more and gave up: considering that I had heavy insulated gloves, it's a testament to either just how very cold it was, or how very wimpy I am. Probably both.

I tried a variety of processing on these [...]

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Despite having heavy insulated waterproof gloves, I could handle the camera for only three minutes outside in the -10°F (-23°C) deep freeze that Ohio and much of the US had yesterday. It was just too painful for my fingers. The heavy, gusty, biting wind certainly didn't help.

(Today was different; 20°F (-7°C) never felt so warm.)

Continued here...

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Lots of goldfinches at the feeders at my folks' place in Ohio. During the summer they're brilliant yellow (as seen in "Goldfinches on a Feeder" a few years ago), but they're less vibrant during the winter.

I didn't bring many lenses on this trip... I would have liked the 70-200, but I made do with the Voigtländer 125mm and some cropping. Good birding pics are very difficult and I certainly don't have the skill, but these are fine for me.

The bush was just a staging ground for the feeders. They'd all cleared away when I stepped out, and were [...]

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