Papa & Iris solve some drainage issues at the southeast corner of the house.

Heather was a preschool teacher before she started having children of her own. Being mobbed by toddlers, she is in her element.

We took a quick trip to the farm. I took some photographs on the tractor ride back to the parking lot. Between the light shifting every 5 seconds and the bumps of the dirt road being greatly exaggerated by the trailer, it was impossible to get a methodically composed photo. However, this gave me the opportunity to work on my post-processing skills. I developed a new Adobe Lightroom preset I call “HDR creamy for bright days.” When there’s lots of burned-out brightness in the background, making hair disappear into the sky, it brings back a bit of detail. Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, it also happens to make people look rather pasted into an image. Here are a few photos:

This sort of recovery is only possible if one shoots RAW image files. For comparison, here is the first photo straight-out-of-camera:

— says Iris, as she sits on the sheep footstool in front of the chalkboard easel.

“This, Papa’s name,” she explains, pointing to the portion on the right,

and “this, Mama’s name,” while pointing to the bit on the left.

Like all good authors, she writes what she knows.

We got it back.

*     *     *

Iris decided the best option would be to avoid the swamp altogether.

He does an excellent job.

To the left of the front door, across from the kindling pile, under the deck, there is a mud kitchen. Iris measures careful cups of water into saturated soil. She wears white with flowers. Joshua dumps gleefully. He wears dark colors. Both children remain remarkably clean, which is more than can be said about the walkway.