"Crop and Rotate"...

...the theme for today's abstract Thursday & a big thanks to Ingeborg for her long term hosting of AT.  My nieces' wedding is coming up in just 9 days and she's been stressing out about getting everything done. They're having a rustic fall wedding, so they'd bought 14 packages of pinecones, the idea being to tie colored ribbon around the top of each one and attach the tag (with the guests' name and table number)to the pinecone with the ribbon......but she & Andy only had about a bag and a half put together. So I offered to help them as they both work full time. She gave me 6 bags to do which I finished in two days and when I took them back to her, she was thrilled and asked if I'd do the rest, which I did. Took them back to her house this morning, and on the way home I couldn't believe my eyes; there were swarms of dragonflies and monarchs all along Lake Drive, so I pulled over & got out of the car with my camera. As I did, a man who was walking along asked if I was going to take pictures of the monarchs, then pointed, and said  "those yellow bushes over there are full of them", so that's where I headed. I put one of the shots in the extras. One of the monarchs was caught in a spider web and was frantically trying to get loose. I debated for awhile about wading through all the bushes to get to it & try to release it, then decided I would. Just as I started through them, it broke free and flew off:  Butterflies 1 Spider 0.  Then I stopped again to get my "abstract"--a set of stairs with the sky and trees cropped off, then rotated to the right--and had a nice chat with a young Asian man who was fishing. As I started back toward my car, one of the park workers came driving by in one of those little carts they zoom around in, saw my camera & spread his arms wide, laughing, and said I must be there to take his picture! I told him it was such a shame that my battery had just died & I hadn't brought a spare, (which was true). He said that was okay because taking his picture might have damaged my lens. I couldn't help but laugh!  Lots of friendly people out today. :))