Beauty in unexpected places

I spent the weekend working down at an old boatyard in Tacoma, WA. There aren't many places you can still do your own work, due to environmental considerations. The ones that do still allow a bit of DIY are all in out of the way, run down corners of our waterways. I stripped the paint off the bottom on Friday and put two coats back on Saturday. Now this paint is $250 a gallon. It is specialized stuff that prevents anything sticking to it, while itself sticking to the hull like the proverbial shit to a blanket. It was a hot day, so I stripped to T shirt and shorts, which, in retrospect, was a fucking stupid foolish thing to do. It never occurred to me that the paint's properties would also apply to me. By the end of the job, I looked like a walking tropical disease, or an undiscovered species of leopard, and was covered in foul smelling black spots, which have proved extremely resistant to removal. Even a liberal dousing in Acetone and a brisk rub down with a scouring pad has only managed to fade them slightly. Not a pretty sight, which really is the segue I've been looking for to show you these two photos.

 I found this orchid flower abandoned in the gravel by the road. I put it on an old faded dock railing for this shot.

Replace the crane with an old windmill and the scrap yard with, well, anything really, and this shot might have been created by an old master. Mt Rainier is somewhere in the background. I love the reflections in the water