Summer in December

Here in San Diego, we don't get a lot of variety in the weather department. Some people say we have "perfect" weather, but I would beg to differ. I grew up in E. Washington where we had four very distinct seasons. Even within a season, the weather would vary and you could have warm winter days or cool, rainy summer days. I have heard it said that San Diego has two seasons... warm Summer and hot Summer. We are now in the midst of warm Summer where the daytime temps are in the 70's and the sun is shining. I took the week off of work for Christmas and so I have had time during the day to go out and walk around the neighborhood, seeing things that normally happen when I am at work. One of these things is that the landscapers are hard at work keeping things tidy and growing. I took these two photos near where one guy was working. He probably thought I was crazy, taking photos of such mundane things. Why would anyone want a picture of this stuff? I guess that is where 'taste' comes in. I like photos of the ordinary, every day stuff that surrounds us. Also, having an idea of what the final image will look like helps. I knew that the film I had loaded in my 1967 Nikkormat FTn was expired 30 years ago, so there would be grain. I also knew that I was going to cross-process the film so there would be color and contrast shifts. I also knew that the film was tungsten balanced, so shooting in daylight would throw the color balance toward the 'cool' spectrum. All of these things were in mind when I composed these shots. So I had a feeling that this 'mundane' subject would be helped out by all of the stuff going on with the film itself. I could have also done other things in PhotoShop after scanning the negatives, but I chose not to do that. These are pretty much straight off the scanner with a little dust spotting. I think they are interesting, especially the shot of the rakes. Let me know what you think.