Garden
Glorious Spring
That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it.~Winifred Mary Letts
I would love to be able to boast that I took this photo from a flowerbed in our yard. This stunning display is another scene from West of the Lake Gardens in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
After the long, hard winter we experienced this year, this spot of incredible beauty is healing therapy for the soul.
Take a look at the larger version by clicking on the image.
Garden Kitty
This is our cat, Dory! She was hanging around while I snapped photos around our yard, so…
Actually, I say she’s our cat, but lately it’s not so clear. We’ve had her since she was a kitten. She’s an outside cat with a generous food plan and comfy place to sleep – previously on our back porch, now in our garage. Still, she has a tendency to disappear on a regular basis – sometimes for a few days, sometimes for weeks at a time. We figure she has another spot in our rural area that she considers her second home.
To get a better view of Dory, click on the photo and a larger version will open in another browser tab.
Garden Party
I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
Rick Nelson
These are the some of the regulars who frequent the birdbath and feeders in our yard. The yellow ones are male American Goldfinches. The other three are House Finches – the males having the red coloring.
In the interest of full disclosure – I never got more than three of them to belly up to the bar at one time, so a little Pops Digital magic was needed to fill up the spaces.
To get a better view, click on the image and you’ll see a larger version.
Beauty Fades
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
This is one of the first poppies to bloom and fade in our spring garden. I applied a texture to the image. To me, it didn’t seem right to gaze upon its unfiltered demise.
Click the photo to view a larger version of this image.
Where Fairies Live
These sprites were gracious to greet us and pose for pictures at the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. Though they seem pretty relaxed, they are obviously very conscientious about their public image and work hard at keeping up their home and garden landscaping.
You can enjoy a larger view of either image by simply clicking on it.
First on the Scene
Make a note on the calendar – the first lily to display its beauty at our house this season happened on Wednesday, June 29th. As you can see, there will be many others to follow, but there’s something noteworthy about the first one.
I’ve been keeping my photographer’s eye on the flower bed and could see the bloom was about to begin. The slender, green pods were beginning to blush.
For comparison, I took a picture of the same lily at the beginning of its opening, in the early morning light of the rising sun. (The smaller image on the right.) This would have been a good time to set up a time-lapse camera – if I had one.
The “grand opening” continued through the day until full bloom, as captured in the larger photo, taken in the early evening of the same day.
(You can see an even larger view of the top image by clicking on it.)