Final Fernbank froggy friends.

More Froggy Friends

Some more froggy friends from Fernbank!!

Hello, I am a cute little froggy!

In September of 2007 Courtney and I headed over to the Fernbank Science museum to check it out--being the nerd that I am it kinda surprises me that it took me a year to get to the museum! Though somewhat smaller than similar museums in Chicago and San Francisco of course, it is still a great science museum with a good amount of hands-on exhibits and some fun variations of some classics. We went to the museum on that particular weekend as there was a special exhibit on the color of frogs. It was a bit challenging getting pictures through the glass and around all the little kids (and finger/nose prints!), but it was fun trying. Here are a couple of my favorites with more to come in the next post.

Prettyness in Holyrood

Yup, that's right, Holyrood...the royal house of the kings and queens of Scotland since the fifteenth century though it was started as an abbey in 1128. The palace itself is pretty and what you would expect of many European royal residences. Much opulence! You are not allowed to take pictures inside as it is still used by the queen, but the grounds are pretty and open for pictres.

Azelas Gone Mad

These were taken in my front yard 2 Marches--such a wonderful explosion of color!

As Pretty as the Skye

These pretties came from the Isle of Skye in Scotland at Dunvegan Castle. Enjoy!

Never Take This Picture

Hello! Just a short note today as I am in the middle of grading g-chem exams but I needed a little break :-) This picture comes form Indiana in 1997 when I was a grad student at Purdue. I have titled it as a picture you should never take because if you look closely you will see that this is taken out of the window of a moving car--it is of the driver's side view mirror looking back at a fantastic sunset. I have always liked how the sunset is mirrored in the car's side window as well as the sky itself. Also, it was dark in front of the car so there is a great dark framing to the picture. Just don't tell my mom how I took it!

Feeling a bit Sheepish

This past summer I had the chance to visit Scotland and England with my family and we had a wonderful time. Most of the trip was spent up in Scotland and needless to say there were LOTS of pictures of sheep taken. We found these sheep in the town of Killin right next to Hamish the Highland Coo. Hamish is a standard Highland Coo that is kept next to a Woolen Mill as a tourist attraction--stop and take photos of Hamish...and then buy things at the woolen mill :) We did find some more Highland Coos farther north being kept by real farmers too. I took many pictures of sheep that I think are really kinda cute such as this one, and this one, but I really like the way this guy is peeking above the tall grasses...a bit more understated than the others.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!!!! I thought a flower appropriate for today :) In the Fall of 2006 Courtney and I went to the North Georgia Mountain Festival in Hiawassee, GA and froze to death. But between cups of hot cider and kettle corn we dropped into a flower competition that was held as part of the festival. There were several examples there of beautiful dahlias and I fell in love with them. The roses I had been growing in California don't grow so well out here so I was looking for a new type of flower. It turns out that dahlias love Georgia weather so I asked Santa for some for Christmas and she (Santa's elf, my mom) ordered several for me from Jackson Perkins. As many of my gardening projects go, this turned into a much bigger task than expected—I needed a place to plant my new bulb so I took out about ~70 square feet of grass in my front yard (and had to go down about 1.5 feet!) to create a pear shaped flower bed for my new flowers. The bed looks great and the dahlias came up in spades (sorry, couldn't resist) and look great around the new bird feeder I placed in the bed. The picture above came from the dahlias this past spring. It is a bit hard to tell from the picture, but the bloom is about 10 inches across—Dahlias really do like Georgia weather!