So Much Depends...

On the blue wheel barrow...

Another goodie from the NY trip a couple weeks ago.  This picture just says fall and farm to me.  They also had a bathtub as a planter...most creative!

As Pretty as the Skye

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

Cawdor Castle...the best of the rest

OK, these picts didn't end up popping like i had hoped. Not sure why but they just didn't carry the same impact as some of the other I have posted. I was using my e-mail system to post as whereas that should make no difference, I am going to try to post. No idea why that might matter, but if nothing else I will avaoid the annoying e-mail disclaimer that Emory has started to add (without our knowing mind you) to all of our outgoing mail.

Athens Botanical Gardens

More purty stuff...this time from last weekend at the Georgia State Botanical Gardens in Athens!

Backyard Goodies

I was out in the yard watering for a few minutes today and noticed a couple of pretties that I wanted to share :) After putting in the new screened in porch last year I have been working (with lots of help!) on landscaping a bed that runs all along the back of the house. These are a couple of the flowers from back there. I planted 2 of the clematis vines and I think I have killed one of them-though there is a new sprout coming up at the base of the 'dead' one which is either a new growth or a weed--not sure yet! The other vine is doing well--it lost a lot of leaves on initial planting, but has spread into the trellis well-yea!

Pulchritudinous Plants

A sampling of the pretties from Africa:

A sample of clawfoot grass in its dried out summer state:

These next two pictures are of the dada plant--it is the local version of pot! We had one of the more politic guides try to convince us that no one smoked it, but a couple other guides were very up front about the fact that it is indeed smokable! The first picture is of the dried seed pod and the second of the still green slowing plant. The pod beneath the flowers will expand to become like the top picture. The plant is interesting as each stalk can have several (4 or 5?) of these pods along its height.


Thorny acacia. Only tasty to giraffe's. Somehow they manage to wrap their almost prehensile tongues around the branch and remove the leaves without getting skewered!

One of the many water lilies seen in Namibia. There are actually two kinds--a night lily and a day lily. Both evidently are white until pollinated at which point hey turn light purple!

Water Lillies Everywhere!!!

Back to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for today's post. There were many a pretty water lily in bloom throughout the gardens and I captured several..here are a few for your enjoyment :)

Red, White, Yellow, and Green

A little change of pace today. We will get back to Africa soon enough but I had the chance to take a whole lot of pictures at the Atlanta Botanical Garden this past weekend. Of course, if I am going to a botanical garden I will have my camera and often take lots of pictures. Sometimes I get some good ones and other times not so much. This was a good trip in that I managed to get 4 or 5 ones that I really like. This one was fun because I didn't think I had captured the picture so I didn't really remember/note it. When I was going through the pictures that night I came across thsi one and was pleasantly surprised! Always nice to find one that you didn't think was going to work. I like the focus and the subject of course, and the diagonal line of the stem is a nice entrance to the picture. What I like best though is the delineation of the color. The red, white, yellow, and green are all such strong colors, especially against the blurred, dark background, and they are so tightly restricted to small, distinct areas. Me like!

Plethora of Pretty Flowers

On our Africa trip we went through Victoria Falls several times as a central hub to the other countries. On one of those layovers we stopped by the Ilala Lodge to drop off some luggage and have lunch before heading out to Hwange National Park. The lodge had a great view of the Smoke that Thunders (the smoke part) and many a pretty flower. We were actually visiting in the middle of their winter so there was not much in bloom on the trip, but we did find a few pretty flowers along the way. And if there are flowers then I must take pictures!!!! Enjoy!! And don't miss the cool African bee in Picture 5 :)

Happy Mistake #1

Ya know, sometimes the mistakes are the most interesting! This orchid was at the San Francisco Conservatory just like yesterday's flower. However, when taking the flash picture I accidentally moved (not easy at a 60th of a second!) and got this fuzzy goodness. A luck happenstance...I mean....I meant it...honestly :)

Flowers as Dinner Plates

Another pretty flower :) This one was taken at the San Francisco Conservatory January 1st, 2008. I had some time to kill before heading back to the airport after Christmas vacation and it turns out that it has been years since I was as the Conservatory--and not since they last restored it. Always a sucker for an opportunity for flower picts we headed over. Mostly orchids and pitcher plants in bloom at the time, but I found this beauty near one of the doors. What you can't tell from the picture is that the bloom itself is probably 12-16 inches across!! This was one darned big flower and I had to use a wider angle lens from above to get the shot. I love the fading of color from deep read at the center on out to white.

Did you say Haarlem or Harlem?!?!

In honor of the tulips being in bloom in the Netherlands right about now, here is a picture I took while traveling there in 2005. I was pretty sure that I was past the time, but I headed down to Haarlem (ever wonder where that NY neighborhood got its name?!?! :-) ) to see the bulb fields. And I saw a lot of fields, but no blooms. Darn it. I think that I missed it by about 3-4 weeks. Ah well, a reason to come back someday. Which I will, I really like it here. I did find 3 or 4 very small plots in bloom and of course took pictures :) Iris and Alliums.

God's Carpet

Off to Denmark for today's picture. I missed the tulips in Holland, but got some pretty flowers all the same in other places throughout Europe on my trip. This is a field somewhere on the part of Denmark called Falster just south of Sjaelland.When taking flower pictures I often focus in on a single bloom and one of the things I like about this shot is the wider field of view showing the red and green carpet of poppies with just a few blue flowers for accent. Focus can be a bear to pull on shots like this so I actually took several and hit one with the focus right in the middle.

This Bee a Favorite Picture

Returning to one of my favorite subject here…FLOWERS!!! I have been revisiting just posting flower picts, but I thought it was time for one more :-) In 2005 I joined my sister and some of her friends to the annual Taste of the Valley in the Alexander Valley, CA for some great wine tasting. Several of the wineries have food and special events and over the two days you can visit WAY too many wineries and be very glad that your sister has a friend who does not drink and that can be a designated driver :-) . We had a great time and got to taste some really tasty wines. I, of course, had my camera with me and while we were waiting for the first winery to open and let us in I wandered around outside their gates and found this guy hanging out on a flower just waiting for his moment of fame and stardom—I was happy to oblige!

The Hopeless Romantic

And here is a red rose for Valentine's Day :) I showed up at Courtney's office today with a dozen red roses personally delivered...always the hopeless romantic :)~

(Check out Courtney's version of a Red Rose post for today)

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!