More tropical color...

Peach yum-yum!

(Hibiscus are edible, and my cats sometimes think they are grazers...)

Finding color in another crazy winter...

The forsythia bushes were acting oddly this fall: They were blooming here and there throughout November and into December. (So was the ornamental holly, for that matter, and the silver maple buds looked full to bursting. A friend in Ohio also noted late-fall blooming forsythia. What the—?!) I decided to bring in a few branches of the forsythia, recalling from a college horticulture class that they are quite hardy and figuring the flowers would open in the warm house since I could see petals in the buds.

Mid January and I had flowers. Love the way the winter light shines in my windows…

I lost my largest, oldest potted hibiscus bush this summer but as I usually end up buying/rescuing a new one every year I still have four or five. They thrive outside during our hot, humid summers (when I remember to water them) but throw right royal tantrums when I bring them in for the winter… Ah, durance vile! The dry, stagnant indoor air and my even more lax watering cause them to drop all their leaves. In spite of this—or perhaps because of it, maybe they think they’re dying?—they reluctantly send out new leaves, and the one even manages to pull off full-blown flowers.

Couldn’t resist shooting just the bottle. There is just something about glass that makes my heart hum…

Bit of Color for a Dreary Day...

Time to catch up with a big backlog of photos and get this blog up and running again!

As it is a typical gray, cold, wet, miserable "winter" (still a few weeks off the solstice astronomically speaking, I know, but close enough) day here in Southernmost New Jersey, I feel a splash of color is in order. (Already, you ask? Aye and oi--'tis going to be a long, slow, grueling slog to get even half way out of the dark this year, I fear...)

So. Violets, as seen through my Lensbaby lenses this past May.

Ten Minute Snapshot of My Life

Ten minute snapshot of my life... In snapshots.

How things work in my life: I went out to pick up some bamboo tips from where I'd tossed them last year because I finally figured out a use for them. Saw a wee snail in a patch of fantastic light, thought it would make a neat picture. Went for the camera, snail was cruising and had nearly managed to get out of sight by the time I made it back outside so I picked up the piece of bamboo it was on, scaring the snail. Snapped photo anyway:

While waiting for snail to re-emerge, out of the corner of my eye I noticed movement under the tree a couple feet away and looked more closely to discover it was a spreadwing damselfly... First for the yard, woohoo! Bad lighting but I took a documentary photo anyway:

The snail being stubborn, I was then sidetracked by the way the light was hitting the milkweed blossoms farther past the tree. (You can actually see the pink blur in the background of the above photo.) I walked around for better angle on damselfly and for photos of the milkweed. Scared the damselfly, took flower photos:

(Oh, snap! Much better than they appeared through the viewfinder, what with all the sweat running into my eyes. Did I mention it was broiling outside and only ten o'clock in the morning--?) Looked up from the flowers in time to notice the damselfly settling back down. Took poor photo but perfectly adequate for an ID: Slender Spreadwing. You can even see the diagnostic pale veins on the end of its wings.

Spooked damsel again. (Must learn not to wear white when creeping around my yard chasing small insects...) Went back to look for snail: Gone. Those things can really boogie when they want to.

New damselfly for the yard list and a flower photo I'm tickled over: Well worth the mosquito bites. And I now have an idea for creating a leaf litter tray for future snail photo sessions... :) And the reason I went for the bamboo sticks in the first place?

Typical way the "stream of consciousness" path of my life tends to go. Eh, I'll take it.

Lensbaby Laurels.

Mountain Laurels, that is.

Kinda weird to have “mountain” laurels without mountains. We're lucky if high points in the county reach 20 feet above sea level! (We do have pine/oak habitat along the north edge, so in this case I guess vegetation trumps topography.)

Of course, I will also once again give laurels to the Lensbaby System. It’s perfect; it’s just the photographer who needs to learn to check the f-stop before hitting the shutter button and record which lens she’s using for which shots…

I actually remembered to check the status of the flowering (a thought prompted by a friend in North Carolina's posted photo of blooming mountain laurel) and so I finished off a day of errands by driving up to Belleplain State Forest late in the afternoon last week. Had to play a bit of peek-a-boo with cloud cover, but I lucked out and hit what looked like mid-bloom.

I was a bit startled to discover (upon sticking my nose into one of those bouquets) that these flowers have, for all intents and purposes, no aroma whatsoever...

Blue Eyed Grass

Click to bigify all photos--these wee flowers (~1/2") are worth a closer look.

Just holding the plants up and together; they got a bit leggy and top-heavy.

What’s in a name? Not too much in this case... Blue-eyed Grass does have a flower that is blue, but the “eye” is not (I wouldn't call it "eyed", either) and it isn’t even a grass. It’s actually an itty bitty iris! (Or close enough as makes no difference. And, wonder of wonders, it's a native wildflower in the genus Sisyrinchium; we may have up to four species in NJ.)

While the blossom doesn’t have the typical fleur-de-lis look of what we think of as an Iris, the base of the leaves form a flat fan just like a “normal” iris. It’s how I managed to sort these plants out from the actual grass in my yard before they bloomed so that I could transfer some of the blue-eyed grass to my deck containers…

Tried it last year but didn’t use the best pots (far too small) and most of the plants didn’t survive until fall, never mind make it through that horrible winter we had.

So after finding that the yard still contains a goodly amount, I snatched a few more plants and am trying again (in larger, mixed-plant pots). Most came from a stone-paved sometimes-walkway and a heavily deer-grazed section, so in essence I was rescuing them.

Sitting on my deck leisurely taking photos sure beats tromping around the tick-infested yard. The plants came up early enough so that I noticed them when a yard walkabout was still enjoyable, but they always seem to bloom just when the ticks really get their game on…

These shots were all taken with my Lensbaby collection: Plastic Optic (for the soft fuzzy look), Sweet 35 (for a “sweet spot” of focus amid radial blur) and Edge 80 (for a streak of focus across the shot), paired with macro converter rings for the close-up work. (And yes, in some instances I'm not sure which is which myself. I really have to start writing these things down...)

Play Date.

Taking advantage of the fact we are (much to my surprise) having a Real Spring, I purposefully went on a wander earlier this week with my new Lensbaby system--a set of creative lenses that basically do special effects in-camera (saving hours of time at the computer messing around with an image editing program that I don't really know how to use anyway).

I made a point of stopping at two of my "must photograph here some day" locations: An old, old house still standing (barely) on the side of Route 47 and an even older cemetery in Cold Spring. Here's a sampling including stops at Cape May Point State Park on the same afternoon and Belleplain State Forest the following morning; many of these photos will develop into blog posts of their own.

One unexpected bonus of the Lensbaby lenses is that even though they were made specifically for "creative" work, the resulting photographs don't have to shout Special Effects! Because they are quality optics you can be quite subtle; this shot was taken in Belleplain State Forest with the Edge 80:

Even if a half-inch long butterfly lands a few feet away from you while you are shooting landscapes, you can crop like crazy and still end up with a decent image. (American Copper, one of two that fluttered past me in the cemetery.)

North end of Reeds Beach -

Shorebird Banding starts today!