Lève-toi, réveille-toi d'entre les morts!
Click photo to enlarge and see detail.
Showing posts with label seasons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seasons. Show all posts
Imbolc
Imbolc.
Soft rain.
The earth smells
like earth.
Soft rain.
The earth smells
like earth.
Daffodil shoots a few hours before the rain.
February 1, 2011.
Photo by Jane Redmont.
Cross country skiing in Greensboro
I must be one of the few Greensboro residents who keeps cross country skis by the front door. I live in hope. Also, I don't have enough storage space.
I used the skis early last March when we had a good snow, and today I used them again. Yesterday the sky was grey-white and heavy. Today the sun was bright and the sky clear. Perfect for skiing, though cold.
At last the huge plot of land here is good for something. On Facebook I referred to it all summer as the Humongous Lawn and I was forever mowing it --and suffering from the mosquitos, who love me, and from wasp stings, because we had an infestation. Today I made trails and got quite the little workout.
I love the smell of snow. To me it is the smell of winter vacation. This isn't the Alps, but even in this semi-suburban neighborhood the smell reminds me of ski trips and crisp air at high altitude.
Taking the skis off...
Lily season
The first lilies bloomed a while back, but now they are here in full force, just as the hydrangeas are fading. You can see the Humongous Lawn, as I refer to it on Facebook, in the first picture. I spend my time mowing. Then again, it burns calories and it beats going to the gym, except for the heat and the bugs. Speaking of the bugs, who just love me, I think the proper order of things is 1) apply sunscreen, 2) apply bug spray. For a while I wasn't sure. But I digress.
I took the three photos above in the bright sun on Sunday after returning from church, sometime after 1:00 p.m.
Yesterday, La Virgencita got some day lilies. (The first photo is a bit fuzzy.)
Yesterday, La Virgencita got some day lilies. (The first photo is a bit fuzzy.)
Same lilies, close up. They look Van Gogh-ish in this photo. They are a much brighter orange in reality.
Here endeth the tour of the day lilies.
Hydrangea catch-up
Good heavens. I neglected to put up pictures of the hydrangeas when they got really blue. Though there is one small bush of purple hydrangeas (the color of hydrangeas has to do with the acidity of the soil) the other small bush and the really huge one are both blue, and they went from pale blue (mixed with cream at the core of the flowers when they were just "ripening") to periwinkle. I took most of the photos with the BlackBerry camera, which distorts the color a bit, so the periwinkle-ness is not obvious, but you can see that the blue is more intense than it was in the first week or too of hydrangea blooming.
The hydrangea is the only thing I've taken care of this year. The garden is my landlady's doing and the flowers pop up in due season, one wave after the other. The hydrangea bushes were full of dead wood --no one had trimmed or pulled it out in years-- so in the late winter or very early spring I got rid of it. It took a long time and the wood filled about three garbage bins. I had scratched arms after that, having been attacked by the hydrangeas as I worked. I now understand why garden ladies garden in long sleeves. The reward was a huge, really huge hydrangea bush, much larger than last year, and even more flowers than last year. Spectacular.
Otherwise, all due credit to the house's owner, to Mother Nature, and to Godde, not necessarily in that order.
This is a little purple hydrangea flower after the rain.
In the variegated bouquet below, the middle flower was in fact more blue-purple than the dark blue it appears to be and the right hand flower was more of a dark purple than it appears in the photo.
I'll take photos with a regular camera next time around, but it is handy to have the BBerry in pocket - I just whip it out and click over to the camera function and take a picture. The camera is especially good with flowers. It is a little less so with pictures of +Maya and even less so with people pictures, though in a pinch it is helpful to take quick snaps of humans.
I've had flowers next to the Guadalupe candle for weeks now. Here is Guadalupe with the last of the hydrangeas.
And here is the way one looked as a green, unripe baby flower.
More magnolias: the last hurrah and the decline
The magnolia blossoms don't last long.
Sic transeunt magnoliae.
But in a bright sunset, the blossoms shine one last time.
One last hurrah.
Sic transeunt magnoliae.
But in a bright sunset, the blossoms shine one last time.
One last hurrah.
Click on photos to enlarge and see detail.
Under the magnolias
Magnolias!
This is spring in the South.
The campus popped into bloom this weekend while I was away. (Not away away, just home away, getting some quiet, getting some writing done, doing battle with the hydrangea bushes, and communing with the cat and yes, with the scriptures.) The flowering fruit trees, several kinds, and the magnolias are all ablossom.
Now, of course, it is overcast and about to rain. It poured buckets yesterday in the late afternoon and part of the night, but the beginning of the weekend was spectacular: sunny, dry, balmy, no humidity, and no mosquitoes yet. If it weren't still Lent I would say the A-word.
Click to enlarge, especially the big tree photos!
The campus popped into bloom this weekend while I was away. (Not away away, just home away, getting some quiet, getting some writing done, doing battle with the hydrangea bushes, and communing with the cat and yes, with the scriptures.) The flowering fruit trees, several kinds, and the magnolias are all ablossom.
Now, of course, it is overcast and about to rain. It poured buckets yesterday in the late afternoon and part of the night, but the beginning of the weekend was spectacular: sunny, dry, balmy, no humidity, and no mosquitoes yet. If it weren't still Lent I would say the A-word.
Meanwhile, in the mountains of Western North Carolina, three hours' drive from here, it is snowing.
Enough blabla. Here are some magnolias. These are all from the same tree in front of my office building. I took the first three in sunny weather this morning. I took the fourth in the early afternoon under overcast skies. [Correction: I think that fourth one is from a different tree.]
Enough blabla. Here are some magnolias. These are all from the same tree in front of my office building. I took the first three in sunny weather this morning. I took the fourth in the early afternoon under overcast skies. [Correction: I think that fourth one is from a different tree.]
Click to enlarge, especially the big tree photos!
In front of the house, spring in bloom
Click to enlarge. (You can do that with the photos in the previous post, too.)
Daffodil, morning sun.
Same flower, two different shots. Taken this late morning with my BlackBerry.
And then there's this
Hard to believe we had snow ten days ago.
I have no idea what this tree is, but it's blooming.
More BlackBerry photos of new daffodils, this time in the sun
The photos are a bit fuzzy, but still nice. Yesterday's were taken under gloomy skies, today's under bright sun. Clouds showed up later in the day though, and we had more rain. Also, we are losing an hour tonight because of Daylight Alleged Savings. BOO!
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