Sunflowers

Last summer the sunflowers I planted in pots on my deck did not do so well but I’ve had more success this summer. Yesterday I went out to photograph them. Even the buds look good with the fuzzy edges of sepals.

Then there is the unfurling of the petals.

They expand and the flower follows the track of the sun. This is the stage when the butterflies visit the flower.

The flower ages.

Even the back of the flower is complex.

Then the petals fade. This one looked like a flower person with yellow orange hair and a green cap!

The petals fall away…and soon the goldfinches come for the seed.

I have enjoyed doing flower photography from my deck because it is easy to use the camera’s zoom for detail and achieve a blurry green or brown background too.

Kenilworth Water Lilies

The two dominate plants at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens during June and July are the water lilies and the lotuses. The sign for the visitor center has a water lily design. The flowers rest at almost the same level as the leaves very near the water surface while the lotuses are above the water – the leaves being a layer that flutters below the flowers that are higher still. I like photographing water lilies – particularly ones that have a lot of color and the background is dark enough to set off the color.

I always wonder what causes the plants to grow only in part of a pond. Perhaps it has to do with water depth.

During our visit in late June there were quite a few geese in one of the ponds that was filled completely with water lilies. They moved through the heavy foliage. They just swim through the foliage and the plants close behind the big birds. I zoomed in (series below) to get a closer look at the geese and noticed that some were juveniles – just beginning to get their adult markings.

As usual – I looked particularly to find flowers that be being visited by bees. Do you think these two bees are the same kind of bee? The lighting makes it hard to tell.

Mesa Verde in 1980

I posted a picture of our camp in Mesa Verde from August 1980. We cooked everything over a camp fire or on our Coleman stove. It rained every afternoon but we still managed to see quite a bit of the National Park. We drove around the park and got pretty good at spotting identified ruins and ones that seemed to be in every nook of the cliffs. Can you find the ruins in each of the images in the slideshow below?

Of course – there are some that are possible to get a better view – close enough to see the complexity of the places. As I look at these now, I realize that they would have all had flat roofs when they were inhabited…and that would make them look very different.

The pit houses on top of the mesa were quite different from the cliff dwellings structurally - and more exposed to the weather and enemies. I picked up a pinion pine cone at one of the stops and got sap on the dash of our car…and left the pine cone at the next stop.

Closer to the dwellings, it was possible to tell more about how they were constructed – how beams were placed to make floors,

How the walls were plastered and designs painted on the inside,

Very narrow steps down into a kiva,

T shaped doors,

And a spiral made on a stone.

My husband enjoys botanical photography as much as I do….so there are those kinds of images in the set of slides as well.

We haven’t been back to Mesa Verde since 1980. It would be interesting to see what has changed…what has stayed the same. This time my husband would not be the only one with a camera.

3 Free eBooks – January 2016

So many books to choose from...so little time....

Denon, Vivant. Egypte : documents d'art Egyptien d'aprés la Description de l'Armée Francaise sous Napoléon Ier, L'Expédition d'Egypte, dessins du Baron Denon, et le Musée Egyptine. Paris: A. Guerinet. 1900. Available from the Internet Archive here. Vivant Denon produced a lot of sketches during Napoleon’s time in Egypt and this book is a collection of them. They include a lot of detail.

Walcott, Mary Vaux. North American Wild Flowers. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. 1925. Five volumes available on the Internet Archive: one, two, three, four, five. I am always thrilled to find books with botanical prints…flowers particularly.

Young, Bonnie and Malcolm Varon. A Walk through the Cloisters. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1979. Available on the Internet Archive here. The art and architecture of Medieval Europe as displayed the Cloisters Museum and Gardens. The gardens – bounded by arches and columns – are always appealing. This book may be a little dated but the photography of the place as it was in the late 1970s is quite good.

Enjoy some good online books!