fireworks — 2016 — The 21st Century Matriarch

Our July has been hot….a very summery month. My celebrations included.

Fireworks – but on July 9^th rather than on the 4^th. It was just when our local community held their event. We did buy a watermelon to enjoy on the 4^th of July – a typical food for summer celebrations.

“The Mother Nature” Award – I was so pleased to be recognized by the Howard County Conservancy for my volunteering with them. The contents of the goody bag (artisan bread and strawberry jam) was part of my little celebrations for about a week!

Photography with campers - I’ve just finished 2 days of nature photography sessions with campers aged 5-12…and I am celebrating their photographs. I’m glad I’ve made it through the 2 very hot days too. Blog posts about the experience to come in the next few weeks.

Green Heron – I always celebrate seeing a bird in the wild that I don’t see very often…the green heron at Kenilworth is a good example. It was certainly the highpoint of that visit to the gardens.

Butterfly outreach – I volunteered to assist with butterfly outreach to 4 Montessori schools this month…one of which my daughter attended 20 years ago! I celebrated that the school is still going strong, much the same as it was when my daughter attended and the wonderful interaction with the children that are there now. They were all very interested in learning about butterflies.

Indoors, staying cool – We’ve had some very hot days recently and I celebrated most of them staying indoors with air conditioning – glad that I didn’t need to do anything outside!

Milkweed tussock caterpillars – Since I have quite a crop of these caterpillars at my house I have been able to photography them a lot this season. I’ll be doing an update soon since they are now even bigger than they were when I posted about them earlier this month.

Kitchen flooring – We have started the process to replace the flooring in our kitchen. It is 25 years old and needs to be done. I celebrated that my husband and I agreed easily on what we wanted and the materials have been ordered.

Carrot cake and Zucchini bread – This is two celebrations. I am using the bounty from my CSA to bake. I love having one of these for breakfast these days so the ‘celebration’ continues for more than just the day that I back. And I have bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer to make more!

The fireworks nearest to where we live were on July 9^th rather than the 4^th. We headed out to the parking lot where my husband works since we knew it would not be crowded…and we’d viewed the fireworks from there in 2014. Unlike 2014 – we left the house early enough to get a parking place that was next to the curb so that we could get our lawn chairs out and unfolded onto the sidewalk by our car. I was using my usual Canon Powershot SX710HS. I put it on my monopod/walking stick and continued to sit comfortably during the whole event. It was a very relaxed photo shoot and I enjoyed the fireworks too because I could look over the top of my camera while they were happening.

The sunset was colorful. I took a few pictures about 10 minutes apart while families with children played on the grassy area that will become the location of a new building by next year.

The fireworks stared about 9:15 – just as it got dark enough. The images I’m including in this post were selected for a variety of reasons: streak of exuberant color,

Burst within burst,

Simplicity,

Red orbs,

Lots of complex structure….it seemed like there were more sequences like this that previous years,

Another complex sequence…and a smaller one below the main starburst,

Wow – I wondered how the fireworks were made that delivered this,

And this one too.

My husband has a more expensive camera and I picked some from his collections as well. I like the colors and the crisper images he was able to capture.