I photographed Hudson and his mom and dad, Jeanette and Richard, this morning at Green Spring Gardens. The sun was out, the sky was blue, but it was really cold! We got some great shots despite the temperature. This shot was taken in the children’s garden. More to come…
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I just added more photos to my Zenfolio Botanical Gallery. Click on this link here to view all 423 photos in thumbnail size. If you double-click on a photo, it will enlarge and a sub-gallery will show on the right side of the screen. You can also select “slide show” at the top. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did photographing them!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Thank you to Chuck Green (http://www.ideabook.com/) for sharing the comedy of Don McMillan in his latest Design Links Briefing broadcast. If you’re a designer, sign up for Chuck’s free Design Links Briefing e-mail here. In his twice-monthly e-mail, Chuck does the surfing and shares his treasures with us—tips on print design, web design, fonts, imagery, illustration, and lots of links to great websites for inspiration. I own several of his books, too—he’s a great resource for designers. Check out the Ideabook.com store here. A working graphic designer in Virginia, he publishes his own books and still finds time to educate the design masses. The man either doesn’t sleep or runs on Jolt Cola! A few years ago I talked with him about designing my website because I love his clean design style—I just have to get ahead of the curve to be able to afford it (not that his prices were unreasonable—they weren’t).
This video is almost 10 minutes long, but it is really funny—particularly if you have ever used PowerPoint or watched a PowerPoint presentation. I love the acronym overload part. McMillan has other videos on youtube.com relating to the workplace.
So about two weeks ago, I bought three ‘Champagne Bubbles’ poppy plants from Home Depot ($4 each, as I recall). I planted them in a sunny spot on the side border in our front yard (which gets both foot traffic and cars going by). Yesterday I noticed one plant, which had bloomed white poppies earlier in the week, was gone. GONE. The plant perp has stolen it and tamped down the ground so it would look like there was never a plant there. Ah, but there’s the rub—I always buy plants in odd numbers—1, 3, 5, etc. No way I would have bought two. I find it funny that they took the time to brush over the hole rather than leave evidence. Guess they figured with all the plants in my garden, I wouldn’t miss this little one. And they would be so wrong. Remember—photographic memory!
For some reason, this theft really irks me. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t take all three. This is the first time in my 6+ years of gardening that I’ve noticed someone actually stole a plant from my garden. I suppose I should be thankful it hasn’t happened sooner. So now the thought occurs to me—should I take the remaining poppy plants and move them to the back yard where only I can enjoy them?
Have any of my fellow gardeners ever had plants stolen from their gardens?
While I was photographing the ‘Blue Moon’ Siberian Iris, a pair of Canadian geese waddled across a boardwalk near the Martha and Reed West Island Garden at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Mom and Dad were trying to keep up with their baby gosling, off exploring the world in all directions. I got this “record shot” (not award-winning by a long stretch) when the mother (I presume) and baby slid into the water and began grazing in the vegetation.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I played with depth of field while photographing this Siberian Iris. I shot more than 30 images of this same flower, and found this one to be my favorite. While the flower is sharp, the background has a very shallow depth of field, making the bloom appear to float—love me some of that bokeh!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
This was a hard-won image (contending with intermittent spring breezes is no easy task). I brought my Interfit 5 in 1 collapsible reflector (translucent portion only) to block the mid-day sun and get more saturated color. I usually follow the rule of “shoot flowers in early a.m. or late p.m.,” but now that I carry this reflector when I head out to shoot, I can shoot flowers in the worst light for flower photography—mid-day direct sun. I highly recommend adding one to your photo bag, whether you’re shooting portraits of people or plants! It also helps to have someone kind enough to hold it for you if you don’t always want to shoot with a tripod (Thanks, Michael). More images to come!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Green Spring Gardens, 1:24 p.m. A steady mist on a dreary day. D300 and 105mm micro in hand, Army blanket on the ground. Sharing the park with one photographer, two walkers under umbrellas, and two grazing deer coming from the woods. Blissful in spite of the weather!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Since she says she doesn’t recognize herself at all without her glasses, I’m throwing out this shot for her—hope you like it, Karen!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Hannah and Margot, one more time…I think I got some really nice shots from my first “cover girl” photo session with Karen and her daughters today…tomorrow, it’s back to shooting gardens and flowers!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
How’s that for your senior photo, Margot?!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I have two Nikon D300 bodies, but now I’m craving the D300s because of the video feature. I just discovered this D300s video on Nikon’s website. It’s a movie about Indian culture by photojournalist Ami Vitale. So beautifully done…from the video to still images to the music selections…great visual storytelling…mesmerizing, frenetic and haunting…but then again, getting into video—-I’d have to learn Final Cut Pro, too (Unlike Ami, I can’t afford to hire Dai Sugano to be my multimedia producer—yet). Great…yet another program to learn…not enough hours in my day! On the upside, I did acquire a full copy of Final Cut Pro for 75% off when CompUSA was going out of business a few years ago. Score!
Originally posted April 14, 2009
In the North Wing of the Conservatory at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, there are hordes of Easter Lilies in full bloom. In one corner I noticed the flowers in shade. In this one flower, I noticed the water drop. As I was getting set up to photograph it, the sun broke through the clouds and illuminated the shaft of this one flower! I call this “Halleluiah Light,” because I can just hear the angels singing!
Did you know that 95% of the 11.5 million Easter Lilies grown and sold originate from the border of California and Oregon? The area is labeled the “Easter Lily Capital of the World.”
From http://www.about.com:
Lilium longiflorum is actually a native of the southern islands of Japan. A World War I soldier, Louis Houghton, is credited with starting U.S. Easter Lily production when he brought a suitcase full of lily bulbs with him to the southern coast of Oregon in 1919. He gave them away to friends and when the supply of bulbs from Japan was cut off as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the rising price of the bulbs suddenly made the lily business a viable industry for these hobby growers and earned the bulbs the nickname “White Gold.”
And if you have cats, please keep them away from this plant! Any part of this lily, as many of its relatives, can cause kidney failure in cats. Eating even one leaf can be fatal. There is a handy list of plants that are poisonous to cats compiled by the Cat Fanciers’ Association, Inc., here. For more information about what types of Lily plants to avoid, read the information here. I do grow Stargazers and Asiatic Lilies (in pots and out of reach), but my cats are kept indoors and when they are (very briefly) outdoors in the summer, they are under strict supervision—plus, their very own bed of catnip keeps them occupied the entire time! They never have been plant nibblers, so I’ve been fortunate that they ignore all of our house plants. I did get rid of a pencil cactus (which was out of the way anyway) as soon as I found out they are highly poisonous.
See another example of this serendipitous light here in a post I did last summer.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Egads…click on any link on the website below and it gets even worse than the home page…if that’s even possible (trust me, it is). I think I need to go lie down now. (Any typos below are hers, not mine!) This link was referenced on a graphic design site.
Gotta hand it to Yvette—she doesn’t want you to leave her site empty-handed. You can:
• purchase prom gowns and bridal dresses, garters and gloves, rent tuxedos
• read pithy quotes (“Happy Trees, Olive leaves, things that are green V8*)
• download recipes (including Sock-it-to-Me Cake, Lord Hurlley’s Gingerbread and “Old Timey Country Cookin’ Recipe’s!!”)
• learn about the Salem Witch Trials and alien abduction (“Psychological Thriller!!)
• read her poetry (“Click here to read an composition”)
• envision your house remodeled (“Fine Designs by Dudeotep”)
• meet Yvette’s portrait painter, a world famous artist (click on this link here to read about his journey into art—you don’t want to miss this link and be sure to turn up your sound and listen to the ragtime music!)
I’m telling you…you could get lost in this website and never recover. It’s like that movie “The Ring.” Enter at your own risk.
Previously posted in March 2008
I photographed this same type of flower a few years ago (see link here), and I still haven’t been successful in identifying it. I think I’ll take a print to Green Spring Gardens and maybe they can identify it (since they’re the ones who grew it). In the link I just provided, you’ll read my father’s take on the origin of the flower. It was quite involved (he had extra time on his hands, apparently), but still didn’t really identify the flower.
FYI—in reference to my father’s note about not pronouncing the “h” in “herb”—no matter how often I tell him that it’s usually the British who pronounce the “h” in “herb,” he still thinks that’s the only way to pronounce the word. He even points out that if Martha Stewart says it like that, then it must be right. (He says that if “erb” is correct, then we should also say “umongous,” “uge,” and “erbert oover”—as in the name of our 31st President). I’ve done the research and actually—both pronunciations are correct (although he will never agree). Most Americans say it with a silent “h.” Some pronounce the “h” if it’s a person’s name, then don’t when referencing the green stuff. I’m taking a poll, here and now. How many of you pronounce “herb” with the hard h? And what is your reasoning for doing so?
An aside: While searching “pronounciation of the word herb,” I found a synopsis of one of Alexis Stewart’s (Martha’s daughter) radio shows. In it, Alexis says that her mother pronounces it incorrectly and goes on to explain her mother’s reasoning. (Martha and my dad—separated at birth—who knew?). An excerpt from that review is below. I am not responsible for the terrible practice of not capitalizing the first word of each sentence, nor the positioning of the period outside the quotation marks, nor the lower-casing of Martha’s name. I know better than that. I’m hoping the practice of lower-cased i’s and names is simply a phase bloggers are going through, although I sincerely doubt it. What can I say? Aside from the “Great (H)erb Debate,” I am my father’s daughter.
then alexis said that martha says the word “herb” incorrectly. martha pronounces the “h” and claims she pronounces the “h” because, after all, people pronounce the “h” when they say the name herbert, so why shouldn’t they then pronounce the “h” in the word “herb”. alexis added that trying to explain to martha why her pronunciation is faulty is like playing tennis with a hopelessly bad player – there’s just nothing you can do about it.
If everyone in America was forced to buy the book(s), The Mac is Not a Typewriter or The PC is Not a Typewriter (excellent little books by Robin Williams—the author, not the actor), we would all be (grammatically and publishing-wise) better for it. I imagine Ms. Williams could retire early if that transpired. I know I could finally stop losing sleep over all those excess spaces after periods and misplaced punctuation.
FYI, contrary to the popularity of the practice, you should only put one space after the end of a sentence before beginning a new one. In covered-wagon days, there were proportional typefaces, and every letter and punctuation mark occupied the same width, so two spaces were necessary to make the sentence break clear. These days, the tap of a keyboard spacebar yields 1.5 characters; plenty for spacing before starting a new sentence. Save those extra spaces for other paragraphs—recycle! Old habits are hard to break. I came from the era of typewriters and had the “two space rule” drilled into my head. Then I entered the world of desktop publishing with my very first Mac. If I can break the habit, so can you. Really. Give it a try. Pretty please? It’s the right thing to do (although you may have been blissfully unaware until just now).
And remember, this rule includes just one space after any punctuation—quotation marks, exclamation points (which my father abhors, but that’s another posting), as well as the oft-used periods.
One comment in a forum on the subject of space after periods signed his letter, “Just say NO to Double Spacing!—brought to you by PADSAP (People Against Double Spacing After Periods).
Whaaaa? There’s a club for people like me? Where do I sign up? Hey Dad—maybe we can get a two-for-one membership.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I made these bird nest pendants for the gals in my wedding. They were made just like the cooper wire ones I made for Michael and his groomsmen here. My friend Kathy models one I made for her in the photo at right.
Silver wire and dyed freshwater pearls were woven to form a bird’s nest. Special thanks to blogger Cathe Holden for posting her great tutorial on how to make these sweet little bird nests.
Once I make the loops to hang them on chains, I’ll be distributing them to all the gals in the wedding party—Karen B, Debbie, Kelley, Lauren, Deanna, Nancy, Carmen, Norma, Karen W and Macie. Unfortunately, I didn’t have them finished to give to them out that weekend. Hence our wedding theme—“better late than never!”
You can see the latest photos I’ve posted from the wedding on our wedding blog here. Many more photos to come!
I must preface my father’s poem (below) by explaining his urge to write about a cheesecake in the first place. In February we hosted a very scaled back Chocoholic Party for friends—aptly renamed the “Cabin Fever with Chocolate Party.” It was scaled back from our annual soiree because of the unprecedented piles of snow in our area, which resulted in virtually no parking for guests from outside the neighborhood. (This annual party usually brings in 35+ chocoholics, so ample parking is necessary!) So, if you could walk to our house in 30+ inches of snow, you were a guest! Anyway, earlier in the week we bought a cheesecake from Costco during our rounds to gather food for this semi-potluck party. I was sitting at the computer working a few days before the party when Michael came downstairs—a brown wrapped package in one hand and a shovel in the other—and unlocked the patio door. I watched him, wondering if he was going to dig a path through the almost three feet of snow to the back gate (and why?). He proceeded to dig a hole into the snow bank just outside the door and buried the package. I then asked, “what in the world did you just bury?” “Cheesecake!” he exclaimed. “There wasn’t any room for it in the refrigerator and since the party is just two days away, I figured it would keep.” There you have it. Such a resourceful man. I think I’ll keep him.
So, my ‘An apology to the wood anemone’ poem (see my previous posting) has inspired my father to write his wonderful ‘Ode to a cheesecake.’ Bravo, bravo, King of Texas! Here are his comments to my post, followed by his poem.
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In advance of posting this comment, I humbly offer my abject apologies to the preacher John Donne, to the poet Joyce Kilmer and to the author of ‘An apology to the wood anemone’ . . . It’s not my fault—it’s in my nature—it’s something I cannot control. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa maxima.
Ode to a cheesecake
Breathes there one with soul so dead
That never to one’s self hath said
Methinks that I shall never see
A word so lovely as anemone.
Offed from my tongue it rolls
Sadly as the bell that tolls
Not for thee and not for me
Nor for the lovely anemone.
But for the cheesecake in its bower
Not ‘neath trees nor plants nor showers
Nay, ‘neath snowstorms full of power
Lying beneath the snow for hours
In wait for the chocolate party
To be eaten by goers hearty.
But wait, what’s that I see
Beside the cheesecake ‘neath the snow
The anemone arises ready to go
With the cheesecake to the table
Petals eight to be divided
Among the diners so excited
A ‘nemone to see.
They smell the petals
They hear the bell
They’ll come to know
As time will tell
If snow and cheesecake
Sounds their knell
Or leaves them alive
And well.
— H.M. Dyer (1932- )
I neglected to give credit to Sir Walter Scott for his poem ‘The lay of the last minstrel’ in my ‘Ode to a cheesecake’—credit is now given. I also neglected to say that I loved your poem ‘An apology to the wood anemone’… Well done!
Your anemone arising from the snow is reminiscent of Thoreau’s “Walden,” in which he tells of a golden bug that in the spring gnawed its way out of a table after being entombed in the wood for many years.
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See more of my father’s pondering, hypothesizing and philosophizing, musings, comments, lectures, diatribes, royal reflections and revelations, essays, memoirs, biographies and autobiographies, tall tales, fables, childhood memories, yarns, jokes, poems, political and social commentary, and my favorite of his topics—excellent grammatical lessons—on his website, thekingoftexas.wordpress.com.
Lovely eight petal wood anemone
please accept my apology
More plants, I surely did not need any
but your price was reduced to a hundred pennies
Relegated to your preferred shady spot
remembering to plant you, I most certainly did not
Lost in the shuffle of spring and summer
as the King of Texas says, “what a bummer!”
you braved well over two feet of snow
yet still come spring, you put on a show
Please accept my apology
lovely eight petal wood anemone
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Michael and I picked up his sister Kathy and her boss from D.C. (they were in town for a workshop) to do a really quick sightseeing tour and then drop them off at National Airport this afternoon. Downtown D.C. was a madhouse with all the tourists and the big Cherry Blossom Festival in full swing! We had about 25 minutes to pop into the U.S. Botanic Garden, then we dropped them off at the Natural History Museum for another 25 minutes while we drove around. I was only able to shoot a few images at the U.S. Botanic Garden—too many people and too little time. Despite that fact, I’ll take flower-shooting time anywhere and anytime I can get it—from here on out, expect lots of flower macros! Here are a few I liked…
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
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