05-30-2012 Making up for 5 days of pictures

I've been remiss with posting picture since May 25th. I actually did take some pictures on the missing days and other days I took no pictures at all. Today I took my camera out while I waited for John to pick me up and took quite a few pictures. I had 43 pictures I downloaded from my camera and managed to get them down to these:

I thought this was interesting. This is actually a close-up of a light post outside of our apartment complex.

These caught my eye while we were at Ralph's last Saturday. 

I loved the soft pink tops of the petals and the deeper color on the inside. It is amazing what you can find in parking lots if you are looking, isn't it?

I was standing outside one afternoon and saw what I thought was a bloom on the Magnolia tree out in our little yard. The sun was so bright and glaring I couldn't really tell if I saw a bloom or was imaging things. I took pictures anyway and sure enough, there was the creamy magnolia bloom. I played with this one and darkened up the leaves to make the blossom stand out more.

This one I actually lightened the entire picture and it is probably closer to what the tree actually looks like when there isn't full sun glare on it.

Remember the tightly wound fern baby? It is uncurling day by day. I tried to get it framed between the stems of my avocado tree, but it was difficult because of the light glare. The sun reflects off the walls of the  apartment building and even though our place is too dark inside to grow anything, outside in the little yard it gets quite bright.

I didn't do a thing to this picture. Somehow I took it just perfectly. At least I think it is perfect the way it is. 

There was a sweet little bird pecking in the grass while I was out taking pictures and waiting for John this afternoon.

I really have a thing for taking pictures of birds--well, maybe just nature. I love to take nature pictures. I guess I get that from my dad who was an excellent nature photographer.

The flowers were a little dark in this pic, but I loved the way the sun shone through the leaf behind them.

The sun through the red leaves of this hedge just inside the fence of the complex caught my eye here.

I love irises. They grew wild in Alaska and I was always trying to get pictures of them. They were a bit different up there, though. The delicate colors fascinate me.

I loved the texture in the green buds on this one.

Jacaranda trees have always been my favorite. I can remember driving through Santa Barbara on the freeway with the Jacaranda in bloom and all these gorgeous purple flowers. I wish I had gone out early in the spring and gotten pictures when the blooms were at their peak.

These were beautiful. What is interesting about this picture is that these are actually yellow flowers. It was bright with lots of reflection, so I manually made the whatever it is called smaller and that, in turn, seemed to change the color of the flowers.

They are beautiful this way, though!

Here is the same flower, but with more light. I used the flash and they stayed yellow.

This one I used a filter to try and bring out the  yellow and the edges turned yellow, but the petals stayed more peachy.

And finally--tada!--This is very close to what they actually look like outside. They are beautiful. I have no idea what they are, but I love the colors in the middle.

I would love to take a digital photography class someday and see if I can learn more about picture taking. 

05-25-2012 Pizza! Pizza!

Last night was pizza night in our house. Yum! I gave up on making a round pizza and making one big pizza. Instead I did two smaller pizza crusts and they were whatever shape they came out as. Interestingly enough, they came out fairly round when I stopped trying. 

Here is John putting toppings on the first pizza. We only have one pizza peel, so after pre-cooking the crust we took it out and put it on our old pizza pan while the second crust cooked. Then we realized we had to put it on the pizza peel in order to get it back into the oven...

John got the first pizza back in the oven like a pro. Must be that Italian blood in him.

Mmmmm! Mushrooms! The sauce is pizza sauce that John makes and we freeze. This one has bell pepper, Italian sausage, black olives, and a variety of seasonings in it. We also had some leftover grilled green pepper and onion from the other night, so we threw that into the sauce also.

Here it is--all ready to go into the oven. It turned out really well. We split the first one and froze the second one. We are starting to get better at making pizza!

05-24-2012 A stranger in the pot

This afternoon I noticed leaves that did not look like nasturtiums. There is strange growth in my pot, I thought. Hmmmm...didn't mean to rhyme there. I suspect from the look at the seed still clinging to the leaves that the stranger is a cantaloupe. Last summer I planted seed from whatever we were buying at the time. Of course, as soon as they came up, the snails ate them. Maybe this year the salt will keep them away long enough to see what they will do in a pot.

I just like how the avocado looked today. The top is so tiny that the big leaves are causing it to bend. I even liked how the curled dead top of the second avocado made this artistic shape and gave balance to the tableau.

05-23-2012 A Better Day

I must admit, I took this one last night, but I wanted to share the inside of the monster apple pie we made Saturday. Now that is an apple pie...

I was sitting outside while our dinner grilled and noticed these two pigeons sitting on the railing of the neighbor's balcony. Unfortunately, somehow my setting were messed up on my camera and I was only able to get one usable shot. I really liked this one, though. There were originally sitting together side-by-side and I thought--John and I are like that. We sit and quietly enjoy the peacefulness as the sun begins to set and just enjoy being together.

05-22-2012 My Life

05-21-2012 The Lazy Picture Taker

I never left the patio today, but I heard the chirping of birds and was

just lucky enough to get this little guy taking off.

I thought of this one as the old and the new. My first nasturtium is almost finished and coming up right behind it is a new bud. I wonder what color this one will be? 

05-20-2012 The Denny's Experience

We went to Denny's yesterday evening after the grocery shopping and I took my pictures.

I really liked the contrast between the red and the blue-purple.

I thought I was done and then I saw this tree...this tree has beautiful blossoms in the spring. What caught my eye was the long bean pods. I had to do some enhancement with filters because this picture was so dark you couldn't really see the pea pods. Getting better with filters!

I really liked how this one came out, too, with the boost filter.

And you thought I was going to show you a Denny's sign...LOL

05-19-2012 Yum!

Now that's a pie! John and I worked on making apple pie yesterday. I made a cheese crust and helped prepare the apples by peeling them. We had a ton of apples and somehow he got them all into the pie shell...truthfully, I didn't think it was possible. He seasoned and cooked all those apples and the pile was so high that when I put the top crust on them it just kind of draped around the hill of apples.

05-18-2012 New growth and continuing crafts

the gardeners worked on cleaning up and cutting back old growth last week and this week I could see a new fern leaf in the process of furling its leaves. 

Slowly and surely I'm making progress on my counted cross.

05-17-2012 Around the town

John and I went to Sprouts after he came home from work, so I took my camera. In front of Ralph's there was a huge  bouganvilla bush and a bird chirping and chirping, so of course that had to be my picture.

I over exposed it. So I used the lomo-ish filter and turned it into this, which I think is pretty cool looking.

Then I used the pencil sketch filter and added in a bit of color. 

I also got a close of the bouganvilla and love the texture in this one.

And I couldn't pass up the draping limb loaded with petals.

This makes the busy parking lot look like a beautiful place, eh? 

05-16-2012 Zoom! Zoom!

I love my zoom lens. I wasn't able to walk much today, but standing in my patio I could see flowers across the yard, so I zoomed in on them and viola! a picture for the day.

05-15-2012 Surprise!

I for sure thought my nasturtium was yellow and it surprised me--it is red. I loved how the yellow center kind of glowed with the sunlight. It would have been nice to get the flower brighter, but oh well...

05-14-2012 New growth and a completed project

My nasturtiums are beginning to bud! 

Looks like this one will be yellow.

I've been working on this afghan for a couple months now and thought I'd share it. I really love the border with the pineapples. 

05-12-2012 Mother's Day Eve

Meg had a beautiful bouquet of  flowers delivered to me for Mother's Day. Such a wonderful feeling. I used some of the flowers for my pictures, although I did forget to post them on that day. I love the roses. They are so big and fragrant. I really like how you can see the veins in the petals in this picture.

Even though the bottom of this rose was too dark, I still like the color and texture of the petals.

I love gerbaras. They are such happy flowers. The pictures I took were way too dark and didn't do justice to the beautiful bright yellow they are. I worked with the  filters and coaxed the picture to look truer to color.

05/13/2012 Visit to the Past once again

I've always loved this picture. Because I wasn't able to take a picture yesterday, I sat and played with my filters and got this picture to look more like my memory of this particular sunset. Well...I used a focal black and white filter so the sun is in color and the trees and water are more of a silhouette. 

This was taken in 2006 at Colt State Park, Bristol, Rhode Island. John and I used to go down often to this park for the sunsets over Narragansett Bay. I think this park is one of the things I miss most about Rhode Island. We could always find a beautiful sunset to watch and it was close to where we lived. During the summer when it is hot and so humid your towels never get dry, we could drive down and there would be a wonderful breeze coming off the bay.