I love that song, though I’m not sure why it is called “Iris”. However, I thought it an appropriate intro to today’s post!
They are blooming like gangbusters right now and I just love them. One of my favorite flowers, bearded irises.
And I think, my favorite shot from the bunch:
Peonies coming soon!
Since I started blogging in 2010, I’ve done a wrap-up of my favorite photos of the year. They aren’t always my more “technically” good photos, but photos I’ve come to enjoy for one reason or another. I believe these photos have all appeared on the blog already this year, but that is because I am always anxious to share my favorites with you! The photos that follow are in chronological order approximately one for each month of the year, but in one case I didn’t find anything I liked all that much in a month (February) and for April and July I couldn’t make up my mind between two shots, so you get them both for a baker’s dozen total.
In January, I was finally able to get a close-up shot of a Mr. Cardinal that made me happy:
In March, I felt lucky to grab this shot of a soaring hawk, with feathers strongly defined:
In April, I went on and on about one of my favorite vacations of all time, the cruise we took. Meghan and Sarah, first day on the ship and taken with my Blackberry, remains a favorite:
There were so many beautiful sights from the cruise, but I wanted to share a shot that I love for its simplicity:
The warm, turquoise Carribbean water brings me back to those precious days when there was little to worry about and happy memories were being made.
May brought me a picture of one of my favorite types of flowers, a bearded iris, that I was very pleased with how it came out. It was the header picture here on the blog until very recently:
Ah, June! The end of the school year, the start of my favorite season. Yummy raspberries are a nice representation of the many good parts of summer.
July is the month when my butterfly bushes start going wild and bring many winged visitors. This monarch was one of my best butterfly shots this year:
I just love this photo of Sarah from her birthday party. Her braces had been removed and her smile was big and genuine:
As part of a photo hunt that everyone really seemed to enjoy, the “Ends of the Earth”, I took this photo in August from our little mountain here in town:
In September, my summer dreams faded away with the weather. This dahlia reminds me of the warmth of the afternoons that I continued to enjoy as long as I could:
October brought a blog-along walk over at Robin’s Life in the Bogs. I found myself doing some quiet contemplation while watching birds appear before my lens. I loved this sweet little chickadee:
I was happily surprised to have the opportunity to photograph an eastern bluebird for the first time in November. It isn’t a wonderful photo, but I was thrilled with the chance to get this picture:
How ironic that I spent December wishing for a gentle blanket of snow to take pretty pictures in and then ended up sharing this adventure with you just yesterday! (If you haven’t read it yet, go ahead, have a peek!) I still really like this picture of my new snowman ornaments, even if I could now do without the sentiment:
Happy New Year everyone. I hope that 2013 brings you good health, and paraphrasing the words of a fellow blogger, enough of what you need most.
It has been more than a week since I posted – I’ve been a bit of a slacker, I suppose, but then this tends to be the “When I Feel Like It” way. It has been a busy week as we approach the end of the school year (16 days of school left for me!), recital around the corner and spring in full bloom. In addition to all the good, a drop of the bad had to rear its ugly head as well. On my way home from work yesterday I was the victim of a motor vehicle accident. While I was stopped behind several cars waiting to take a left turn, a very young and newly licensed driver hit my car from behind. I am fine, but my poor car is damaged yet again and having a reunion with the body shop it has already visited 3 times in its past (none of those incidents my fault, by the way!) So how about the photos of the nice stuff that happened this week?
Mandaville hanging flower basket from my daughter for Mother’s Day
Peonies, ready to bust open
My little lupin, in light and shadow
Mr. & Mrs. Duck, stopping by my still covered pool – the water on the cover is sure to contain a variety of tasty insects
A pair of hummingbirds has returned to my yard. I was distracted getting ready for work one morning in my attempt to take these pictures:
My dearly loved bearded irises have started to bloom:
While sitting outside hoping to find a nice shot for Scott’s Blue Hour assignment, due this week, I was thrilled to come up with this iris photo:
I’m particularly happy with how that one came out.
I’m not as happy with how my blue hour attempts came out. I’m still deciding whether I will choose to post them tomorrow for Scott’s deadline.
What’s been happening with you?
Hi everyone! I’ve missed you! This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the contents of this post, but I wanted to show it to you because I like it. 🙂
It has been a busy week and I just felt the need to blog! I haven’t posted since last Sunday and my fingers just insisted on typing. Ever happen to you?
Lots going on here. We are one week before dance recital, so I’ve put plenty of miles on the car driving the girls back and forth to the studio for extra rehearsals. I’ve been working furiously on the project I mentioned in this post, which I can share with you after tomorrow. And we had a wonderful visit with my nephew from California and his wife:
( I stole this picture from his Facebook page since I inconceivably forgot to take any pictures while they were here!)
I also found my stomach getting worked up in knots Thursday evening. The weather in this area was strongly reminiscent of last Wednesday. The power went out again, but thankfully it was only strong thunderstorms this time around. Power was back on about two hours after it went out. I had no idea how viscerally I would feel about the threat of strong storms after what happened here last week.
Hope all is well in your part of the world, and I hope to have time to be blogging more regularly very soon! If not next week, definitely after June 22nd, when my 70-day-weekend begins!
A wise woman once said, “All weekends should be three-day weekends; then you’d have a day for running errands and chores, a day for socializing and a day to yourself to do whatever you want or nothing at all.” I may be paraphrasing a bit, but the wise woman is my sister and I couldn’t agree more! Thanks to the wonderful servicemen and women of this country who gave their lives for us, we are able to celebrate this three-day holiday weekend. I got to thinking about all the things I am appreciative for this three-day weekend and thought I’d share my appreciation with you.
I am appreciative that I was able to get my veggie garden planted with a minimum of back pain. I finished off that garden today by planting my little sentry row of critter-guarding marigolds:
I am appreciative of the warm weather that we have been granted after very wet spring. It allowed me to continue my planting frenzy this weekend. In addition to the veggies and marigolds, I planted all of my containers of flowers. A sampling:
(I can’t take credit for that top one – that was my mother’s day gift from hubby._
New guinea impatiens in my whiskey barrel
I put the bee balm that I bought for the hummingbirds in the ground near the butterfly bushes and fuchsia, and I found a spot in one of my flower beds for the new columbine:
I am appreciative for my home, my family and my friends. As I’ve enjoyed my yard, and having my hands in the dirt this weekend, I’ve taken a good look around. As appreciative as I am that we are past the long, harsh winter that Mama Nature had us endure this year, I couldn’t help but feel she was making up for it with an absolute bounty of beauty this spring. Remember all those wonderful lilacs I showed you? Now in bountiful bloom I’m enjoying both my rhododendron and my irises; I don’t remember such huge displays last year:
Looks like I’m also going to have plenty of rosebuds:
and that the chipmunks are going to have plenty of strawberries:
( Lord knows I never get any of them! Really need to get around to moving these one of these years)
While they are not bountiful yet, the very first of my peonies opened too!
So thank you Mama Nature, thank you fallen soldiers, and thank you blogging friends; you are all appreciated.
Remember what my garden space looked like a couple weeks ago after I cleaned it out?
I spent yesterday from about 9 am until about 5pm (with a break for lunch) weeding (yes, they did manage to invade after all the rain we’ve had), raking, digging and planting. It was probably one of the warmest and most humid days we’ve had so far this spring (86 degrees F), but I finished planting all my veggies:
.
It doesn’t look like much right now, but there are 18 tomatoes, 33 peppers (varieties of both bell and hot), 12 zucchini, 6 yellow summer squash and 12 cucumber. I hope I haven’t overplanted my garden space this year! I started putting down some landscape fabric too (you can see that along the foundation of the house where the tomatoes are planted) in an attempt to keep weeds down a bit this year. I got too hot to finish that job; the black fabric just seemed to be throwing extra heat my way.
In addition to the veggie garden, my flower gardens have had some beautiful blooms this week too. Rhododendrons, woodland hyacinth, bearded iris and just this morning, poppies have all opened up. Do I have pictures for you? Of course! I even spent sometime with my extension tubes and tripod.
These are woodland hyacinth. They are not a large, showy flower. Those little bells are about 3/4 of an inch. The plants themselves are only about 6-7 inches tall. I thought they might make a nice extension tube subject, but my tripod, of course doesn’t go that low and resting the camera on the ground would be too low. So, I got down on my belly and parked my elbows on the ground as I held the camera. Here’s the best shot I got:
The rhododendron is in full blown bloom now:
and so are my beloved bearded irises:
Of course I played with the extension tubes on these also:
The bright orange poppy got in on the act this morning:
My crazy poppy! I must admit the light was just right for this shot this morning, and it has its own beauty, but it does look a little crazy where it is planted – take a look:
Right next to the delicate irises. Oh well! They are here to stay.
I just love this time of year. Don’t you?
Remember those days of AOL and logging in to your account via dial-up…bing, bing, bing, oooo…..ksssshhhhh….just waiting for those special three words: “You’ve got mail!” I was reminded of those days when a special package arrived on my step this week. Real mail though, not electronic, but I found myself chiming “I’ve got mail!”
Do you remember this sad tale of woe I told you last spring? I decided to forgo the woe this spring and buy all my plants already started at the local garden center. Only problem was, hubby still wanted his “Biker Billy Jalepenos.” I discovered this year that Burpee sells their Biker Billy’s in plant form. They were a little pricey for young plants, but I figured they’d be worth it. I’ve been wondering since back in early April when I ordered them, exactly how Burpee shipped live plants. May 13 was the ship date for my Zone 5 planting area. The box you see above arrived via UPS. The air-holes in the side kind of gave me chuckle, like I was receiving a breathing creature of some sort!
Turns out Burpee has this plant shipping thing down. Inside the funny-air-holed container, I found this:
The plants were safe, snug and secure in a little greenhouse-colored plastic container.
Three Biker Billy Jalepeno plants, ready for planting next weekend! In addition, I was able to find the other hot peppers we were looking for when I went back to the garden center.
Although the weather doesn’t have a great outlook for the week (temps around 70 but chances of thundershowers virtually every day), it appears it could be a lovely week in the yard. Besides those peony buds I showed you a few days ago, look what is also getting ready to bloom:
The bearded irises! I LOVE these flowers and the number of buds looks promising. Also on the way are my crazy poppies:
I call them my “crazy” poppies for a couple reasons. First, those buds are a little alien-looking, aren’t they? Second, once I tried to get rid of these flowers simply because they didn’t fit my general color scheme; they are bright orange in a sea of pink, lavendar and white in this particular bed. But they kept coming back. Now, I’ve grown to like them as the cheerful survivors they are.
It has been a busy weekend! (I’ll probably ramble on a bit more about it later in the week) I can’t believe it is time to go back to work again tomorrow morning already. I hope to catch up with you all very soon, and hope your weekend was awesome, even if you spent a lot of it feeling sorry for yourself! (You know who you are!)
My daughter Meghan has been laughing at me over the past week or so, each time we pull out of our driveway. In a funny, high-pitched voice, I’ve been exclaiming, “Irises!” I just can’t help myself! The irises have been outrageously gorgeous this year and I’m very excited to show them to you! Last year was very disappointing for these favorites of mine, so that makes this year’s showing extra special in my eyes. I have 5 different colors of tall bearded irises, although I don’t know the names of each type. I ordered these from a Breck’s catalog years and years ago and I look forward to their showing each year.
This was the first bearded beauty to show its lovely face this year. As with all my perennial flowers this year, these have made an earlier-than-usual appearance due to the earlier-than-usual very warm weather we have been experiencing this spring. I really love the unique “beard” of white outlined by purple on this one.
Next up:
I think these are my favorite of the 5 bearded iris colors that I grow. This one has a unique color you generally don’t see all that often in irises – pink! What’s not to like there? I decided to get up close and personal with this one. Say “ah,” please! (I know they are called bearded irises, but they just look like tongues to me!):
Here’s our next patient with another healthy look up close….
(Psssst..hey Scott, would this be an example of sidelighting?)
….and with a group of his friends (I guess they are boys due to the beards? 😉 )
Next to join the iris party is a pretty blend of ivory and periwinkle:
When this has fully openned, it is another stunning beauty:
I thought this was a neat perspective on these:
I have one final contributor to the iris fun. This last iris doesn’t really go along with the color scheme of the group of irises that I originally ordered, but the fine folks at Breck’s threw it in for free. Who am I to say no to a freebie?
So that’s my tour of one of my favorite flowers in my garden. More beautiful blooms coming soon!
Karma's When I Feel Like It Blog 