Sara’s Fave Photos

I belong to a garden club, and my favorite part is that every three months, people get together and bring things they’ve grown that are beautiful. I find them irresistable to photograph. Here’s a sprig of azaleas, oops, now I see they are rhododendrons!, a peachy pink color that I am in love with. And if you’d like more pink, hie on over to Pink Saturday.

This rhodie photo is one of my absolute faves, so I think I’ll include it for Shadow Shot Sunday and Flowers for Today, and what the heck, let’s go for Macro Monday while we’re on a roll. All those meme sites have super participation from talented photographers, so take a look.

Looking at the sky from an airplane is only sort of a sky view, but when there are clouds right there, what else is it? Anytime I fly, it’s a reminder of how beautiful and huge our country is, and mostly seemingly empty.

For more beautiful skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday. Join in, if you like; it’s loads of fun.

This is not my garden; again it’s from the Bronx Botanical Garden in New York City. This section was to inspire and inform the home gardener. While I have planted vegetable beds with flowers in them, I have never seen the plants planted in diagonal rows. So simple, but such a great idea. If you are going to have neat rows, might as well be at an angle, for pretty.

I like this photo for Think Green Thursday because to me the idea of growing your own food is about as green as you can get, especially if you do it the simple, cheap way with kitchen compost to enrich the soil, seeds, and there you go. No expensive supplies needed, just a bit of know how. Just ask a gardener and you’ll learn enough to get you going.

Just for the heck of it, here is a photo of the raised beds from October of 2007 in my last house. The string trellis at the right is for the flat peas which were already done by then. It was a nice garden, but the current one will be even nicer, eventually.

In one of the back areas of the incredible and huge Conservatory in the Bronx Botanical Garden in New York City, I found this fountain. The sound of splashing water was wonderful, and the air smelled so good. I like the way the water looks dark and mysterious.

For more photos of water in its many manifestations, visit Watery Wednesday.

Yet another photo from the Bronx Botanical Garden and my recent New York City trip. This was taken in the beginning of May, and the peonies were ALMOST ready to pop. For more ruby redness of all kinds, go to Ruby Tuesday, a fine place in blogland if ever there was one.

I’m trying out yet another photo meme, Macro Monday. Seems like a fine photo idea to me.

Here are some succulent sedums, or hen-and-chicks, from my recent trip to the Bronx Botanical Garden in New York City. There are a million kinds of them (OK, maybe that’s a teensy exaggeration), but this hairy one is a bit more unusual. Sedums are so pretty, many like little flowers, and tough and easy to grow as well.

This a a top fave flower photo of mine, again from New York’s Bronx Botanical Garden. These little pansies were at their peak, and perfection in a modest little flower, to my mind. For more heavenly flowers around the world, visit Today’s Flowers.

Another couple of photos from the Bronx Botanical Garden in New York City, the top shadow photo taken in front of the famous and enormous Conservatory, which is below it, and kind of scenic, isn’t it? For more scenicness, visit Scenic Sunday.

Hard not to be seduced by shadows from this sinuous bench. For more lovely and intriguing shadows, go to Shadow Shot Sunday, hosted by Tracy, AKA Hey Harriet. You’ll be glad you did.

This tree was blooming so intensely in my recent trip to the Bronx (New York)  Botanical Garden. On Wednesdays you can walk through the grounds for free. Such a deal! I’ll post a photo every now and then from that amazing trip; must save some for the long Seattle winter of no flowers. Hope you like it.

I found out about a Pink Saturday photo meme, and it looks delightful. This ought to qualify!

While I was in New York, I stayed at my friends’ place on the 14th floor in Riverdale, in the Bronx. Here is a view from their apartment on three different days. The big bunch of green trees is Van Cortlandt Park, one of the largest city parks anywhere, I’m told.

For more extremely interesting and varied skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

We went to Chinatown when I was in New York and it was so fun. I had never seen fresh lichees in their shells, only canned (looking like eyeballs but tasting heavenly) and dried, in rough, thin brown shells. I had no idea in the world they looked like this! Well, actually I thought they were lichees, but no, readers tell me they are rambutans! Here’s a link with the difference.

I’m participating in a new photo meme, Color Carnival. If you like color, and I sure do, check it out!

I took this photo at the Steidhardt Garden tour in Mt. Kisco, NY on my visit recently. This incredible place is 55 acres of exquisite plants AND animals, open to the public two days a year. It was drizzly, but hailing from Seattle these days, I’m used to it. This low-growing plant is grown for just how pretty it looks in the rain.

For more photos of water in all its many manifestations, click HERE.

Food is like dance, in a way. So beautiful, and so fleeting. This beautiful brunch spread was created to celebrate my visit to the East coast. The smoked fish (you can just see the lox plate in the upper left), the fruit salad, and the veggie plate were joined by scrambled eggs and mimosas. And bagels, of course. A perfect meal, as far as I am concerned.

For more red visions, or to post your own (do! it’s fun), click HERE.

These tulips were part of the bulb marathon we planted last fall. Nothing on the package said they were more than twice the size of a normal tulip. If you look at the photo of my garden a few posts down, they are quite tall and you can see a couple behind the left vegetable bed. I have never seen anything like the size of these flowers. And they are beautiful as well!

For more flowers around the world, click HERE.

I took lots of photos on my trip, of course, but mostly the gray Seattle weather seemed to follow me to New York, which is not so good for shadows. But one lovely afternoon we were walking around the Upper West Side and the light coming through the trees in Central Park across the street was just perfect. I can’t decide which photo I like best, so please help me choose. Long shot, or closeup?

For more excellent shadows seen in the most unlikely places, click HERE.

And for more scenic shots, click HERE.

I realized it’s been just a year since we moved in. We dug up lawn and planted bulbs, dug the vegetable beds, and in general dove in to a very neglected situation. Today the sun peeked out and this is what it looks like out there. Not as good as it will look next year, but such an improvement over last year!

Here’s a New York City shot for you. There was one perfect sunny day and I took advantage of it. I used to work in this building on the 53rd floor, so many years ago. The windows opened and you could hear the traffic like it was at street level, surprisingly.

Romantic note: My neighbors just got back from a trip to NYC and he proposed at the top of it!

For more skies around the world, click HERE.

Here’s a photo from my trip to New York, taken in Crocheron Park in Bayside, Queens—my old stomping grounds, you might say. The weather was mild and dry, and perfect for a quick walk.

The new Think Green Thursday meme doesn’t need postings to be a green color or even a photo, but photos and greenery suit me fine. For other ideas on being green, click HERE.

This is such an unusual photo that I had to share it today. I took it on my trip to NY from Seattle at the beginning of the month. This view out the airplane window was somewhere in the middle of the country, past the Rockies I think. It looks like a map of itself! I have no idea if the snow was deep or not, but I have never seen the earth look like this from above. I know it’s a stretch from water to snow, but this one is as magical as water, I think.

For more shots of water in all its many manifestations, click HERE.

The story in our family is that Mom would make the requested strawberry shortcake for a birthday, but since it had to be kept refrigerated until after dinner, when we saw it there after school she would pretend that we were dreaming and say, “Cake? What cake? There’s no cake there,” so that we could all enjoy the “surprise” later. Mom is gone now, but What-cake lives on. Here’s the one, almost exactly like she used to make, from my recent birthday.

For more ruby redness in photos around the world, click HERE.