Sara’s Fave Photos

We were at a friend’s house on Lake Washington in Seattle, enjoying the perfect weather (finally!) when my favorite super noisemakers roared by. What a kick!

Visit the other views of different skies at Skywatch Friday, a huge and successful meme that has people looking up around the world.

You can’t really call them green beans when they look like this. The yellow ones are called wax beans and the package on the purple ones says they will be green when cooked. We’ll see. They sure taste great just like this.

Here’s a tip: When storing, make sure they are in a plastic bag but DRY (wash just before eating or cooking). Peas like it moist in storage but beans, surprisingly, do not. That avoids the disappointing rust yuckiness. Also, you think you will remember which you picked when, but you won’t. Mark the bag with the date!

Home gardens are the ultimate in local, fresh, and hopefully organic food. And a package of seeds is so cheap, plus the seeds last many years if stored in a dry place. So grow your own! And for more GREEN ideas, visit Think Green Thursday.

UPDATE: I cooked them tonight, steamed the way I always do, and sure enough, the purple ones became green. Check it out! Top one is after cooking a bit and stirring, bottom one a bit firm but tender. No purple! They were yummy.

It’s brutally hot here, record-breaking for Seattle, today in the upper 90s. That may not impress some of you, but I believe that 100 degrees F. is the Seattle record. And only 13% of us have air conditioning. And one forecast says 102 degrees tomorrow!

So! Here is a picture of coolth for all you overheated locals. This is Lake Cushman, WA, taken last week on our camping trip. Enjoy! And for more water visions everywhere, get cyberwet and visit Watery Wednesday.

A week or so ago I went on a local garden tour and one place had bouquets of flowers on tables. This one dahlia looks more like an illustration than a photo! But I think it qualifies for Ruby Tuesday. Take a look there for more red seen everywhere. And while you’re at it, visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday, too! I love memes.

These fancy daylilies are really something. The colors, the ruffles, the extra petals. The hybridizers have been busy! This was in a friend’s garden and I wish I had some. They do OK in part shade, you know.

Sometimes when I am taking a photo of a flower whose petals are in direct sun, the background blacks out and I get this exciting chiaroscuro effect, straight off the memory card. Isn’t it something?

For more flowers seen around the world, visit Flowers for Today. And for more brilliant color, visit Color Carnival, two great memes.

The first couple of days were warm and sunny; perfect shadow capture weather. Here is our cooler and a path in the campground.

For more scintillating shadows, visit Shadow Shot Sunday.

This adorably pink ground cover was growing at Whitney Nursery and Garden over in Brinnon, WA. A delightful wander over 7 acres, on the Hood Canal. For more pink visions, visit Beverly’s Pink Saturday.

On Wednesday the weather was heaven and we were camping at Lake Cushman, WA. Here is what it looked like in the evening, wading at the shore.

For more skies seen around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

We are going camping for a few days so I’ll post two photos today for you.

Yesterday there was a garden tour pretty close by and the weather was superb. One lovely place had this view of Puget Sound from their backyard. For more scenic loveliness, visit Scenic Sunday.

Another garden had planted different kinds of sunflowers. They were in their element, literally! It’s a Flower for Today, and visit them for fascinating photos of flowers around the world.

See you in a few!

Oh, the joys of a sunny day are so much magnified when spotting shadows is your game. Here’s a bouquet of shadow shapes for you today, aka a tree. If you crave yet more of the ephemeral penumbra, visit Hey Harriet’s blog at Shadow Shot Sunday. It’s one of the best places in the blogosphere.

I wish it was easier to find out the name of flowers you don’t know. This one is an oldie; my mom grew it when I was a kid in Queens, New York, in her beautiful garden. It grows well up here in Seattle and reseeds itself. It’s two or three feet tall, and kind of hard to photograph, with deep, brilliant magenta flowers and silvery foliage. I figure magenta is a kind of pink, so I’m including it for Pink Saturday.

Does anyone know the name? I’d be so grateful.

The great thing about Skywatch Friday is the amount of looking up we all do now. This scene was from a hardware store parking lot. You can see showers falling a few miles away, but all was balmy and beautiful overhead.

This small park in Renton WA on the Cedar River is so small or unimportant it doesn’t show on our AAA map. But it’s lovely and perfect on a warm day. We went to be someplace cool and quiet, and rested on the grass and looked at the leaves. It was wonderful.

In terms of Think Green Thursday, even though parks are not wilderness, they remind us of how powerful and meaningful the simple outdoors experience can be.

There was a Fourth of July vintage autos exhibition at the Normandy Park Cove, and on a recent walk this specimen was in the neighborhood as evidence. I took a photo of the rear trunk plate because I’d never heard of a Kaiser car. Hope you like it.

Seattle has an International Festival in the International District which really seems to be Chinatown, mostly. We went last year, had a great time, and were glad to see it was bigger this year, but I could do without the amplified karaoke. There was wonderful dancing on the Dragon Stage by several Punjabi groups, and the vendors included a food carver, below. Red is the color of good fortune in China, you know, so there was lots everywhere.

For even more red, visit Ruby Tuesday. And for more seriously bright colors, visit Color Carnival.

These shasta daisies are a yellow color that I haven’t seen before. I saw then on a walk in the neighborhood the other day. Nothing like seeing what grows in your neighbors’ yards for ideas about what to plant. I’ll have to try these, I think.

For more close up shots of everything imaginable, visit Macro Monday, and for more golden goodness, visit Mellow Yellow Monday. And have fun, hear?

Did you know that the “hydra” in hydrangea means these plants love water? Up here in Seattle they can take full sun, but they must have water and plenty of it. You can also root the pruned stems very easily. When pruning in the spring, just poke the extra stems in the soft ground where they will be shaded by the mother plant, keep all moist, and you will be amazed by how easily they root. New plants!

This lovely specimen is from a friend’s garden. Happy Flowers for Today!

I was lucky enough to be invited to tea at the home of a talented tea-maker, complete with little triangle sandwiches with the crust cut off. The weather was as superb as it gets, and here is a little slice of that heaven, with shadows. For more creative shadows seen in the most interesting places, visit Shadow Shot Sunday.

I admire the restraint in planting one color of flower like this. I can’t seem to help wanting one of each color. The best I can do is plant groups of similar plants in different colors, which is just not as impressive as one huge color splash like this one. A neighbor’s garden on a walk the other day was so perfectly pink I had to share it. Happy Pink Saturday to all!

Last week we had such fabulous weather. I was in Seattle driving downtown and during stopped traffic, out my open car window, shot this photo. It’s like two buildings and skies in one!

For more visions of skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

Everyone loves to grow tomatoes but not everyone knows how to make sure there are lots of tomatoes on the vines. With bees experiencing serious decline for unknown reasons (although I seem to see more this year than last year in my own garden), pollination can be a problem.

The solution? You! Assisted flower sex is the answer, and you get tomatoes for your trouble. Unless you are a farmer with acres of tomatoes, for a few backyard plants you can make a big difference in yield by going around your plants with a child’s little paintbrush, or even a cotton swab, and brushing each little yellow flower in turn. Do this every few days to catch as many flowers as possible, and you will be amazed at the results. And it’s fun!

Visit Think Green Thursday for more takes on the meaning of green.

This is from a neighborhood yard. Such a lovely specimen of a Japanese Maple. I love this photo and hope you don’t mind me counting raindrops as water for Watery Wednesday.

We went to the Normandy Park Cove beach for the fireworks on Saturday. It was a gas, filled with fun and adrenaline as errant fireworks occasionally zoomed by. And it was loud, too, believe me, since so much was set off at once. But I have NEVER seen such a red sky. Maybe it was all the smoke from all the fireworks being detonated everywhere, but there it was.

For more rubiness, visit the inimitable Ruby Tuesday.

Oh, let’s try a new meme. After all, there are plenty of yellow flowers in the garden, so why not? The name of this one is Broadway. Pop on over to Mellow Yellow Monday for more kinds of yellow seen by people with cameras around the planet.

And since it’s a close up, let’s check out Macro Monday as well. Two for one!

My sister drove me past this field on Friday. It is her favorite. She loves the faint magenta color of some of the plants, and the way there are soft drifts of color. When I asked her to stop the car so I could take a picture, she said, “I KNEW you’d want to do that.” She does know me, I guess.

For more scenic photos here and there and everywhere, visit Scenic Sunday.