The boys and I took a drive after dinner last night. Baseball practice for Johnny was cancelled due to rain, but we wanted to get out for a few minutes anyway. I spotted these gorgeous irises growing along the sidewalk at The Garden Hut, and just had to stop and take some pics. There was a pause in the rain when I started, but as I shot, the rain picked up, and there are a few shots where you can see a few raindrops.
I almost cannot believe that I am posting a B&W flower shot. So not the typical me. Yet I was inspired to try this shot in B&W and then totally grabbed by it once I did, so here you have it!
I was out riding my bike and saw these lovely bearded iris in my neighbor's yard. I couldn't help but come back and take a few pics. The homeowner came out, and we chatted a bit. I have permission to come back and some tips on other lovely flowers to look for over the next few months.
After a doctor's appointment yesterday which happened to be near Duke Gardens, Donnie offered to take me back over to Duke Gardens for Tulips Round #2. Wow! Really?!? Way cool!
The sun was out, and I enjoyed working my way through all the flower beds again in search of fantastic light or a great angle and more bold color. I liked what I came away with and thanked Donnie very much for giving me another chance to walk among the flowers.
The tulips really were not easy to photograph. Some of the flowers were huge and the bulbs were planted kindof spaced out with ground cover under them. I had trouble getting the angle and dof that I wanted.
We came across this marker for the 36th parallel. Very neat! I had the hardest time flash or not no matter what mode getting the lettering to show up in the bright sun. Donnie's shadow helped me get most of it.
I really wasn't sure how yesterday was going to turn out. It started out chilly and cloudy and I was depressed thinking about all the things I wanted to do if only the weather would cooperate.
Madi had such a good time Saturday afternoon that she was ready to go doing something fun on Sunday too, so she got me thinking about just what could we do. I boiled some hot dogs and packed a picnic somehow without the kids seeing and set off in the car with them to find a nice picnic spot. I decided on Crowder Park which has a very nice playground that's usually full of kids If we show up at a playground that's empty the kids never seem to enjoy it as much as if they get to run with the pack of other kids at the park.
We picked one of the smaller mini playgrounds for our lunch area and then walked around the pond on our way to the big playground. This was also a great strategy for getting the kids to do the walk around the pond with me...not their favorite part of the park.
The kids loved the hot dog idea, thought it was hilarious that this squirrel tried to join our picnic several times, and were thrilled to find tent caterpillars to carry around. I enjoyed the azaleas and hearing frogs and taking my first dragonfly picture of the year. The kids met up with a boy Madi's age on the big playground, and they were acting out scenes from Star Wars. It was a good time.
Since the day was going pretty good, and the sun had come up, I decided to make the trek over to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Now I've been here before with the kids, and when I told them we were going they weren't too thrilled. See if you think they had fun or not. Sure seem like it to me!
It ended up being the perfect time to go to the gardens in my opinion. Azaleas, dogwoods, camellias, tulips and much more all in bloom!
Now the collage below is for all you photographers and parents out there that have ever tried to take a great picture of more than one kid at a time. What a comedy of errors this one was!
Part of the problem was that the center of the big cement dogwood flower was slippery. Add in childhood humor, rabbit ears, and everyone wanting to be in the middle all at once, and well, I didn't ever get quite the shot that I wanted. This one was the best.
I had pretty good success at just taking portraits of Madi by herself, though. I'm always impressed at how well she's able to naturally move and pose for the camera.
Here's a collage of the best flower shots I took at Duke Gardens. I didn't really have the light that I wanted and I know I didn't get a shot as good as the one I use for my Facebook timeline photo, but I still enjoyed seeing the tulips and taking the pics.
I so much wanted to have a great tulip shot yet I came away with other flowers/pictures that were better. This garden with the red and white combo of iris and tulip was my favorite.
I posted my second favorite as my daily. Purple iris with an orange flower background. The blue yellow combo and purple and white combo were also lovely!
For my daily post today, I am sharing a picture of the Stamp Mill at Reed Gold Mine. I looked for a video of it in operation on YouTube but didn't see one. It is in working order, and they do run it sometimes for school field trips, etc.
I really liked how this shot showed the leaves opening on the trees in the forest and how the path leads to the Stamp Mill. I ran 3 bracketed images through Photomatix but still wasn't 100% pleased with the result. I then ran the HDR'ed shot through Color Efex Pro and added a detail enhancing and color stylizing filter on it. I then also ran an Orton action on it but have decided not to post that version.
Yesterday the kids and I ended up at the Fuquay-Varina Easter Egg Hunt. Unfortunately, it was raining, so they just gave out buckets of eggs in the South Park Community Center Gym. It rained last year too. I hope next year the kids can really hunt for the eggs. I do appreciate that the town puts this event on and regardless of the weather. Hundreds of families turned out and enjoyed themselves.
The Easter Bunny was posing for pictures:-) I just had to strip the kids and bunny out of the original shot because the background was an off white cement block wall in the gym and was ugly. A gentle suggestion to the town would be to invest in a piece of cheap fabric as a backdrop for next year:-)
We caught up with Madi later in the day for dinner on our back deck and a trip to Porter Farms and Nursery for opening weekend. Yes, there are strawberries already!!! Not pick your own yet, but you can buy a bucket if they haven't sold out for the day yet. You can see the kids posing with some of the girls that work there. What fun!
And, even the local Garner VFD has to get their ice cream somewhere. Imagine being a kid at the local ice cream store and the fire truck pulling up! The guys let Johnny and Madi who were very interested into the cab for a few minutes. Thanks!
I mentioned in my last blog post that I had a shot of Donnie sharpening the blades on my lawn mower. Here's the best one. Pretty cool but just not a daily shot I didn't think. Johnny and I were behind a window inside the house watching. Donnie of course had on all the proper safety equipment.
Decisions, decisions, so hard to pick what to post today... I want to spend at least one more day sharing pictures from our trip to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC.
I decided to post the anole shot eating a cricket because I felt really lucky to capture this moment as everyone else was paying attention to the elephant trainer. I usually have 1 good anole shot a year, so I'll consider this the one for 2012.
Here's a collage of all the flowers at the gardens and zoo that I really liked.
I hope you felt like you got to go to the zoo with us. It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to going again sometime.
Donnie did maintenance on my dad's lawnmower yesterday, and I got some cool shots of him sharpening the blades with sparks flying. Maybe I will post one of those tomorrow or at least include it in my blog.
Today is't raining and Joey's baseball scrimmage is canceled and the Fuquay-Varina egg hunt is being moved indoors and no longer a real egg hunt Bummer. Everything I want to do today is outside but the weather just is not cooperating.
Just in case you somehow missed it, the Angry Birds are back with a new app Angry Birds Space! That's right, just when you might have thought Angry Birds was fading, they're back with new costumes and, according to J&J, some great new powers.
During our road trip, we stopped at a Wal-Mart, and they had several displays with new Space-themed merchandise and advertisements for the new app. Who could resist?!? We needed another t-shirt, right? Just too cute to pass up!
The boys wore their shirts into the Riverbanks Zoo, and at the end of the day we met up with a young boy wearing a St. Patrick's Day themed lucky Angry Birds shirt, and the boys compared notes and playing styles.
Donnie's wife. Mom to Joey 14 and Johnny 13. Trying to do all sorts of cool stuff with life. Taking 1000's of pictures a month to preserve the memories.
