New Camera

I bought my daughter a Nikon CoolPix camera when she was in high school. When she got a job after college and bought herself a camera, she gave me the CoolPix. It took great pictures (see my blog posts from Alaska - I've included the tag - all those pix were taken with that little camera), but technology has advanced since then. My phone takes sharper pictures!

So - I picked up a NEW CoolPix (the S9500) and took it for a trial run today at the local botanic garden.

We're into serious fall here in the midwest. It was partly cloudy today, more clouds than sun. Also quite windy. The camera is almost completely automatic, so I was pleased to see there's great depth of field in this picture. 

Close-up came out far better than I expected!  Didn't notice the lighting effect when I snapped it. And it's focused in spite of the wind. 

Yep. Fall in the midwest. 

One outing and I'm liking the camera. The main issue will be teaching myself not to rest a finger of my left hand on the top where the flash pops up!  I'm practicing ...

Oh, and that NaNo thing I'm doing? The writer portion of my brain seems to be filled with flutter and fluff. No focus. No follow through.  I've written some thumbnails and one scene spread; no stories completed yet. I will keep flinging words at the page until a story happens.  And then another one ... and so on until the end of the month. 

Critter Day!

In an unusual turn of events, I left home before 7 AM this morning.  (On workdays I'm rarely out of bed before 8!)  The flowers at the botanic gardens were blooming in profusion and perhaps I'll share those pictures another time.  Critters became my focus today, starting with the first picture I took.

Guess the swans like to sleep in, too!  I roamed toward the English walled garden, then along the shore in the direction of the Japanese garden.

Sorry that one's a bit blurry.  Completely my fault.  The toad wasn't moving fast!  Just around the bend from the toad, a chipmunk scooted across the path, far too quickly for me to get a picture.  These little guys are everywhere; I see some every time I'm at the gardens.  Not far ahead was a bench.  I sat and watched.  My reward was a chipmunk approaching along a low stone wall.

Extra bonus was a second one (on the right) that I didn't know was there until I saw the photo.

Near where you enter and leave the gardens is a fountain.  The angle of sunlight was just right for a rainbow.  I took several pix from a distance.  When I moved closer I realized the cluster of photographers at the water's edge were not there solely for the rainbow.

The shore visible to the right is the western side of an island.  The swans were sleeping on the eastern side of that island when I arrived.

The swans continued on their way.

I headed off for iced coffee.

Moar Flowers

I posted a picture of prairie smoke HERE when it was blooming and said I'd try for a picture after it had set seed = "smoking."

I took this a couple weeks ago.  It's not the same patch as before - that one was finished seeding - but hopefully there are enough tufts remaining to give you the idea.

Here's another of my favorites that was in my garden:  wild columbine.  I couldn't locate the tag for the white flowers, so have no idea what they are.

Unlike most of the cultivars, wild columbine seeds freely and will show up in random places throughout the garden and yard.  It's fun - for the first few years.  After that, I made sure to deadhead the plants before the seeds ripened. 

A great plant for semi-shade is spiderwort.

The flowers bloom in the morning and usually close up by early afternoon.  

I'm sure you can tell I'm partial to native wildflowers, even when maundering through botanic gardens.  They were always my favorites in the garden.  Once established, they need minimal care and come back every year in larger clumps than before.

But I can also appreciate non-natives.  Here's a beautiful cluster of calla lilies.

Never tried to grow them - they wouldn't have fit with the other plants I had - but these are some awesome blooms.

The Summer Solstice is Friday.  Longest day of the year.  Don't forget to celebrate!

Some Spring Flowers

Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate. 

I recently made my first springtime visit to our local botanic gardens.  I love strolling the paths, checking out the various gardens, seeing how some of my favorite plants are doing.  The day I went it was a breezy, overcast 45° F (about 7° C).  The flowers were there, but not many animals.  I saw a few robins, two male red wing blackbirds challenging each other at the boundary of their territories.  A chipmunk dashed across the path in front of me.  Nothing fancy, like the pair of eagles I saw last spring. 

These foxgloves were near the parking lot.

One of my favorite areas is the landscape gardens, with a mix of native and imported plants.  Prairie smoke is native to the midwestern US short grass prairies.  I used to have some in my garden. 

It works well as a ground cover, grows about ankle high.  When the seeds are fully developed there will be white 'plumes' from what was a flower; that's where the name comes from.  If I time it right I might get a picture of that later in the season. 

The predominant flowers were tulips.  This is just one bed of many. 

Some varieties of crabapple trees have finished blooming and their petals are on the ground.   This one was just reaching its peak. 

It was a pleasant, if chilly, maunder.  Cleared the cobwebs from my mind.  Spring cleaning!