Tips, tricks, and tools for gardening in a forest community
Achillea millefolium, not Queen Anne’s Lace
Caladium
Rose
Coreopsis
Hibiscus
Colocasia
Hydrangea
Coleus with Colocasia
Salvia
~
Gardenia
Posted in Color, Flower Gardening, Foliage, Four Season Garden, Garden Resources, Gardening addiction, Gardening in Williamsburg, Geometry, Nature art, Nature Photography, Perennials, Perma-culture, Photography, Plant photos, Poetry, Summer Garden, Symmetry, Texture, Weather, weekly challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge, Zone 7B Cultural Information
~
With the Black and White Photo Challenge completed, my fascination with the photos continues.
~
~
Here is a final post of selected photos which didn’t make it into the five ‘official’ posts, and links back to the photographers I invited to the challenge over the last week. Please visit with them when you have a moment. Although I’ve finished the challenge, they are still posting wonderful photos. These are wonderfully creative bloggers and photographers. You will enjoy the time you spend visiting them.
~
~
With appreciation to Eliza, who invited me to the challenge…
~
~
~
When the Osprey Eagles re-build their nests and lay the next generation of chicks, I finally trust that it is spring. After months of “empty nest syndrome,” we happily spotted brooding Ospreys in all of the familiar trees along the Colonial Parkway between Williamsburg and Jamestown.
~
~
Bald Eagles call to one another in the skies above, and birds of all descriptions may be seen perching on rotting bits of wood along the river bank.
~
~
Ah, the river has come back to life!
This is the fifth day of the Black and White Photo Challenge which I accepted from Eliza Waters.
So far, I’ve passed it along to Robin, Sarah, Creekrose, and Jane. You may recall that Jane completed the challenge last month, and you will find links to her posts in my fourth post. I hope you are visiting all of these intriguing writers and photographers. Their black and white photos, poetry and prose are stunning.
Today I am inviting John of A Walk In the Garden to the challenge. John, a Master Gardener, enjoys the warmer climate of Charlotte, North Carolina. John and I share a love for our gardens and flowers. We are “dirty hands” gardeners; trying new cultivars, watching for each leaf and flower to come into its prime, and routinely digging in the dirt.
I’m always inspired by his Monday Vases, a collaboration between him and his beloved “arranger.” Although John is still pondering this invitation, I hope he will decide to play along.
~
There are two bald eagles roosting near their nest in the trees across the creek, to the left of the bridge. When you enlarge this photo, you may be able to see them.
~
It has been an “eye opening” experience for me to see the familiar in a new way through black and white photography, and I hope that John will enjoy this experience as well.
If you would like to participate in the challenge, and have not been invited by a blogging friend, please accept this invitation from me.
I invite you, now, to explore the world of black and white photography. Please accept my invitation in your first post with a link back to this page. I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment with a link, as well, so I will make sure to find your post.
The rules of the Black and White Photo Challenge are simple:
Although this is my last official challenge post, I will continue to use black and white photos on occasion because of the unique perspective they offer. But now I want to share one more photo, taken this afternoon in color. Although technically color, the effect feels very “black and white.”
~
~
These guys watched over us all afternoon as we worked out in the front garden.
My partner says that at times a few more showed up, but these buzzards remained our faithful companions. I’m not quite sure what they expected…. or hoped for.... but let’s just say that we are fine this evening, and so is the cat!
~
We celebrated the sunny afternoon with a drive to favorite spots along the Colonial Parkway. I wanted to see these familiar scenes through my “black and white” lens. Winter and early spring make for a good time to use black and white photos to explore texture and form.
Already spare, there is intriguing geometry in the landscape to see, undistracted by color.
~
~
The wind blew in chill off of the river, and the temperatures dropped through the 40s as we drove. The large nests along the way, empty these many months, have sitting eagles once again. I’ll share a photo or two of the Osprey mothers sitting their nests tomorrow.
The tide was very high today and moving strongly. We enjoyed the interesting textures created by wind on the water.
~
~
So much to see, so many interesting photographs to capture!
Yesterday, I invited Jane at Just Another Nature Enthusiast to join the challenge. Somehow I missed her Black and White Photo Challenge posts back in February! Please enjoy the gorgeous photos in her posts:
Day 1 Keeping an Eye Out, Day 2 Web At Wetland’s Edge, Day 3 Just Ducky, Day 4 Hoover Dam, Day 5 Saguaro Cactus.
Robin, over at Breezes at Dawn, has joined us with her first image. I just love how Robin can photograph a bit of driftwood and transform it into a piece of artwork you would love to frame and hang in your home. Robin lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where she takes stunning images of the beautiful wild landscapes of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding marshes.
Today I have invited Creekrose to join the challenge. Creekrose lives with her beautiful family on a small farm in far western Virginia. Mother, midwife, artist, storyteller, poet, and chef, she continues to delight those who know and love her with her joyful spirit and deep insight into life.
I hope you will visit her site, shared with her own eldest daughter, as she posts her black and white images over the next five days.
There are only two rules for the black and white photography challenge:
If you have not yet experimented with black and white photography, you may be surprised at the beautiful images you take. I believe that I will continue to explore photos in black and white, even beyond this photo challenge.
~
We bought our first tray of perennials last week, tiny little starts in two inch pots. I was surprised and delighted to find them so early, but couldn’t pass up the selection and the price.
We have more cold weather ahead, and so for now, we are keeping them in their pots in a sheltered spot on the deck. They are so pretty, their beautiful leaves full of promise.
After enjoying Eliza’s post of her Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) leaf and flower, I decided to photograph our tray of new perennials for this third post in the challenge series.
~
Foxglove
~
Eliza invited me to participate in this challenge, and I hope you’ll enjoy her photo today of White Ash bark, the fourth in her series.
Today I would like to invite Jane, of Just Another Nature Enthusiast to join the five day Black and White Challenge. Jane shows us the beautiful Pacific Northwest through her photographs. She is a conservationist, poet, teacher, and all around interesting person. I hope you will enjoy visiting her site.
Please also visit Sarah, at anordinarymiracleday, who accepted the challenge on Sunday.
Sarah learned some important lessons about black and white photography through the first set of photos she took. Like many of us participating in the challenge, she is also a novice at black and white photography. I love Sarah’s post because not only are her photos brilliant, but she has explained what she learned from this first set of photos clearly enough that we may all benefit from her insights:
“After reading the posts of several who are participating in the challenge, I noted that most of us are unaccustomed to black and white photography. I naively thought it would be the same as regular photos – just point and shoot an interesting scene and edit it to B&W.
It’s not quite so simple. Different rules apply when you remove color – when I looked at some of my photos in B&W they were just a jumble of unidentified objects. It made me realize how much we rely on color to identify and navigate our world.
So I decided to change tactics and use the absence of color to draw the eye to other attributes of the natural world that are beautiful, but under-appreciated. When I went back outside, I focused on various textures in the plants and landscape.
This tactic worked very well, especially as I found many of my subjects were drab and devoid of color at the ragged end of winter. They wouldn’t be very interesting in color photography, but they shine in black and white. So I hope that you will enjoy spending the next five days with me seeing the world through different eyes.” – Sarah
There are only two rules for the black and white photography challenge:
If you have not yet experimented with black and white photography, I hope you will give it a try this week. It truly does give one a new way of seeing the world through different eyes.
~
Heuchera, Lavender, Coreopsis, Foxglove and Salvia (clockwise from top center)
~
~
Could today be any more different than yesterday? Deep azure blue skies, brilliant sunshine, and mild temperatures make the first full day of spring believable. And it is Saturday, to top it off. What a gorgeous day! This is the day when I would normally use color to show you the pastel shades of budding trees against the deeply blue sky.
On day 2 of our Black and White photography challenge, I’ll show you the scene in black and white, inviting you to fill in those gorgeous colors from your own memories. These photo show the view which greets us from our back deck, looking out towards the ravine.
Eliza invited me to join the challenge on Friday. Please do take a moment to see her post today, showing ice crystals in her garden. Eliza’s post is the third in her series.
I am inviting Sarah, of “anordinarymiracleday” to join the black and white photo challenge today. Sarah writes wonderfully inspiring posts about the tiny ordinary miracles she encounters each day. Sarah has an artist’s eye and takes lovely photos. I hope she will join the challenge!
The rules are quite simple:
Another view of our budding trees; a gorgeous sunny day in black and white:
~
~
Eliza Waters invited me yesterday (dared me to try) to participate in the Black and White Photo Challenge. This is a very challenging challenge (an opportunity wrapped in a challenge.) You see, I haven’t taken any black and white photos since my little Brownie camera went along on field trips with me in the 1960s. I was raised in the age of Kodak, and I’ve happily used color film, and then color digital photography, for most every photo I’ve ever taken.
But because Eliza and I seem to agree on so many things, and find our interests so similiar; there was no answer possible but, “Yes.” And then I spent quite a bit of last evening trying to figure out how to either convert a photo already taken in color to a black and white image ( read: trying to figure out the multiple editing software programs I own and barely use) or to take a black and white photo in the first place with my beloved little Nikkon.
So, I stretched, and I learned something new. Once I found the well-put away instruction booklet, it took only a bit more time to learn how to access and use the right menu to convert to black and white photography.
And then of course, it rained all day today. No mind. I own hats and coats. So I was out in the rain this afternoon celebrating the Equinox by photographing everything I could find which looked “fresh” and new…. in both color and black and white.
So I offer you my first attempts here. For a dull day, the images may not be too dull to post.
In the spirit of the challenge, and of friendship, I pass this on by inviting one of my favorite blogging photographers, Robin, of Breezes at Dawn, to join Eliza and me in this five day Black and White Challenge.
Robin lives and gardens on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She documents the changing of seasons, her beautiful coastline and gardens, and the local wildlife with exquisite photographs. I especially love the images she captures of birds. She must be a hummingbird whisperer, because she captures such wonderful photos of these little jewels in flight. I hope you will watch for her photos each day of this challenge, and perhaps choose to follow her, as I do.
The guidelines are blessedly simple and clear:
Even in this season when the world bursts into glorious color once again, I believe that there are beautiful images to capture in black and white. This is a new adventure, and if you have not yet tried it yourself, perhaps you’ll figure your camera out in advance should you be invited to join in next!
~
The roses, which still need spring pruning. Once this cold snap passes…..
~
Forest Garden 