Snowmaker

Utah should hire me to go visit - often. They wouldn't have a drought to deal with because I make it snow when I go out. Last year this is the result of an overnight storm that I made appear. Sometimes it's just a few flakes and sometimes . . . well what can I say?

What you are looking at is my son-in-law going through the snow for me so we'll be able to tell how deep it is - notice the ice on the rock under the snow. It is really thick.

Hole in the Wall

While on a ROAD TRIP!! from Cedar City, UT to Ft. Sill, OK and then to NC, I passed this place and had to stop for a photo op. I wonder how many people have these photos in their vacation pictures?

I know I have the location of this place written down but for now
I'll be vague and tell you it is in Texas. Great detective work, hunh? The license plate . . . I'm about 95% sure it was in Claude, TX.

UPDATE: It was Claude, TX and a stranger contacted me to say that the story is that a car really did go through the wall and they decided to incorporate it in the decor. It wasn't this car that did the damage. They also said the car goes all the way through and they use the front end as a table for condiments and stuff. Cool.

Late Afternoon Sun

These photos are from last summer at - you guessed it - Duke Gardens. What can I say? When I go there I know I'm going to see awesome stuff.

I love how the sun is behind and going through the petals of the lily.

Passion for Flowers

This is called a Passionflower and I took it's picture last summer at Duke Gardens. I LOVE THIS PHOTO! It is what I have on the desktop of my computer and if you look online, like I did, you'll find it is a better picture than those on the sites for flowers. Even with the ant on the petal and the spot of pollen you can see when it is enlarged! so there.

Strange flower, isn't it? Almost alien with those thingies on top.

Fall Color

November 2007

I went on a trip to Oklahoma and went through the Blue Ridge Mountains on the weekend that was supposed to be the peak color weekend. Since I has visited the mountains in past years to see the glorious color, I know that this past year was an off year and the color was nothing compared to previous years. I was halfway through Tennessee before I saw the pretty colors I was looking for and they still weren't up-to-snuff. These pictures do show the beautiful sky and some of the leaves I saw. I had a great trip but was glad I hadn't made a special trip to the mountains just to see the colors.

Allie and Flowers

This picture is pretty special to me for two reasons. I had taken care of Allie for six months and it was time to take her home to my daughter in Utah and I was going to miss my little gran-dog. I wanted to get some pictures of her at Duke Gardens and I wanted pictures of me with her. My brother was a good photographer so I asked him to go with me. After quite of number of years of Bryan distancing himself from our family, he was making the effort to spend time with me and I was thrilled. This two hours of wandering around the gardens was one of several times in the next couple of years. We talked about a lot of things and got to know the adult siblings we had become. The following year after our "photo shoot", we went back for another special walk. Bryan had been diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer and it was the beginning of months of illness.

There will be a lot of photos on this blog and most will be from a special memory.

Flowers

I have a lot of pictures of nature or buildings or whatever that I want to show off because it's part of me. Things I like, things I find strange or pictures that are just because.

Flowers will be a big part of my pictures. I love to look at them, photograph them, smell them, heck, just the fact that they exist makes me happy. This was taken at Duke Gardens on Easter Sunday. The photo of the flowering tree that is the background on my blog is from the same place on the same day.