With May ending and summer coming on soon, I am posting a variety of drive by shots I've taken this spring.
The first shot is of a neighbor's flowers that I pass on the way out of my neighborhood. If my neighbors notice me, I'm sure they wonder why I slow down and point my camera at their driveway. The next two shots were taken at stop lights around town (Raleigh, NC).
I'm moving backyards with this post. The first three shots in this post were taken this May.
The next two shots were taken at the end of April when I was looking for a parking place at North Carolina State University.
I love the cluster of iris below. I have a few of the same iris at my house but mine are mixed with other iris as well as lilies.
The rest of the drive by shots were taken in March of this year when I was out and about.
I always enjoy the daffodils in early spring and miss them now they have all finished blooming.
The next three shots are in my neighborhood and it's kind of funny how much I do drive by flower shooting close to home.
The vantage point of a car makes me look in a different way than I do when walking. I'm also not quite as shy when photographing from the car. The good thing about drive by shooting near home is I can slow down almost to a stop and take quick shots when there aren't any other cars around. I don't do it if someone is behind me.
The last shot is of a Durham, NC park with the Durham city farmer's market pavilion showing. The area in the shot is conveniently located at the end of one of the parking lots for the company I work for. Normally I work from home but I go to the Durham office from time to time for photo opportunities, oops, I mean for meetings or to pick up work.
To view flowers from around the world, please visit the home of Today's Flowers.
The photohunters theme this week is memorial. I thought I'd show you some photos I have taken of Raleigh, NC's Memorial Auditorium.
Memorial Auditorium was built in 1932 to replace the original 1912 City Auditorium which burned down in 1930. It was named Memorial Auditorium to honor Raleigh citizens who served their country during World War I.
This coming Monday is Memorial Day which is a day of remembrance in the U.S. for those who died in their nation's service. Formerly called Decoration Day, this day was first celebrated at the end of the American Civil War to honor those who died in that war. The first observance was in 1866 in Waterloo, NY. The alternate name of Memorial Day was first used in 1882 in some places, but didn't become more common until after World War II. In 1967 Memorial Day became the official name and was signed into federal law. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Saturday is the post day on the home site of Photohunters.
For this week's nature notes I thought I'd post a variety of shots I've taken recently of some of the animals that share my home environment with me. Not inside my home but outside in my garden.I get so much pleasure out of being able to listen to and watch a variety of wildlife in my yard and on my deck. The female cardinal below isn't as easy to spot as the bright red male ones I photograph more often.
It's amazing to me me how much life can be supported by a home garden. The butterfly weed below is coming up all over my yard. I planted some years ago and at this point it covers large sections of my garden and the bees and butterflies love it.
The wilder my yard gets and the less I tend my garden the more animals it supports in some ways. I remind myself of that fact when I feel down about how I don't have the energy to garden in the same way I used to. The rofous-sided towhee below is one of the few birds whose call I recognize because it's very distinctive.
The carolina wren are usually too fast for me to photograph but the one in the next three shots gave me a number of clear shots for a change.
I never realized how light and what a solid color the wren's stomach is before.
I'm so used to spotting them because of the stripe on their head and the darker brown on their backs and wings.
I'm happy to start seeing a lot of butterflies or perhaps they are moths.
Reading about how to identify the difference between moths and butterflies isn't helping me much.
The catbird cracks me up for some reason. They are noisy much of the time. The one below was staying rather still for me to take its picture.
I took a ton of shots of this robin. She really cracked me up the way she looked at the water.
Then she (or maybe he) turned around and warned off a brown creeper who also wanted a bath.
Finally she jumped in for a long luxurious soak all by herself.
When she finally decided she's had a long enough bath she let the brown creeper have a turn.
For other participants in nature notes, you can go to Rambling Woods. The official nature notes and signs of the season day is Thursday.
Every day my hydrangea bushes are having more color and more blooms forming.
I like the variety with some of the blooms changed all the way to blue and some still mixed with immature blooms.
I started with one hydrangea, pictured below, which got to be very large.
About five years ago, I noticed that part of the hydrangea was like a separate plant. I investigated and was able to dig up the part that was to one side and crowding the entrance to my back garden. I planted that in the back garden and it's now a large plant of it's own. That's the baby below. It quickly catching up in size to its parent.
The parent plant has put out another baby in the place where I divided it. If I ever get the energy, I'll dig up that new section and start another new bush.
I love to be able to get new plants by dividing old ones. A lot of my garden has been expanded that way.
I never realized that you could divide hydrangea bushes but after my success with that one I read about how you can dig up the original bush and divide the root ball. That never would have worked with mine. The parent bush was much too large to dig up, at least in terms of my digging ability. What I've discovered is if the bush has room, it can spread out with new parts having some of their own roots. If you dig up the part with it's own roots and cut away the ones attaching it to the parent, you have a new plant with little disturbance to the large parent plant.
To view flowers around the world, please visit the home of Today's Flowers.
The photohunters theme this week is monthly. For this post I went into my monthly photo folders for 2009 and picked some photographs.
The shot above was take at the NC Art Museum park in Raleigh, NC in April of 2009.
Above is a screen shot of my monthly photo folders for 2009. The screenshots are hard to see at this size but I didn't realize that until they were already in a format that can't be enlarged so what you see is what you get. The next shot was in my monthly photo folder for May of 2009 and was taken in Wilmington, NC which is on the coast.
Below is a screen shot of my general 2010 photo folders which are monthly. However, within each of the monthly folders are separate folders for most days. The folders on the right of the screen shot are the daily folders for February 2010.
The next shot was in my monthly folder for July of 2009 and was taken in downtown Greensboro, NC.
In preparation for this post I selected a photo out of every one of the monthly folders for 2009 and you can see the screen shot below of what I picked.
I am not going to post all twelve of those shots because the post is getting pretty long without doing that.
I decided to pick out one photo from each town or city represented by the shots I selected from the monthly folders. The shot above was taken from the monthly folder for September 2009 and shows the entrance table at the NC Botanical garden in Chapel Hill, NC. The shot below was taken in August 2009 in the NC mountains just outside of Boone, NC.
The last shot was taken in Durham, NC in October of 2009 and I'm surprised how green it still was, at least in that part of the park. I had other photos in those folders showing some trees that were already changing to red but at this spot it looks more like summer to me.
To visit other photohunters, you can go to the home of the hunt where participants post beginning on Saturdays.
We were beginning to seriously need some rain so I was very happy that we finally got some. It was so great to see how green everything was at Shelley Lake when we walked around it in between storms on Sunday.
We timed it exactly right because a few hours after our walk it began to rain again.
There was even a bit of blue sky for part of the walk but I wouldn't have minded all clouds.
When the ground begins to be dry and cracked and the leaves are starting to wilt, there is nothing like deep soaking rain. I realize there has been flooding and too much rain at some places and I'm sorry about that but since we were overdue rain here, I'm glad we're getting plenty of it.
In the shot above there is a sandbar that I always check out on the lake because at different times of the year, there are different numbers and types of birds hanging out there.
As I got closer and zoomed in with my camera, I was surprised to see a great blue heron on the sandbar (actually there are two bars and grass is growing on one).
The herons are usually at two specific places on the lake where I spot them but I've never seen them on the sand bars before.
I got a lot of different shots of this one who was oblivious to me shooting from the bridge. Usually the herons at this lake fly off after I get a few shots.
The two white ducks curled up together on another part of the sandbar look very cozy to me.
Thursday is the official Nature Notes day and as usual my post is early.
