Photohunters: String(s) and Day six of the Opening Doors Challenge

All week I thought that the photohunt theme this week was wild, and next week was strings. I thought it would work well to show you my wild home for both the last day of the opening doors challenge and for the photohunt theme. At first, when I found out this week was strings for PH, I was flustered until I realized there are strings in my wild environment, in case I ever want to be tidy (like that's going to happen).On the left hand side of the picture, you can see the open door which leads onto my deck from the yard. The door in the middle with the lamp shining through leads from my bedroom onto the deck. Have you found the strings yet? You may have to click inside for an enlargement to see them but there are vertical strings on the wall which is on the right hand side which can be used to support the wild and stringy vines which are growing over the deck wall.
The shot above shows you the top of the door leading into my greenhouse. If you look closely, you may see the horizontal strings which are there to support my roses. If you enlarge the picture you can see the vertical strings on the left side of the greenhouse which used to support clematis until they were killed by a drought and currently support morning glories.
Above is my front door with the virginia creeper which sprung up wild and is growing all over the railing, attaching to the house, and goes around the door. The vine is useful as string when I pull it up.
The last shot shows the doorway of the barn at an old farm house where I lived with friends for a while when I took a break from college in 1977. One of my friends who I lived with, visited in between our 50th birthdays and we checked out the now abandoned farmhouse and barn. A wee bit sad to see it so overgrown with stringy vines covering the barn.

Thank you Jjentje for coming up with this fun opening doors challenge and as always thank you to TNchick for the photohunt. The opening doors challenge was hosted at Heaven in Belgium and for photohunt you can go to PhotoHunt or photohunt

Day Five of Opening Doors

Note - If anyone early photohunters are here. The parallel live photohunt I do with SabineM is up at Snap2Days but my personal photohunt will go up here later as a combo with Day 6 of the door challenge.
Thursday morning I went to my UNC follow-up and everything checked out fine which is always a relief. Thank you for the kind well wishes left in the comments on my last post. That means a lot to me. After my appointment, I went across the street to the NC Botanical garden and did manage to photograph some doors. The hut above and below, whose doorway I'm featuring, is nestled in the Native American herb garden and is a replica of the huts in which members of the Occaneechi tribe dwelled in.This is a project constructed by Eagle Scout Joe Johnston and Chief Blackfeather of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. It is constructed of cedar saplings, rawhide and straw thatch. Traditionally the roof would have been made of river reed and was covered with animal skins during the winter. . . . The Occaneechi descendants have recreated a tribal village in Hillsborough, NC which celebrates their heritage, culture and lifestyle. The italics part is taken directly from the plaque beside the hut. Hillsborough, NC is 12 miles from Chapel Hill where the garden is located and the Occaneechi lived in that area along the Eno River.The door above is to a miniature house which sits on a table in another part of the garden. They don't have any information on the miniature.
The house has a little tree made of twine sitting beside it which I thought was fun. It was easier to photograph this miniature house than the full size hut. The hut was nestled in the herb garden in a way that meant to photograph the whole structure, I would have had to stand on plants. The shot below shows just how small this little house is.To find other opening doors posts, please visit Heaven in Belgium.

Opening Doors Day 4

The first two days of this challenge I showed you doors in Durham, NC and yesterday I showed you doors in my hometown where I still live (Raleigh, NC) and now I'll show you a garden in the third town, Chapel Hill, NC, which makes up the triangle. Each town has a major university and the research triangle park is in the middle so there is a lot of back and forth in this area. The door above is to the Paul Green cabin at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.
The gates above were temporary doors into the garden, when I visited it last September. They have temporary Art in Garden exhibits in the fall and the gates and other features as well as sculpture were part of the temporary exhibits. I went there last year after my oncology appointment at The University of North Carolina since the garden is across the street from the road leading to the cancer center. Below is another gate which was there last fall and was the door leading into the mountain habitat garden where the Paul Green cabin has been since being moved there.
If I have time, I'm going to go for another quick walk through the garden after my oncology appointment today (Thursday). I have not had a melanoma recurrence since my lymph nodes were removed from the affected basin, after one was positive in March of 2005. I do have a lot of doctor's appointments both as a follow up for the cancer as well as for subsequent issues I've had since after the dissection. I try to combine photo shoots with appointments to take the bad taste out of my mouth.
I will definitely be looking for doors today in Chapel Hill if I have the time. To find other doors from around the world, please go see the host of this challenge at Heaven in Belgium.

Opening Doors Day Three

I went by the house I grew up in this past spring and took some pictures. I cropped the door out for the opening doors challenge. My parents moved into that house shortly before I was born in 1957 and my mom was there until the end of her life in 1990, and my Dad stayed until near the end of his life in 1998. The door appears to be the same one that was there when my Dad sold the house in 1997 although the greenery he started around the door has become much more established, and the current owners have done a lot of landscaping. The shot above isn't officially part of opening doors challenge since I didn't take the shot, but I couldn't resist throwing it in. That's my brother and I standing in front of the screen door which was there prior to central air conditioning, after central A.C. the glass door took its place on the outside of the wooden door.
While I'm opening doors on memory lane I thought I'd show you some shots I took of one of the doors on the church I went to when I was growing up, and where I also took my daughter to when she was growing up. The shot above is of one of the side doors into Christ Episcopal Church in dowtown Raleigh, NC (U.S.). My Dad was the Rector there for over 35 years so lots of memories behind those doors. I guess you could say the arches above which lead into the courtyard of the Church are sort of the open doors of the church. To your left there is a door into the bell tower.

To join the opening doors challenge or find other open doors, please visit Heaven in Belgium.

Opening Doors Day 2

Monday was Labor Day, a U.S. holiday, and since Bill and I were both off work we went to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. The open door above leads into the Terrace cafe, nestled in the garden. Although we ate lunch after we left the gardens, I thought the open door was appealing.From one part of the garden, you can see Duke Chapel. I zoomed in from a distance and then cropped out the door as you can see below. Not a great shot but I thought I'd throw it in. This "chapel" has 3 pipe organs and seats 1,600 people.After we left the gardens and had lunch, we went to the part of town which used to be a warehouse district for tobacco companies. After the tobacco companies left, as part of revitalizing downtown Durham they renovated the buildings to use for performing arts, businesses, exhibits, and other purposes. In the American Tobacco Historic District there is a massive water feature running through the area for several city blocks.
Believe it or not, the old train is part of the water feature. You can see the door to what I assume is the caboose above and below how it fits into the water feature.
So that's the hodgepodge of doors I saw this Labor Day: a garden cafe, a chapel, and a train door. If anyone is interesting in joining this fun challenge or wants to find other participants, please head on over to Heaven in Belgium.

Weekend Snapshot 52 and the Opening Doors Challenge

Here I am with another combo post for weekend snapshot and a new challenge. When I heard that Jienje who blogs at Heaven in Belgium was starting a new challenge that would run from Monday September 1 through Saturday, I doubted I'd be able to participate so soon after having done 3 challenges in a row. However, since I loved the idea of an "Opening Doors" challenge, I spent a little time over the weekend looking through my photography for doors and, or entrances of any kind.
Although I didn't shoot these photographs this week, I figure they qualified for weekend snapshot since I cropped out the doors from photography I took previously and I did locate them in my archives over the weekend. To an extent it was a weekend project.These doors are located at the old part of the medical campus at Duke University in Durham, NC, US. They go to show you that a beautiful door doesn't always lead to something pleasant. The opposite can be true with shabby doors leading into a fairly pleasant home (my doors at home are pretty tattered). These doors took me into an oral surgeon's office where my impacted tooth was pulled, OUCH.
Who guessed that teeth are pulled behind these doors? The H on the side of the door is a clue that it's part of the hospital complex. I did get a pretty good photo shoot out of the ordeal and I posted full shots of the building in old posts. However, I never cropped out the doors, so this is somewhat new. If anyone is interested in joining the opening doors challenge, you can check it out at Heaven in Belgium on Monday.
If anyone is interested in Weekend Snapshot, that is a Monday meme. Weekend Snapshot

Photohunt: Beautiful and Day 7 of Bridging the Gap

I am combining my photohunt post with the last day of Bridging the Gap. Alice mentioned that she may turn this into a weekly challenge for anyone who is interested so be sure to check out her site if you are interested. The photohunt theme this week is beautiful. I thought I would feature a walk which included a bridge on one beautiful day from each of the four seasons.
The shot above was taken in November of 2007 at Shelley Lake which is close to where I live. You can see the long bridge better if you click inside the picture but the bridge itself isn't particularly unique. None of these bridges for my last day of the challenge are particularly special but they are pleasant to walk across on beautiful days throughout the year. I've even slid on parts of them when they were icy although I'm not quite that adventurous any more.
The second photograph was shot in February 2008 and was taken at Lake Lynn which is also close to where I live. I don't go there that often because Shelley Lake has a 53 acre park and many side trails so I tend to go to the lake one mile from me as opposed to the one that is two miles from me. Lake Lynn has a long bridge which you can see above in the winter shot. It's a much smaller park than the one at Shelley Lake but it has a longer bridge. The shot above shows two bridges on a beautiful May day in 2008 when all the trees have leafed out. I was walking on one of the many side trail which extend out from Shelley Lake.
I end where I started, back at Shelley lake looking at the bridge, but this time it's a beautiful morning a few weeks ago in August of 2008. I have enjoyed this bridge challenge so much and thanks to Alice at Born2cree8 for coming up with it.

To find beautiful photohunter posts you can go to PhotoHunt or photohunt

Day 6 of Bridging the Gap

If anyone is here for my photohunt post, I will be posting that early Saturday morning with Day 7 of the Bridge Challenge, instead of early like I usually do. However, Snap2Days, my parallel lives photoblog with SabineM has our Photohunt "Beautiful" post up now. This is my post for Day 6 of Bridging the Gap.
The shot above shows two parallel bridges. The one in the front is a foot bridge over the creek which water from the lake I frequently walk around pours into. The bridge in the back is the road which goes over the creek, as well as over the walking path which goes under the road.The shot above shows the bridge which goes under a bridge on the other side of a tunnel. The tunnel is how you walk under the road by the creek. I'm having a hard time making my sentences comprehensible in this post so I'm hoping the photographs make it more or less obvious what I'm saying.On the opposite side of the dam and the lake, there is another tunnel I walk through and another bridge I walk under, and after I walk a ways I come to the bridge above. I like this walk during the different seasons. Above is a summer shot and below is a winter shot of the same bridge.
If you want to find other bridge shots please go to the site of the host of this challenge at I was born2cree8.

Day 5 of Bridging the Gap

For day five of the bridge challenge, I thought I'd feature the foot bridges in the neighborhood park where I grew up. When I was a child, the only bridge across the park's creek was the one above. It has been repaired and changed but is similar to the bridge that was there when I was a toddler in the late 1950s. As a girl in the 60s if we wanted to cross the creek at any other point we jumped, hopped stones or climbed across limbs like the one below (although I shot that limb at another park).
I think our physical development was greatly aided by having to jump, hop and skip to bridge the gap, unless we walked to the one bridge. These days I guess kids have to find other ways to build their strength because there are now 5 bridges in this fairly small park.The bridge above is located in a spot where I perfected my broad jump back when there wasn't a bridge. We would get a running start and jump, with the occasional accidentally on purpose falls into the creek. We didn't have a picnic shelter back then either. I liked the absence of such amenities since the park was my enchanted forest, where a wicked witch turned me into a human being. Enchanted forests and picnic tables don't really go together. By the way I was a flower fairie until the witch changed me into a human girl, just so you know.
If memory serves, the metal rail bridge above went in when I was a teenager in the early 1970s. I think that was the second bridge to be put into the park.

I guess I'll end this trip down memory lane there because I fear I was up to no good as a teenager hanging out in the park.

To find other bridging the gaps posts please visit the host of at I was born2cree8.

Day 4 of Bridging the Gap

I had to crop this out of a much larger shot and it's still hard to see the little stone bridge which is on the trail around the pond at the Moses H. Cone Memorial Park in Blowing Rock, NC.The second shot which is a crop from another picture shows the bridge somewhat better. You can click inside to enlarge but neither really does justice to the little bridge. I was shooting large landscapes and had to do a major crop to show the bridge at all. You can see the horses better in the first shot if you enlarge it.The last shot was taken at Cannon Gardens in Blowing Rock, NC. I have a different issue with this shot. I took a closeup to get the detailed rocks and I'm honestly not sure if this is technically a bridge at all. Next time I'm in Blowing Rock I'll have to refresh my memory. My mother was from near there and I still have a lot of family in that area.

This fun challenge is being hosted by Alice at I was born2cree8 and other participants can be found there.