More Sunshine

Sunshine Community Garden is an easy bike ride from our house, so it’s hard not to visit.  I went by there yesterday and a surprising amount of plants are alive and healthy.  In other words, it’s nothing like our garden.

Lots of cosmos in bloom, and their spiky seed pods are so pretty.

Is this an allium? Their seed pods are gorgeous.

Summer is upon us! We are heading to New Mexico in a couple of weeks, and getting hitched while we’re there. It should be fun, just a few family members. And temperatures in the 50s at night in August!

Flowering trees

This is my submission for the July “Picture This” photo contest at Gardening Gone Wild. I’m sure my grandmother took this picture of my mom, probably in the early to mid 60s. Adorable, no? The photo was taken in the piney woods of East Texas, and the flowering tree looks like a Mexican plum, Prunus mexicana, though I’m not sure.   Maybe a flowering dogwood?  Understory flowering trees are my favorite; I could fill my whole yard with them.  I particularly love the pinnate-leaved ones, like huisache, acacia, mesquite, and goldenball lead tree.  That filtered shade is just lovely.  And of course my favorite is the Anacacho orchid tree, with its two-lobed leaves and bunches of white flowers.  Right now I am struggling to keep leaves on my little trees.  The weeping cypress and the fig are giving them up fast!

Some photography fun

In anticipation of our trip to Santa Fe in August, I updated my point-and-shoot to a new Canon SD960IS and also ordered a Nikon SB-400 flash for my SLR. The point-and-shoot is good, the most important thing is that the screen is 3 times the size of my old one! I am most excited about the flash, since the on-camera flash results in some really awful photos. I have been avoiding flash altogether. This isn’t the best photo, but it was taken in a really dark corner of the house where I would normally just not even try to take a picture. Other than the shopping bags (still have a Goodwill run to do!), it looks awesome! The light is just right. I am impressed.

I have also been playing with Pioneer Woman Actions for Photoshop, with a flash photo from the backyard of poor Kitty. (Poor Kitty hates having per picture taken, but she stands still, so of course she is the victim of my photography experiments.) These actions are a lot of fun. I need to take a Photoshop class to really master it, but these are an easy cheat until then. I love the Seventies one and the PW’s black and white.

PW’s black and white

Seventies

All of them

1. colorized, 2. cooler, 3. dim the lights, 4. heartland, 5. sepia tone, 6. seventies, 7. sharpen THIS!, 8. sunshine, 9. warmer, 10. B&W beauty, 11. boost, 12. define and sharpen, 13. fresh and colorful, 14. lovely and ethereal, 15. PW’s B&W, 16. slight edge burn, 17. slight lighten, 18. slight sharpen, 19. soft & faded, 20. vintage

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Gardening is over until fall. I’m struggling to keep everything alive through the drought. I’m glad we didn’t go all-out on the vegetable garden for summer!  Fall will be good.

I support the Clean Water Restoration Act

Please click here to find out more, and please support this important legislation to protect wetlands.

Natural Gardener tour

Last Saturday some friends and I went on a tour of the Natural Gardener led by Roger Igo and Rosina Newton.  We covered the butterfly garden, the vegetable garden, the herb garden, and the vineyard.  I took some notes on things that I would like to incorporate into my garden, particularly from their butterfly garden.  Both of them were knowledgeable and passionate about their work.  It was lovely spending the morning wandering around with them.  It was pretty warm, so I was dissuaded from taking home any souvenirs.  At this point I have given up on gardening until the fall vegetable garden gets going.  It is too damn hot!

Map of the promised land.

I believe this was called corkscrew willow, it was really gorgeous. It’s tucked away in my mind for future pond plantings.

From the vegetable garden.

Still here!

Gardening just holds no allure in this heat. Oh well.

We went to San Antonio for our friends’ wedding and had a good ol’ time. I had never been to El Mercado, so we dropped in for a little while and it was good fun.

This weekend we watched my 3-year old nephew, who is about as cute as they come. He likes trains and Dr Seuss and cookies and the car wash.

We went to the Battleship Texas and, although I’m sure he would have been just as happy at the car wash, it was fun for the adults.

Flickr favorites

1. Sugar Skull Pillow Closeup, 2. Tentacles, Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo, 3. LIMBO : 5, 4. *, 5. 藍鵲襲犬 Pup! Watch Out!, 6. Magnolia Beach, 7. don’t forget!, 8. Austin Bats, 9. Painter’s helper, 10. Put that down Forbo, 11. Untitled, 12. Untitled, 13. Rock Poster Wedding Invitation, 14. The small things, 15. Marilyn Rose Journal Quilt: Interstate 20 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, 16. Sun Done Gone

Quick trip

I went to Corpus Christi for work and managed to sneak in a couple of hours in the evening at the Padre Island National Seashore.  It was low tide, and plenty of interesting things were on the beach.  There were lots of these lettered olives, which were alive and digging in the sand. They were entertaining to watch.  They are predators!

The birds were busy. You can see the marks their probing beaks leave in the sand.

I found a skate egg case (aka mermaid’s purse) and some whelk egg case strings. They are very stinky! I am hoping that drying them out will help. It was lovely to be on the beach in the evening. There were only a couple of other people around, it was really nice.

Flickr favorites

1. Turtle, 2. Guardian, 3. bird egg, 4. Radiator’s Last Home, 5. Go toward the light!, 6. Gotcha!!, 7. Visiting Italy, 8. wonderland: leaves, trees, & ferns…, 9. England, Surrey

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Artichoke update

It bloomed!