spring colors

Spring Colors

May 8, 2013

Lew picked this week's Headbanger's theme.  We are going with "Spring Colors."  Check out my  pals for their interpretations on this theme: Fishing Guy, Katney, Imac and Lew.

For me, Forsythia is what does it.  It has become to me the official announcement that Spring has arrived.  This started some years ago when I learned that the right time to put the first application of lawn product is when you see the Forsythia bloom in the same region.  That's how you know what's happening under the turf with the insidious Crabgrass, and you can catch it before it grows up and chokes out the good grasses like Fescue, Rye and Kentucky Bluegrass.  I used a polarizing filter for the header shot, because I wanted to show the deep blue in the sky in contrast to the gorgeous Forsythia in full bloom.
 

Spring offers a lot of options for this theme, and here are some other ideas.  I hope you like them.

a neighbor's tulips just before sunset

a pretty pixie hides among paper flowers

Periwinkle experiment with selective B&W

a Magnolia tree's first bloom

Crocus buds emerging from rain-drenched soil

I'm fond of this one--it's a juvenile (American) Robin up close and personal

90 degrees with snow flurries

Man, it's hot outside. I just saw a dog chasing a cat... and they were both walking! We've got record highs this week. I hate turning the air conditioning on this early, but it was just way, too muggy. In the midst of this scorching heat, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

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Something outside caught my attention: for a second, it appeared that we had snow flurries. Big, fluffy snowflakes! I mean, it's so hot, that chickens are laying fried eggs, and it it's simultaneously snowing?! But that was just the petals from a Bradford Pear tree. Those beautiful trees seem to be all over the place now. The white petals make them very obvious. It's funny how I hadn't really noticed them before.

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Something else surprised me today. I received a call from a customer who talks slow and takes a lot of my time. I secretly wanted to hurry up and move him along. He said that his son, who is my age, is in the hospital with a brain tumor and has been given a 10% chance of surviving. Wow, that tore me up inside. I asked him if I could pray for him. That's all I could really do, but I was glad that I could do that much. He expressed his appreciation. Then I hung up the phone and cried. I'm not the weepy type, but this really got to me.

a moment in spring

The magnolias outside of the office have started to bloom, and the sky was such a deep blue color that I stepped out at lunch time, and snapped a quick pic. When I came back inside, I discovered that one of my coworkers was busy taking a picture of me at the same time. Thanks for the photo, A.W.!

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So this is what I look like to other people, eh? Just meandering on the lawn, and looking around as if I need to be escorted back to a padded room? At that time, I was looking for a shot that gave me blue sky for a background, and I did not want the building to be in the shot. I was paying attention to the angle, making sure that I got close to a ninety degree angle off the sun, maximizing polarization for the deepest blue in the sky. And one more thing. There were bees buzzing about, and I was hoping one would come back to pose for me, but they seemed more interested in the higher blossoms. One nice bee landed on my shirt sleeve and visited long enough for me to take a blurry picture, but not long enough for a crisp, clear image. That's alright... I like the flower by itself.

fall foliage at 6 pm

Many evening photographs are taken into the sun for spectacular sunsets or dramatic silhouettes. This one was more like ninety degrees away from the sun. That is a good angle to use a polarizing filter, because the sky comes out darker.

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The trees are tallish in this stretch of my daily commute. The amber rays from the setting sun broke through a gap in the trees on my right, and lit up these red Maple leaves. The scenery almost looked fabricated, as if the coloring was boosted with saturation (but it wasn't). Perhaps it was the queen's gardeners (from Alice in Wonderland) who painted the leaves such a brilliant hue of red.

just out of reach

This squirrel was gorging itself in this tree. Here, you can see it getting ready to consume one more tasty red morsel. Our squirrel leaned as far as it could and pulled the branches closer to reach the prize. Sometimes, I wish I could do that for the weekend -- just streeeeetch out and pull it closer. This weekend, I'll be hanging out with close friends, worshiping in community with local saints, and hopefully taking a Sunday afternoon nap. But at the time of this writing, that feels juuuuuust out of reach.