I took some photos of my garden this past week. Above is what’s left of a bloom on my rose of sharon tree; below is how it looked last summer.
Rose of sharon from August 2008
Azalea of December 2008
The azalea bush in April 2008
A rose bud of last week as seen in my backyard
A November rose from the same bush
Above is a lambs ears photographed last week.
This was the only photo of a lambs ears flower of mine that I could find. The lambs ears are more treasured for their leaves than their excessively bright pink flowers.
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely and fun meme.
Thursday Challenge: the theme for this week is Threes. These are rose hips from climbing roses on the side of my porch that only bloom for a week in June.
JPIX #21, a blog carnival of pictures by Jewish bloggers, is up at Mother in Israel. Thank you for including my fall foliage and stars watercolor.
What else is going on in the blogosphere:
My World is a meme played by people all over the planet. For more information and to see other places and wonders, visit My World.
There are railroad tracks on the edge of Highland Park; one could travel these tracks all the way up to Boston or down to Washington DC. Most of the trains, though, just travel between New York City and Philadelphia. You can see the train bridge in my post on the Raritan River. There’s a station in New Brunswick, on the other side of the Raritan, and one in Edison, but none in Highland Park.
You might able to tell why I bothered to head over to the tracks with my camera from the above photo. The land bordering the tracks is all nature: trees, shrubs, plants, dirt.
A path runs through the trees near the tracks, used by hikers and joggers.
This little evergreen bush was the only greenery I could find.
Ah! One tree with pretty fall foliage.
It’s cold and gray and *not* snowing (we got just a sprinkle) in New Jersey (I like snow, it makes me happy), so I am reaching into the archives and bringing you this tall, pretty flower (agapanthaceae or agapanthus, thank you to my brilliant European blogger friends, Ilana-Davita and Jientje) that I photographed last July in the City of David outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely and fun meme.
My neighbor’s tall maple tree left an avalanche of leaves in our driveway a month ago.
This pretty bare tree with red berries is around the corner from my home. I’ve seen others like it here in Highland Park. (Ideas were: crab apple or American Ash; no, it’s been identified as a hawthorn! More pics coming soon.)
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
Inspired by some emails from Robin, I decided to play with a photo of my daughter. I selected the background of the original with the magic wand in Photoshop (I also used clone stamp, which mimics one part of the image in another section). Then I duplicated the layer, so I wouldn’t be changing the original. I desaturated the background and slid the color scale, increasing the magenta and yellow, same as I usually do to create sepia. I also decided to add a slight gradient to the background.
In this version I duplicated the above layer. I then desaturated that layer and changed its opacity to 55%. That way, one could still see some of layer below and the color still appears, but it is not as vivid as in the original.
I decided the previous version was too gray. I slid the magenta and yellow color sliders, increasing those two colors, especially the yellow.
Here’s the original photo, minus something on the bottom that I cropped out of the photo. As you can see, the original background was the siding of our house, which I didn’t really care to be a focus of the photo.
For more sepia photos, visit Sepia Scenes.
There is a creek or brook a block away from my home, so I went down there to take some photos for Watery Wednesday.
The creek wiggles its way through the edge of Highland Park and Edison, in between private houses. I do hope people aren’t putting too much pesticides on their lawns that will leach down into the brook, but I’m sure I hope in vain.
For more watery photos, visit Watery Wednesday.
This dianthus is the last flower in my front yard, other than a straggly, lanky, tall yellow snapdragon. It waves its purplish pink petals at us, like a flag of surrender to the oncoming winter months.
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely and comforting meme.
I would prefer just to be writing about the sunset my daughter and I saw on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park earlier this week. When we got into the car and I took my camera, she made me promise not to photograph any flowers on our trip. But she didn’t say anything about sunsets.
Unfortunately, there is too much urban drama going on in the home city of photo blogger magiceye. As I type this post, I am wondering about the safety of the Chabad rabbi and his wife, trapped by terrorists in the Nariman house in Mumbai. (Update: Chabad Rabbi and his wife in Nariman house reported killedtortured and then murdered, and more than 125 too many reported dead in Mumbai). Thank you to Dina in Jerusalem for posting about this. To use Twitter for updates, go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23mumbai or click http://hashtags.org/tag/mumbai/. For updates on Chabad, http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nariman (Nariman is the name of the Chabad house in Mumbai).
An upsetting post about the Taj by an eyewitness
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ll say I’m thankful that there is an America.
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
