wanting to share some favorites

post #193
      I am having a serious case of nostalgia today, feeling tender toward my life.  Therefore I have decided to simply share some recent favorite photos, and leave it at that. The making of a photo is often my way of connecting to where I am and making sense of it. They can speak to me and for me. 
      Also, I am finally mostly rested after my time away from home, and this is an excuse for celebration and for seeing these photos with new energy.

My neighbor thought that I would be interested in this swarm of bees in their peach tree.  And I was!! I have actually never seen a swarm before.  I love seeing something new -- and important.  I hope these bees have by now found a good and healthy home.  We need our bees.

Another first - taking a taking-off photo of a plane made by exended family members!!  They came by twice last weekend; in between they went to a wedding in Illinois! 

Before they left, we took a group photo -- Here I am being laughed at for making a photo of the photographer setting us up for the photo, which came out well.  Bravo!

Note: they both helped to build the plane and one at a time to fly it, but it can take two to get the baby ready before take off!!  We loved having them here in Kentucky, all three of them.

MILKWEED!  New plants.  So far, eleven marveling months of following the milkweed.

a side passage in Chipping Campden, looking lovely in the rain

Again from France:

the feather garden

the stork over head, surprising me

sweet talk

There are many things I love about this photo, especially the good fortune to be there to make it.

 

A photo I haven't shared yet  -- I am with friends, in Dinan in Brittany, and I thought this blue window and the flowers enchanting.  Again, I was just happy to be where I was and with whom I was.

a second detour, this time to an English garden

post #192
       Every time I go to England to be with my stepmother I get to visit with close friends Bill and June. This time, ten days ago, we had our visit in their garden. It's not huge but it is always amazing. At the end of our visit I took ten quick photos, and they all came out well!  Now that is also truly amazing. Good vibes and good light and the copious English rains must have helped. I want to share these photos while spring is still in the northern hemisphere's air.       
       Thank you, June, for the help with identifying your beautiful blooms and for giving the back story on Mr. Frog. What commentary there is in the titles, however, is just me.

allium -- loud and proud

clematis  --  the gorgeous social climber

bird sugar water bottles, a gift to them brought from South Africa.  At the end of this post, I hope to add a photo June just sent me showing the bottle in use.

Solomon's seal - which even I recognized because here in Appalachia it is a wild flower. Fun to see it surrounded by emerging peonies!

Mr. Frog, who used to have a whole garden "pool" to bask in and float around on. Now he is on an extended dry out!  Hard to believe that at first he was just a joke.

delphinium

June writes that this is a Siberian Iris, either a Wisley White or a Dreaming Yellow.

      On the way back to my stepmother's I was in a hurry. However, I could not keep from stopping along this back (and narrow) road to take photos of the blossoms on the rapeseed plants (used to make cooking oils) and the general lay of the lovely land. It was raining off and on at the time, and I was running late, so this is all I managed to take home with me: 

It was all in all a beautiful time of year to be in England.

 

          p.s. June sent me this photo of hers -- a blue tit drinking out of the sugar water bottle. She says all the birds really go for it.

Is it going to be Route 32 or more from France!? How to decide!?!

post #191
      Deciding which topic to share today is taking way too much time.  I have returned from my trip, as of last night, and I am blaming travel fatique for my not being able to decide which choice to make.  I want to do both.  I am excited about my new photos, but also I can't wait to get back out on Route 32 to take even more photos.  (And then there are the milkweed plants in our field which have grown, well, like weeds since I have been gone.)       BUT as I write myself through this decision, I am thinking the flowers in the gardens in France and England, the train stations I passed through, and the views from the Vosges mountains will have to wait.  I don't want to lose the thread of that road and a community whose future is up for grabs.

       Once again, I find a parking place and take several photos from one location:

         This building will surely be gone.  It was once a store.  Darlene remembers being bought a pair of shoes here when she was young!

       Then I turned around to look across the road to see the other side of things, including this sign on a fence, the cows, and the lay of the land:

Route 32, facing toward where I am headed

        Continuing to move to my left , still with my back to the former store:

       Nearby, I had taken this side road, just to see what is close to Route 32.

     A few photos from this road that look back toward Route 32, along which are all the buildings in the next three photos:

 

also here on the woods side -- the early blooming sarvis tree blossoms -- our sign of spring

     To finish today's chapter of this story, a morning mist along Route 32:

      I will try to find this place again this week and take a photo of what it looks like with GREEN LEAVES now that summer is almost here.  Stay tuned -- and drive safely no matter what road you may be taking.

please note: I have recently added two photos to last week's post, about an afternoon walk in France.

a brief side road - during six days in France

post #190
        I expected to wait until finishing the Route 32 photos before sharing my current trip, but I just can't.  I am eager instead to show at least a few of the photos from where I have been this past week.  I set off to visit my stepmother, who is British and lives in the Cotswolds, but I also had wanted to go again to France where I was an exchange student in high school, for a year.  I have been close to the family I lived with ever since -- which means for over 50 years.  I took a lot of trains from here in England to get to several places in France, but I love trains so it was a big treat -- a lot of work to figure it all out but nonetheless a treat.  It helps that I still speak fluent French, rusty though my vocabulary may be.  
        Now that I am back in England and have been reunited with my laptop, here are snaps I took during a wonderful walk in the country outside Mulhouse, in eastern France.  Maud, my French "sister," knows the hikes near her home very well.  I loved that we headed out to where she knew we would see some STORKS.  And we did!  Mulhouse is in Alsace which has always been famous for storks and for their nests perched high on some building.
      It was a beautiful few hours.  I hope the photos share my delight being with Maud in a new place on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

       This is the front door of Maud's house.  We drove not far from here to get to the area where she often hikes:

        We parked here, near a church and cemetery which face the Vosges Mountains nearby and the Black Forest in Germany across the plain of the Rhine River:

     We were soon walking along a system of dirt roads for the farmers in the area, surrounded by a variety of crops, mostly corn but including vineyards.  I have taken these photos to show to my neighbors back home who also farm.

woodpile art!

   We soon saw this apartment house with a nest -- and a family of storks!

   
 Another one in the area took off and flew over head before landing:

       There were other kinds of animals as well belonging to these farmers - or maybe a single farmer.  For me, it felt like a surprise around every corner.

bee hives

 Then, on the way back:

   J'ai de la chance, n'est-ce pas?  [I am fortunate, don't you think?]