Cactus Flower

I was so excited to catch this beautiful cactus flower blooming!  I walk by this cactus often but have never seen it bloom before; I love the delicate poppy-like petals and the pretty peachy color!

Blue Wildflower

This is another photo taken during our trip to Illinois; it’s a beautiful blue wildflower that I just couldn’t get enough of.  I love the perspective in this photo – it’s totally un-retouched, but you get a nice sense of blurring in the background.  I also love the little petal just curling up towards the camera.

Thistle

During our trip to Illinois in July we were struck by the sheer number of these white thistles on the sides of the road; we’ve never really seen this variety in this quantity before.  I had the opportunity to traipse around on a property nearby our hotel and enjoyed getting a close-up look.  I love the tiny, spikey details captured in this photograph!

Blue and Orange Bird of Paradise

It’s notoriously difficult for me to take photographs of large, long flowers.  But I love the perspective I caught in this photo, and the beautiful color saturation.

Baby Mockingbird

A couple of years ago I was eating lunch out on the patio with my husband (then my boyfriend) when a mockingbird baby came out of nowhere and fell between some chair legs in the corner of the yard.  He was flapping around pretty hard but was pretty stuck, so I moved the chair so he could get out, and then went inside to watch as his parents came and made regular food drops until he got old enough to fly.  This is the first baby mocker I’ve seen in the yard since then, and I just happened to be in the bedroom when he decided to hop up my tomato plant next to the window. 

I know this isn’t the most well-composed shot I’ve taken (it’s also taken through a window screen), but I had to share.  This little guy was making a ton of noise calling for his lunch, and his parents kept telling him to shush, with that “chuzz, chuzz” noise they make.  When I came to the window, actually, both his parents were unhappy with me – flapping their wings and staring at me making lots of noise.  But I couldn’t help it – he’s just so cute! 

Big Black Ant

We visited family last week in the Chicago area.  They have the biggest bees and ants you’ve ever seen!  I snapped this photo of a giant black ant (literally it’s about a half inch long) on a pretty lacy flower.  I actually started off trying to get the flower and saw the ant – and I love how it’s looking right at me!

Post-Parade Confetti

It’s been a crazy month here…  So busy I can’t stand it.  But I wanted to post this photo I took.  It was taken at Disneyland, about two weeks ago, just as the parade was finishing up.  I liked the way the confetti was laying around on the ground.  Within thirty seconds of my taking this shot, it was all cleaned up by the grounds crew.

Happy 4th!

Fireworks!  Always tricky to photograph…  But especially tricky when you don’t have a tripod.  Pretty proud of this one, taken a few years ago at Disneyland!

Red-Leaf Lettuce

So I have a confession.  I have been wanting to post photos this week but I couldn’t.  I ran out of pictures I’d already processed and couldn’t do any more, because my desktop, which housed my copy of Photoshop (from college!) died.

After 7 years of working perfectly, it just wouldn’t turn on one day.  I thought it was the power supply, but I tried replacing that at the beginning of this week and no dice.  I blame my college best friend, who literally the day before the computer died told me that he’d been through more components than he could count on his desktop (a twin to mine, built with almost identical parts during the same 12-hour late-night computer-building binge).  I’d never had a problem with it before, so it’s all his fault! 🙂

Anyway, he and his wife are coming over this weekend for Fourth of July so I’m hoping he can take a quick look and tell me whether it’s good and truly dead or if (just maybe) I mis-wired the power supply.  Regardless, the laptop doesn’t have enough computing power to load Photoshop (despite the fact that it’s a version almost 12 years old).  So I had a decision: wait until I can process and “properly” label each photo, or ditch the label and just put up photos.

Honestly, I think my photos are good.  And the reason I’d put a label on them in the first place is because I know how darn easy it is for someone to take photos from one website and put them on another, whether or not they take credit for them.  But I haven’t been a fan of the label for a little while, and I’ve been considering just placing a watermark on the photo, so now seems like a good time to start.

Aaaaand, with that (probably the longest post in the history of this blog), I give you my photo for the day.  Red leaf lettuce.

This is actually one of three plants growing right now in my backyard.  One of several veggies I grew that we’re going to get to eat during our 4th of July BBQ!

Enjoy the holiday weekend and be safe!

Hiccup

For the record, I didn’t intend for “Hello World!” to repost an hour or so ago.  WordPress did that all on its own.  Gotta love technological hiccups.  Sorry for cluttering up your Readers!

I’ll have more photos with you later this week! 🙂