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Here and There…Now and Then |
Corvettes
Last month I posted a rather pedestrian photo of a line of Camrys. Question: Can a photo of cars be pedestrian? What if the photo was taken from the window of a car? Anyway…
Today, after a short visit to the orthodontist and then another brief visit at Einstein’s we stopped and I took a few pictures of a line of Corvettes. Yes, that’s better.
Dutch Iris ‘Eye of the Tiger’
A few years ago I planted a few of these Dutch irises called ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ in the front of our house, along the sidewalk. Dutch irises are actually hybrids of the Spanish iris (Iris xiphium) and the Morocco iris (Iris tingitana) but are often called Iris x hollandica. I think they’re awesome.
Dorothy's New Shoes
I don’t know that she actually needed them but she bought them, anyway. Nice.
Champneys’ Pink Cluster
Roses are about to appear in force. The rugosa in the back yard is blooming but I haven’t gotten a good picture of it yet. This is ‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’, a Noisette bred by Champneys (U.S.A.) in 1811. It is growing on the south end of our house and is a very upright plant. I have it tied to the trellis that Keven helped me put up two years ago. It’s the smaller of the two roses there. The other completely covers the 10 by 12 foot trellis and hangs off of both sides. That’s starting to bloom, as well and I’ll try to get a good picture of that soon.
Andrew
Some kids get all the luck. If both your parents are attractive, you have a good chance of being attractive yourself. Of course, there are attractive people who are not photogenic and photogenic people who are not traditionally attractive. Then, there are what I call “the beautiful people.” These are people who look good in every situation. If his parent and his sisters are any indication, this is a little boy destined to be one of “the beautiful people.”
Maureen and Julia
We have quite a few friends whose children are or have been home-schooled. Maureen is one such parent and her daughter, Julia, is a good friend of Dorothy’s. They are among our favorite people on the planet (I might go so far as to say the solar system). Their home-school association has a formal every year and Dorothy went this year. They had a fun time getting ready and Cathy and I went to take pictures before they left for the event.
There was a picture of Dorothy, Julia, and Rachel doing the “I’m a Little Teapot” thing, which was very funny but it was out of focus so I decided to go with this glamour shot instead.
Zéphirine Drouhin and Clematis
It’s a bit early for roses to be blooming but it’s been that sort of a spring. I have a couple roses that have flowers up against the house. One rose, ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’ is about to start blooming. Ralph, on the other hand has quite a few already out in his back yard.
Back about ten years ago (I don’t remember precisely) he asked me what roses he should plant and I gave him a list of six or seven to choose from. Instead of choosing, though, he planted them all. They are mostly doing very well and a couple are quite huge. This one is ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’ and it’s a very nice Bourbon rose bred by Bizot in France in 1868. If you are looking for a good, reliable rose with an amazing, damask fragrance, this may be the rose for you. It does suffer pretty badly from blackspot and will be mostly leafless by the end of the summer but it grows so vigorously that it doesn’t seem to do any lasting harm.
The roses are the cerise-pink flowers whilte the white flowers are clematis, which is a very good companion to roses.
I went for a short walk in the neighborhood when I got home today. I walked around two blocks and stopped to take pictures a few times, mostly of flowers and in all cases of colors. Here’s a selection. The irises were all in Mark and Kathy’s yard. Mark invited me to the back when I told him what I was looking for. The clematis were growing on mail box and lamp post, respectively. I also took some of rhododendron flowers but I wasn’t happy with them so I left them out, although that would have added a bright red to the collection.
Sarah, Hannah, Dorothy, Jenny, Gwendolyn, Ellen, and Katie
The kids gathered for X-Factor at church this evening and heard an interesting presentation titled “Interfaces and Abstract Classes.” Well done, Jeff, an interesting approach. Early in the evening I took this picture of some of the girls: Sarah, Hannah, Dorothy, Jenny, Gwendolyn, Ellen, and Katie. It has nothing in particular to do with Jeff’s talk. It does, however, picture seven different implementations of the “pretty girl” class.
Aquilegia ‘Biedermeier’
As you can see from the flower in the background, this particular flower has faded a bit from the bright blue-purple it was. I still think it’s a wonderful shape and pattern, though.
Clematis ‘Mrs. George Jackman’
Whether you call them KLE-mə-təs prefer kli-MA-təs, they have beautiful flowers. This is Clematis ‘Mrs. George Jackman’ and we planted it last week so it can grow up into a large rose on the back fence. It’s only a foot and a half tall and is covered with big white flowers. I’m looking forward to a few years from now, when it’s really established. Should be nice, especially with the million little pink rose flowers that should come out before the clematis is done.
Kadie and Stephen
Not a lot to say about this picture. As the title says, it’s Kadie and Stephen. I’ve known Stephen for about eight years but just met Kadie today. Cute couple, wouldn’t you say? Thanks for posing for me, guys.
Anne and Lillian Gilbreth
On the one hand, I’d love to post all my favorite pictures from the two Saturday performances of Cheaper By The Dozen, put on by the WCA King’s Players. On the other, it’s hard to narrow it down to few enough. So, I’m going to take the easy way out and post just one more photograph here. I enjoyed the show (four times) and this is the scene that touched me the most. Lillian (the mother) is telling Anne (the oldest of the twelve children) that Frank Sr. (the father) has heart problems. I don’t know that it would have affected me so much when I was younger. Experience makes things more real (because they are, I guess). Having a daughter somewhere about the age of Anne in the play probably has something to do with it. Anyway, the girls sold this scene and I thank them for it. Bravo.
The Cast
After work I headed over to the theatre for the Friday evening performance of Cheaper By The Dozen. I took pictures of each of the performers as they got into make-up and costume and then we got them all together for a cast photo. We took some of just the “Gilbreth” family, then the full cast, and this of the full cast with their long-suffering director. The show went well and a good time was had by all. Two more performances tomorrow.
WCA’s King’s Players production of Cheaper By The Dozen had its final dress rehearsal this morning with an audience of private and home school students. They did a great job and we all look forward to their performances Friday evening and twice on Saturday.
Dandelion Seeds
Like most people trying to grow a lawn, I’m not crazy about dandelions. They are pretty tough to get rid of completely and they will grow in almost any soil conditions. As much as I hate them in my lawn, I am actually kind of fond of the seed heads, at least from a photographic angle.
I was sitting on the lawn at church with Gwendolyn watching the other kids playing soccer with a big rubber ball and I took this picture of a dandelion seed head that was growing where we happened to sit.
Chives
I don’t have a lot to say about this picture. It’s chive flowers opening up. They are growing in a crack in our patio and self seeded from chives I grown in a container and use for cooking. My favorite thing to do with chives is to tear up the flowers and sprinkle them on soup or steak or whatever. Purple food!
Rain On The Window
I’m not complaining, mind you, but it rained again today. I happened to be out taking pictures when the rain rolled back in, which was a bit of a surprise. The pictures I got were not all that good and I decided to go with this one of rain on the window of my office. I’ll try to get better versions of the picture I tried to take another day.
Rain!
We’ve been hoping for rain for a while now and it finally came, starting last night and continuing pretty much all day today. I don’t know how much rain we got but it was very welcome. We went to Stadler Nurseries this afternoon and walked around in the drizzle. I bought a camellia (C. japonica ‘Dad’s Pink’) and Cathy bought a columbine. It was too wet to plant them today, though. This picture was taken on our back patio.
Convallaria majalis (Lily-of-the-Valley)
Convallaria majalis, lily-of-the-valley, is a remarkable plant. When we lived in our old house there were a few houses near by that were to be torn down to widen a road. We did what we called “plant rescue,” digging plants out of the garden (with permission) and replanting them in ours and giving them to friends. There was a lot of lily-of-the-valley there, growing alongside the driveway. Actually, it was coming up through the driveway in places. You have to admire a plant that can break up a pavement.
It’s fairly expensive at the garden center so we dug up a lot of it, putting it in every spare container we had. When we moved here in 2006 we brought three or four containers of it with us. Actually, we still have a container full. It blooms every year but if anyone would like some, we’d be happy to share. As it turns out, there already was some in one part of the garden here, and that’s where this photograph was taken.
Lily-of-the-valley has sweet little flowers that are hard to resist. They aren’t as easy to photograph as you might think, though. I’m still not sure I’ve captured them properly. Still, I’ll keep trying.
