Margaret, Cathy, and Dorothy

Photograph taken on Sunday, April 05, 2015 by Henry
Margaret, Cathy, and Dorothy

Margaret, Cathy, and Dorothy

I already posted a photo from the sunrise service we went to this morning. After that we enjoyed talking with friends and having ham, deviled eggs (which, come to think of it, is a funny thing to have on Easter), and fruit. At 8:30 we went to the regular 8:00 a.m. service. I say regular but the orchestra does make it a bit more special.

After a nice lunch at home with roast lamb, potatoes, green bean casserole, and asparagus wrapped in bacon, we went to Cross Community Church, which is not the official name of the church plant that we’ve become involved in. After the service there, we all enjoyed the warm afternoon sunshine and I took a few pictures, including this one of Margaret, Cathy, and Dorothy.

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Sunrise Easter Service

Photograph taken on Sunday, April 05, 2015 by Henry
Sunrise Easter Service

Sunrise Easter Service

One of our favorite aspects of the celebration of Easter is the sunrise service at Fourth Presbyterian Church. For a long time Rock Creek didn’t have a sunrise service and in general doesn’t make as big a deal of Easter as some churches (and hardly mentions Palm Sunday at all). So, we go to the church where we met, and where Cathy’s mom still goes. Dorothy knows quite a few folks there, as well, having participated in their youth group quite a bit over the years.

Last year I set my alarm clock to the wrong time and we only got there as the service was almost over. Previous years we got it right and this year I got it right, again. It was a chilly 40°F this morning, which is cool but not really bitter and certainly not as cold as it has been in some previous years.

I only took a few pictures. It is a church service, after all. In the first few the sky is nearly black. A little later it was the most beautiful, luminous blue. This is one of the early pictures.

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Helleborus (Lenten Rose)

Photograph taken on Saturday, April 04, 2015 by Henry
Helleborus (Lenten Rose)

Helleborus (Lenten Rose)

We drove back from Richmond this morning, having a much better time of it than the drive down yesterday. In the afternoon I went out back and took some pictures of a couple Lenten rose plants. This is one we put in when we first moved in and it’s doing really well (and probably needs to be dug up and divided). Lent is over and this plant has only just started blooming late this week, but we had snow later than is usual and that slowed it up a bit. In 2012 I have photos of this same plant blooming on February 19. Anyway, it’s blooming now and it’s lovely.

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Monuments, by Brian Menkis

Photograph taken on Friday, April 03, 2015 by Henry
Monuments, by Brian Menkis

Monuments, by Brian Menkis

After what can only be described as a terrible drive down the beautiful I-95 corridor between D.C. and Richmond, Virginia, we had a very nice evening at the gallery where Dorothy has been working. Our friend Brian (son of friends Sid and Sherri) had a show at Gallery Edit in Richmond, mostly sculpture but there was one large painting in the collection. I took pictures of individual pieces when the gallery wasn’t filled with people but there were not a lot of times that was possible. He had a pretty good flow of folks throughout the evening. That’s Brian facing the camera in this photo. His web site is here: http://brianmenkis.com/

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Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Pink Giant’

Photograph taken on Thursday, April 02, 2015 by Henry
Chionodoxa forbesii 'Pink Giant'

Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Pink Giant’

Today the ‘Pink Giant’ Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa forbesii) started blooming. This is a pale pink variety that I have growing amidst the pachysandra in the northeast corner of our front yard. In addition to being pink, as the name suggest ‘Pink Giant’ suggests, it is fairly tall for a Chionodoxa and holds its blooms above the pachysandra. Otherwise, it is similar to the blue flowers I posted a photo of for yesterday.

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Chionodoxa luciliae (Glory-of-the-Snow)

Photograph taken on Wednesday, April 01, 2015 by Henry
Chionodoxa luciliae (Glory-of-the-Snow)

Chionodoxa luciliae (Glory-of-the-Snow)

Next up, after the early daffodils, are the glory of the snow (Chionodoxa luciliae), this little bulb native to western Turkey. I have a pretty nice little bunch of them growing on the south end of the house, which warms up before other areas, which helps get them up early, as well. As you may know, I’m partial to blue flowers and these, although early and ephemeral, are some of my favorites. They are such a lovely color and in quantity are quite striking.

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Our First Daffodils

Photograph taken on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 by Henry
Our First Daffodils

Our First Daffodils

Are you ready for flowers? I hope so, because they are coming up relatively fast and furious now and I think I’ll most likely be posting them fairly frequently. If you’ve been following me a while, then they may look like photos you have seen before. If her are new, well, they will be flowers. You’ll see.

Today the first daffodils in our yard came out. They are called Tete-A-Tete and are small but growing in large clumps and are quite cheering.

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Leisure World Globe

Photograph taken on Monday, March 30, 2015 by Henry
Leisure World Globe

Leisure World Globe

Over the weekend something came up about old fashioned phones—remember when you had to turn a dial a different amount for each number—and I mentioned that my mom took my older brother and me to the New York World’s Fair in the mid-1960s. Ralph and I saw an exhibit where you could time yourself dialing your phone number on the then-current “rotary dial” phone and then on a newfangled touch-tone phone. We also talked to each other on video phones, which was even cooler, even if it was only in black and white video.

I mentioned that I had heard that the large globe at Leisure World was from the New York World’s Fair. Turns out that is not true. According to this page at the Roadside Architecture site, the globe from the World’s Fair, the Unisphere, was 140 feet tall. The Leisure World globe is only 40 feet tall. They are similar, of course, because they are both based on the same planet, but they are not the same. Someone also mentioned that there was a rumor that Australia is upside down on the Leisure World globe. That is also false.

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Shadowy Papyrus

Photograph taken on Sunday, March 29, 2015 by Henry
Shadows of Trifoliate Oranges

Shadows of Trifoliate Oranges

Earlier this month I posted a photo of a trifoliate orange (Poncirus trifoliata) that I am growing from seed in a plastic bin in my kitchen (see “Poncirus trifoliata (Trifoliate Orange)” on Wednesday, March 18, 2015). Today’s picture is (sort of) of the same subject. The afternoon sun coming in the kitchen door was shining on the tub of little orange plants (there are at least four dozen of them) and casting what I thought was an interesting shadow. To me it looks a little like some ancient artwork drawn with faded ink on a sheet of papyrus. Okay, maybe it takes a bit of imagination to see that, but if we don’t look at the world imaginatively once in a while, what a dull place it can become.

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Covenant Village

Photograph taken on Saturday, March 28, 2015 by Henry
Covenant Village

Covenant Village

Our youth retreat was at Covenant Village again this year. I really like it there, especially the quiet. It was 18°F this morning when I got up though, which is more like a winter retreat than a spring retreat. There were clouds moving across the sky all day and it was quite lovely. To the south from the main meeting room there is a hilltop field that you can see through the trees. I went out to take pictures and the sun was shining on that spot and it looked quite nice, I thought.

This is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photograph, made from three images taken at different exposures and then combined into one image. This process allows you to capture detail in shadows that would otherwise be black while still getting highlight details that would normally go pure white. Sometimes it it overdone and way too obvious. For all I know, this is one of those times, but I think it’s a pretty picture, anyway.

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Bonfire

Photograph taken on Friday, March 27, 2015 by Henry
Sokho, Nick, Jeffrey, Anna, Katie, Lucia, and Timmy

Sokho, Nick, Jeffrey, Anna, Katie, Lucia, and Timmy

As mentioned in the previous photo, the youth retreat was this weekend and I came up today, joining the group already there. It was a smallish group this time, due to various conflicts that others had. We missed those who could not be there but had a great time with those who came. It was fairly chilly so we all sat pretty close to the fire Friday evening, roasting marshmallows and talking and basically having a good time. It had rained early in the day and was cloudy most of the day but it cleared up about the time this was taken. I even got a pretty decent photo of the Big Dipper a little later.

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Blue Jay Feathers

Photograph taken on Friday, March 27, 2015 by Henry
Blue Jay Feathers

Blue Jay Feathers

The youth retreat was this weekend, starting Thursday evening because the county schools were closed today (end of the grading period, or some such). I went up today, joining the group already there. At lunch time, some of us walked from the main building down to the house by the road. In the woods on the way down, I happened to notice these two blue jay feathers (Cyanocitta cristata). The blue in blue jay feathers is not because of any blue pigment but rather because of the physical structure that refracts different wavelengths of light differently. Either way, though, they are quite beautiful.

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White Crocus

Photograph taken on Thursday, March 26, 2015 by Henry
White Crocus

White Crocus

It’s certainly starting to look a bit like spring. The trees are still bare and there are not a lot of flowers around yet, but they are starting. The snow drops (Galanthus) have been blooming a while. I had a single flower on the new Lenten rose and there were a few purple crocuses in the back yard last week. Today a few white crocuses have opened up in the front.

Spring is accelerating.

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Photo 100,000!

Photograph taken on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 by Henry
Cathy

Cathy

A bit of a milestone was reached today. I’ve had my current camera, a Canon EOS 60D, since Christmas, 2010. Then, a week later I started my Project 365 and have taken at least one photograph every day since then. In the 1,552 days I’ve had this camera, I’ve taken photographs all but two of them (December 26 and 27, 2010). Today, I took the 100,000th photograph with this camera (although the image number is 100,010 because the camera resets to image number 1 instead of to 0 (zero) after 9,999). In case anyone cares, that’s an average of 64.4 images per day. My previous camera, a Canon 10D, was at 87,376 images when I got this new camera. I had owned that one for 2,823 days, averaging only 31 images per day (and not taking any on a lot of those days).

Cathy and Dorothy have, not surprisingly, been common subjects for my photography and Cathy let me take a few of her this evening to reach the 100,000 point.

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Galanthus nivalis (Common snowdrop)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, March 24, 2015 by Henry
Galanthus nivalis (Common snowdrop)

Galanthus nivalis (Common snowdrop)

The snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) have been out in our yard for a few weeks now but I haven’t posted any pictures of them this year. This afternoon I went out into the back yard and took a few pictures of a clump of snow drops growing in our back bed. They are pretty little things and their appearance so early in the year is their chief attraction. The flowers open during the day and then close up in the evening, as seen in this photo.

Spring it upon us.

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Up, Up, and Away

Photograph taken on Monday, March 23, 2015 by Henry
Contrails

Contrails

The sky was a beautiful blue this morning but was criscrossed with contrails from a bunch of jets, either coming to or leaving from one of the local airports. I don’t know where everyone is going but there were a lot this morning.

This is the view from our kitchen door at about 7:15 a.m. It made me want to travel. Just get on a plane and go anywhere. I’m not particular, I’d be happy to be anywhere else.

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Helleborus ‘Mango Magic’

Photograph taken on Sunday, March 22, 2015 by Henry
Helleborus 'Mango Magic'

Helleborus ‘Mango Magic’

It was another beautiful day today, cool but sunny. We went to church this morning and then to our other church in the afternoon. We got home at about 4:45 p.m. and it was so nice that we sat out in the back yard in the sun until the sun went down and it got too cool. While we were out back, I took some pictures of this Lenten rose called ‘Mango Magic’ that I planted in the fall. It is the first to bloom of the twelve things (mostly bulbs) that I planted for Cathy’s birthday. It isn’t a perfect flower but it’s the first, so I thought it worth recording.

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A Few Farm Photos

Photograph taken on Saturday, March 21, 2015 by Henry
Cabbage Ladies

Cabbage Ladies

Our good friends Brian and Lisa (and their two dogs, Goldie and Kippen, see Thursday, November 20, 2014) came for another short stay, spending all day Saturday and Sunday with us. It started out looking a bit gloomy this morning but cleared up and ended up being quite lovely out. We drove to our friends’ farm. We visited a little while with Greg and Anna and then wandered around a while. My first photo is of some cabbage plants that we all thought looked a bit like overdressed, Victorian ladies.

Chicken Little

Chicken Little

From the cabbage patch, we wandered up to the barn where the pigs are kept. We enjoyed watching the very young piglets, of which there were quite a few. From there we walked out to the area in the field where the chickens are. I got into their fenced enclosure and took quite a few photos.

The chickens were quite interested in me but getting them from very close range was tricky. The would turn away just as I took the picture, or would bend down and I’d just get the top of their head. This one turned out pretty well, I think.

After this, we walked to where the larger pigs are, out in the field and then down to the garden shed. When we came home, we rested up a bit and then capped off the day with a wonderful dinner at Bombay Bistro. It doesn’t get much better than that. What a beautiful day it turned out to be.

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A Final (We Hope) Snowfall

Photograph taken on Friday, March 20, 2015 by Henry
A Final (We Hope) Snowfall

A Final (We Hope) Snowfall

The forecasters all got this one about right. It’s been relatively warm so it didn’t really stick to paved surfaces but the grass was covered and it was another beautiful morning. After the last snowfall and then the warmer weather, I think most folks around here were ready for winter to be over but we got this one, last dusting just to remind us that it can snow in the spring, as well. Because it didn’t affect traffic and I didn’t have to worry about shoveling the driveway, I was perfectly happy to enjoy this snowfall.

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Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite)

Photograph taken on Thursday, March 19, 2015 by Henry
<em>Eranthis hyemalis</em> (Winter Aconite)

Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite)

These are not the first flowers we have had this year. The snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) were blooming as the snow melted off of them last week. But these are still quite welcome. They are fairly small and there are only the two little flowers so far, but they are so bright and cheerful that they make up in quality what they lack in quantity. I’m looking forward to the spring because I planted quite a few new bulbs last fall. Newly planted bulbs tend to come up a little later than those that have been in the ground a bit longer, which builds the anticipation a bit, but that’s all to the good. Spring has certainly arrived.

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