I started out with this photo — at first it seemed that the camera just couldn’t handle the contrast in the automatic setting and I lost definition in the daffodil trumpets.
Then I applied the HDR-ish setting and pulled out all the details in the petals and leaves, but I lost the intensity of the colors.
Now I’m not so sure that I don’t like the original photo better. What do you think?
Just when you either loved or hated the yellow poles in yesterday’s photo, here’s another option. I didn’t do anything to this photo; what do you think?
Dicentra (bleeding-heart; Greek dís “twice”, kéntron “spur”) has attractive mounded foliage with arching stems of delicate, heart-shaped flowers in spring. It’s a woodland perennial that is happiest in moist soil along with ferns and other shade-lovers.
When I took this photo at the nursery, I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of this branch of bleeding heart that I didn’t see the ugly yellow poles in the background. I started by using the vignette effect to draw attention away from the poles.
Then I tried to draw more attention to the pink flowers by using the sharpen effect along with the vignette effect.
Finally, I decided to try it in black and white with some sharpening. It gets rid of the pesky yellow poles. It also gets rid of my favorite hot pink… insert sad face here.
So what do you think? What advice do you have for a novice photographer? I welcome your critique, but please be nice. 🙂
The genus name for columbine (Aquilegia) is derived from the Latin word aquila, because of the columbine flower’s resemblance to an eagle’s claw. The common name, columbine, comes from the flower’s resemblance to a cluster of five doves; columba means dove in Latin. It is a woodland plant that prefers moist roots and some shade, but is hardy even in poor soil and sun. The columbine thrives in northern climates in the United States.
I don’t see either a dove or an eagle’s claw, but I love to see the columbine in the spring. This photo was taken at a local nursery and enhanced with the Lomo-ish effect on Picasa.
Where did winter go? We never had one in Chicago. This is by far the most beautiful spring I have ever enjoyed in 35 years of living in Chicago. The old joke is that Chicago has two seasons — winter and construction. In between we have about a week of fall and one day of spring.
I was so excited by our March spring (???? — when will the other shoe drop?) that I decided to take photos of the amazing forsythia that popped into bloom over the weekend. While driving through the parking lot of our newly renovated mall, I spied a well-shaped forsythia bush and stopped to take a photo. Sounds innocent, right?
As I’m focusing my camera on the perfect spot, behind me I hear someone asking, “Can I help you?” I turned around, saw what apparently was the shopping center security guard in his seekie car, and replied, quite obviously, that I was taking a photo of the beautiful flowers and that everything was fine. Still innocent, right?
Oh, no. It’s illegal to take a photo of forsythia in this particular shopping mall because if I can take a photo, so can terrorists, and terrorists aren’t allowed to take photos of anything in America. You know why.
I was very tempted to mouth off, but I said I understood and got back in my car. As I drove away, I really wanted to drive back around and flaunt the authority of “the man.” But then I thought about how getting arrested would look in the newspaper. It might just affect my credibility in the classroom, don’t you think?
I’m a law-abiding citizen and proud of it. And here’s the photo I took of another beautiful forsythia bush from a legal spot on the sidewalk. I’m really glad I didn’t get arrested for it, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get much out of my yellow petals blowing in the breeze. Note to self; don’t use HDR when the wind is blowing.
Paperwhites. The sign of spring. Who doesn’t want dirt in her punch bowl? It can be washed out and sterilized, after all. When I read this at the Reluctant Entertainer, I pulled out my dear deceased neighbor’s lead crystal punchbowl and I planted paperwhites in it.
My neighbor is definitely turning over in her grave while her beloved house and garden is dying a slow death because it has been ignored and abandoned by her children and then her mortgage company for almost four years.
The local police tell me that since the house is probably uninhabitable at this point and occupies a large, valuable suburban lot, one day I will come home from school and find it demolished. I’m determined to keep her legacy alive through her treasured belongings and I’ve worked to save them from the bulldozer.
The neighbors and many of my friends have harvested perennials out of her award-winning garden. She had well over 100 varieties of hosta in her backyard. They are living a new life in new gardens and she would have loved that.
My brother and I have two sets of her formal dishes (that NO ONE bought at the sales, so we got permission from her children to take them). I don’t ever need to use paper plates. Combined with my other sets of dishes, I have enough bread and butter plates to serve well over a hundred people for appetizers, and they go into the dishwasher and will be used for many events over my lifetime. This is my concept of living green and then living green again.
Many of her silver platters (that no one bought at multiple estate and garage sales) were purchased by my friend and are proudly displayed throughout her house in their polished glory.
My darling Oksana, who survived a concentration camp along with both her parents and her baby sister, is remembered in my house. The bulbs sprouting new growth in her punchbowl tell us that life goes on — we who survive carry the stories of those who have gone before us.
When I come home this spring, and her house is gone because the economy is picking up and the lender has decided to sell the property, I’ll welcome the new neighbors and tell them about who came before them. And I’m likely to give them something to remember her by.
I’m a garden girl, but usually I like having someone else doing the hard stuff for me. I was understandably concerned when NRB brought these maple leaves into the kitchen.
My reputation as a “farm-ish” girl from Ohio was at stake. I was supposed to diagnose this nasty thingey on the neighbor’s maple leaves.
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about my next door neighbor’s house that is in foreclosure and has been empty for three years after both owners died. My beloved husband (with help from the younger neighbors across the street) has been taking care of Oksana and Roman’s house during that time. It was a very welcome big deal when the city started mowing the grass in the back yard, but he still takes care of the front yard and the snow. And we have a LOT of snow in the winter here in Chicago.
We were worried about the black spot on the maple leaves, because we have both big maple trees and some new Japanese maples. Will this nasty thing kill our trees? So Mrs. Jennie went to Mr. Internet to find out. Thank goodness, there is a solution from our friends at the Purdue Pest and Plant Diagnostic Laboratory.
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Question: Almost every summer the leaves on my maple trees have black spots on them that look like tar. What is it and what should I do about it?
Answer: 
Tar spot on maple is not actually “tar” on maple, but rather a fungal disease. Tar spots on maples are caused by fungi in the genusRhytisma. The most common species areRhytisma acerinumand R. punctatum.
Symptoms first appear in late spring or early summer as infected leaves develop light green or yellow-green spots. During mid to late summer, black tar-like raised structures are formed on the upper surface of leaves within the yellow spots. R. acerinum causes spots that are 0.5 to 2 cm in diameter; R. punctatum causes spots that are smaller (about 1mm in diameter). Spots caused by R. punctatum are sometimes called speckled tar spots.
Tar spot diseases seldom are detrimental to the overall health of infected trees. Tar spots may cause premature defoliation, but are not known to kill trees. Tar spot diseases are best managed by raking and destroying fallen leaves because the fungi overwinter on leaves.
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I told my husband that he has to destroy the leaves or the problem will continue, but that presents a problem in itself. We live in a suburban environment that bans burning of leaves, so we have to send them to the local yard waste collector. Unless they destroy the fungal leaves, we will have tar spot fungus next year.
It’s a conundrum. It’s not our house, it’s not our maple trees, and we’re really not supposed to be taking care of this foreclosed property. It’s actually trespassing — can you believe that? Yet, if we don’t, the “fungus among us” will spread.
I wish the lender would just get this house on the market for a couple of dollars and relieve us all of our burden. Anyone want to buy a five bedroom, three bathroom house with an artist’s studio (that needs a little work) in the land just beyond O’Hare? We would love to have you as a neighbor.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
Okay, so the story of Knole is pretty juicy, but it starts way back during the mid-1400s, when it was first built. It is one of the largest houses in England, and its state rooms are largely preserved the way they were in the early 1600s. In this section, the juicy part is in the way Henry VIII forced Thomas Cranmer, his Archbishop of Canterbury, to hand it to him in 1538, just cause Henry liked it, and we now know that you don’t fight with good ole Hal. The Sackville family got control of the house during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1566 by being loyal courtiers, and Sackvilles have lived there ever since.
Image via onelondonone.blogspot.com
Many acres of park are still owned by the Sackville-West family and they live in over half of the house, but the National Trust owns the house and 43 acres of park. Its medieval deer park is comprised of 1ooo acres, and the deer that inhabit it are well-used to constant visitors, as Knole has been shown to the public for 500 years. Watching these very tame deer, it was sad to think that their original purpose on this property was to provide sport for the noblemen to hunt.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
Knole is so big and beautiful and full of ancient artifacts that it’s kind of hard to wrap your arms around its magnificence. We weren’t able to take photos inside because the furnishings and art are so old that they are on the verge of crumbling into dust.
“In the early 17th century, Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, transformed the late medieval archbishop’s palace into a Renaissance mansion. Towards the end of the 17th century, his great-great-grandson, the 6th Earl, acquired Knole’s unique collection of Stuart furniture and textiles through his office as Lord Chamberlain. And then, towards the end of the 18th century the 6th Earl’s great-grandson, the 3rd Duke, added Old Masters bought on the Grand Tour to Italy and portraits commissioned from contemporary English artists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough” (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-knole/w-knole-history.htm).
The Stuart furniture and bed linens are in the process of being copied and hermetically sealed to protect them from further deterioration. It was really interesting to see the posters showing the original pieces prior to restoration and or duplication.
Now we get to the really juicy part. Thanks for waiting so patiently as the historian in me made her presentation.
Image via Wikipedia Commons
Enter The Honorable Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, the only daughter of the 3rd Baron Sackville. Vita, as she was called, grew up at Knole and talked about how living in Knole was like living in a museum. The family actually occupied a small part of the immense house and left the state rooms and ancient furnishings intact. Our guide told the story that once Vita snuck into one of the Stuart bedrooms and tried to use a hairbrush. Her mother about flipped out over this silly childish curiosity, but you can image mom’s horror to find her daughter playing with these priceless heirlooms!
Image via bookdepository.co.uk
By 1913, Vita had become the wife of Harold George Nicolson, a British writer and politician. Vita already had quite a history of having affairs with female lovers before her marriage, and although she and Harold were devoted to each other, their open marriage allowed them to experiment outside their marital vows. Their letters to each other were edited and published by their son, Nigel Nicolson, after their deaths, and show a couple deeply in love and committed to similar goals and values in life.
Although not officially a member of the Bloomsbury Group, Vita was a friend of the collective of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who lived and worked together in the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury. They were political and social liberals who believed passionately in the importance of art, and also of personal relationships and individual pleasure.
Image via hunter.cuny.edu
Among the many now-famous members of this group was Virginia Woolf, who began a lovers’ relationship with Vita Sackville-West in 1922. Although Vita claims that the affair was only twice consummated, the relationship lasted until the late 1920s and Woolf’s novel, Orlando, is set at Knole and is said to tell the story of Vita’s affair with a previous female lover. Orlando explores the nature of gender difference and sexual identity because its main character goes back and forth in gender over its 400 years, and Woolf may have used Vita and her husband Harold, both openly bisexual, as the inspiration for Orlando.
Given the memories she had of Knole and her personal social agenda, you can imagine how difficult it was for Vita to be forced to leave it and renounce all claims to Knole simply because she was female. She was heartbroken when her father died and her male cousin inherited Knole and the hereditary title.
Image via telegraph.co.uk
Vita and Harold purchased Sissinghurst in 1930 and began to revive the ruined property, which in the 15th century was owned by the Baker family, who were related by marriage to the Sackvilles. She ended up owning a piece of her own history and making new history with the gardens that she and Harold created together.
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Is there anything more beautiful that the pristine perfection of spirea in spring? Officially it’s Vanhoutte spirea (S. vanhouttei), the classic bridal wreath spirea.
Image via Got My Reservations
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