Hard to believe Labor Day has come and gone and children are back in school already. this week. It has been one of the nicest summers I remember: not too windy, lots of warm days, and lots of sun, even if we didn't get much rain. But the last couple of weeks I have noticed a hint of fall in the air. And the fact that the spiders are weaving webs all through the garden is a sure sign autumn is on its way.
I had such a beautiful lily blooming in the garden this summer. It was an “Orientpet”
(a cross between an Oriental lily and a trumpet lily) from “The Lily Garden” in Vancouver, Washington, called ‘Scheherazade’ and it had over 20 blooms on the single stalk. It was at its peak just before the county fair, but I just could not bear to cut it down and take it in to enter.
Instead, I took a picture of it and entered that in the photography section at the Fair. It didn’t win a prize, but I now have it in a nice frame in my office and am reminded every time I look at it that this particular lily was extremely gorgeous this year.
Since that photo was such fun, I thought it might be interesting to go into the garden and take more photos of the flowers and other plants. I have incorporated these photos into my garden journal so I now have a really good record of what the garden looked like this summer. I try to also write things that I have done in the garden on a regular basis, but even if I don’t find the time to do that, the photos can help remind me of what I did and when. Long ago I realize that if I didn’t make keeping a garden journal fun, I would never want to do one. So, along with recording garden changes, I have been having some fun with the camera by doing some “artsy” photography, too.
I used to have a small Canon digital camera, but I found that my phone took even better photos than the camera. I am careful to focus before I shoot so I can get a pretty cool picture with very little effort. And by downloading them into my computer, I can do all sorts of unusual techniques, morphing colors, blurring edges, and just generally playing with the images.
This past week I have taken photos of sunflowers before they bloomed, the heather flowers, a few different types of leaves, a rose with the traditional dew
on the petals, and some South African impatiens’ flowers. But my favorites have been the close-up photos. You know… the ones they used to put in magazines and ask you to guess what the object is. I am including one of my favorites today. Can you figure it out? I have blurred it just a bit to make it a little harder.
So get out that phone or camera and see what kind of fun images you can find in your garden. Maybe we can all enter a fun photo in the County Fair next August.
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