RV Travels With Huggy

Pat was called in to work today at her on-call receptionist job at the school district, so I said I would water the plants in the back yard. When I finished I thought it would be good to take some photos, so I got my camera, tripod and a reflector and got to work (play?) out there. I took close to 50 photos and have selected these five to prepare to post here. My process is to work a bit on them in Photoshop Elements version 6, then re size them to about 800x600 pixels before uploading those smaller ones to my site on Flickr. When they are there, I can write a post and add some HTML code that brings the photos into the blog. I read on others blogs about having some problems with photos posting correctly on Blogger but I've never had any problems with this method. Anyway, here they are:


I think this first one is a mum. It isn't one of the gigantic ones you sometimes see but I do like these. These are planted on our patio outside the sunroom in a giant pot. We like to eat lunch at the Garden Cafe at Skagit Gardens, where the Skagit Valley Mum Society has their gardens, which are beautiful and includes many of those very large ones.


Yes, I know this is a zucchini squash and probably not technically a flower, but isn't a flower really up to one's definition? I like the flowers these have and this view also includes one of the fruits (are they fruit?) We were wondering if we would ever have any squash from any of the three plants Pat set out. The little hill they are on is made up mostly of cedar bark that was put on as a ground cover over the years. She started feeding them with Miracle Grow and watering them regularly and there are now nearly half a dozen of a decent size. So, I have included it here, flower or not.


I don't know what this one is, although Pat does. It is also on the patio in another of those giant pots. I think it is getting close to the end of it's blooming season. I had to pull off quite a few of the dead petals or whatever they are before I took these photos. But it is bright and colorful and pretty large.


Last year Pat was asked by the manager of our park if she would plant four hanging baskets with fuchsias and other flowers to hang on the gazebo in the common area behind our house. This is the gazebo where our wedding ceremony was held April 28, 2007 and those hanging baskets in the photos were these that Pat planted. In the fall they were brought to our house and just left outside along the south side of the house. This spring she thought they were done for so replanted four others and just left the others there. We later noticed they were flowering so she moved them to a table on the patio and started taking care of them. As you can see from this and the next photo, they have done very well for flowers that we had not expected to grow.


Here are some of the other fuchsias that are of a different color (variety?) These have really surprised us. I wonder what they will do next year?

I have fun taking photos of flowers even though I have a black thumb when it comes to growing them. I also don't know what many of them are. I had to send Pat a text message on her cell phone to ask what the fuchsias were called as I couldn't remember. These photos were just taken with my 18 - 200mm zoom lens which will focus pretty close. I used a reflector on most to add fill light but think flash fill was used on one of the fuchsia shots. I also used a tripod and set the camera on aperture priority so that I could stay with f/11 for better depth of field. My macro lens is being used by Pat's daughter but maybe I'll retry these with it later. Our great "Indian Summer" weather seems likely to continue for a few more weeks, so the flowers should also be good for awhile longer. Of course the lawn also grows and has to be mowed, but we can't have everything perfect, can we?

Labels: Flowers, House, Photos, Weather, Wedding