There are several reasons I chose this photo for Alisa’s travel theme “Edge” but my favorite element is the line of Gulls patiently waiting their turn to stretch their wings and fly away.
Travel Theme: Meeting Places
There’s nothing quite like the mix of summer weather, interesting beaches and kids with plenty of imagination and time on their hands. Driftwood forts are a common sight on Lopez Island and each beach we visited had at least one great structure ready and waiting for the next group to meet up and play until bedtime…
Posted as part of the Weekly Travel Theme: Meeting Places.
Weekly Travel Theme: Purple
My sweet niece, Sophia checking out the amazing flowers on this Butterfly Bush. July 4th, 2014.
Posted as part of Alisa’s Weekly Travel Theme: Purple.
Travel Theme: Shine
Travel Theme: Cities
Alisa’s newest Travel Theme: Cities is a great excuse to post another photo from our recent visit to the top of the Space Needle. This view is looking south towards the Downtown area over Elliott Bay and one shot manages to show you a gray spring day, the Port of Seattle, a Washington State Ferry and the lower part of Downtown.
iPhoneography Monday in the Skagit Valley Tulip Fields
I know I said Thursday would be my last tulip photos for a while but since Sally’s mobile photography challenge is on vacation until May 5th I thought I’d share one more post from the Skagit Valley. The annual Tulip Festival is a favorite with photographers as well as fun day trip for the family but it’s important to remember that along with the beautiful display gardens and $5 off-road parking these beautiful fields belong to working farms and tulips are big business.
While paying visitors slowly walk around the perimeter of these large bulb fields the hired pickers work long shifts carefully selecting almost opened stems to bundle for sale in the gift shops and flower stands through the valley. Greenhouse grown tulips and daffodils are available year round but field grown flowers are prized for their longer length and deeper colors and are only available for a few weeks each year. This group of pickers quietly worked through their Sunday morning shift morning filling wood crates with perfect stems and though I noticed most people tried to avoid including them in their photos I thought the crews hard work should be noted as part of the tulip story.
Travel Theme: Round
We found this old wagon wheel just down the beach from the driftwood pirate ship I posted yesterday. The owners of the property have a knack for collecting and re-purposing old items and interesting pieces of wood but I think this wheel is at the end of its road…
Posted as part of Alisa’s weekly Travel Theme: Road.
Travel Theme: Statues
The Santuario de Guadalupe in Santa Fe, NM is the oldest shrine to our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States. I wrote a little about the history of this place in a Black and White Tuesday post about the Church here and today, as part of Alisa’s Weekly Travel Theme: Statues I have a view of the beautiful statue at the entrance.
Travel Theme: Pink
I know I’ve been very quiet this week but don’t worry I hope to spend some quality time with my reader as soon as tomorrow. I plan to be back to a more normal schedule by next week and can’t wait to see what everyone has been up to while I’ve been away!
As a quick “hello I’m still here” post I hope you enjoy my Pink image of some late summer Hydrangeas.
Travel Theme: Garden
This isn’t a traditional garden picture but March in the Pacific Northwest is a challenging time everyone who loves the outdoors. It’s cold and damp 90% of the time with a few brief stretches of sunny weather that give us all spring fever but send pollen counts into the double digits. Instead of a photographing the wet and weedy mess of a garden we have today I thought I’d post one last shot from our front yard before the excavator got to work digging out stumps and moving rocks boulders. This photo was taken about 10 months after the Public Utilities District cut down our large cedar trees and shows how aggressively the native ferns and salal expanded with additional light, water and space to grow.
Posted as part of Alisa’s weekly Travel Theme: Garden.
Travel Theme: Tempting
In honor of Alisa’s newest travel theme “tempting” I have a set of his and hers photos.
Grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s is always full of tough decisions. This morning I stopped in the entry debating if I should get the Bunch of flowers or do I pick up the Bigger Bunch. Maybe I could make room in the cart for the Biggest Bunch?
My husbands dilemma is a little more difficult as this year he chose to give up alcohol for Lent. Five days in and he’s doing great but look what’s on his phone…
His last Manhattan, lurking in the photo roll.
Posted as part of the weekly Travel Theme: Tempting.
Weekly Travel Theme: Romance
As part of Alisa’s Weekly Travel Theme: Romance I’m sharing a well-loved photo my husband’s Grandparents as a young, engaged couple in the early 1920’s. They married soon after and had four children starting with my father-in-law and followed soon after by three beautiful sisters. I’m sorry I never got a chance to meet Joe and Bess but am happy we have plenty of stories and a few treasured photos to keep their memories alive in our home.
Northwest Frame of Mind 