Look what I found

I saw these flowers on the side of the road today and had to stop and photograph them; I was so excited. Normally I might not have stopped because I had told Tom I wouldn't be gone long and I had Rascal in the car with me, but these were the first flowers of spring; how could I resist?
I have started to change my mind a little about Georgia winters being just drab and brown. Tom and I were driving home the other day and he started pointing out the shape of several old oak trees and how much character the tree shapes had. This is something that is not as noticeable with the leaves on. I hadn't given this much thought before. The bare trees have a beauty all their own. I had been looking at the Georgia winters from a half-empty glass viewpoint instead of a half-full viewpoint. I think I' going to go look for interesting tree shape to photograph later this week. Thanks Tom.

Church in the woods

I found this church sitting back off the road after the leaves had fallen off the trees. Actually since I have taken up photography and have started to notice things more; I have seen a lot of buildings I didn't know were there especially since the leaves have fallen off the trees. This part of Georgia tends to be very wooded and it doesn't take long for an unoccupied building to return to a wooded state. Anyway it is not unusual for a building to be built in the woods and than be difficult to see. I liked the look of the steeple sticking up out of the trees and took the picture. I didn't particularly like the dull browns and the light colored sky of the original so I added some blue to it. Then I thought about stained glass windows; the colors kind of reminded me of stained glass plus it was a church so I decided to go with that theme. I did the photo with a small mosaic effect, then went to FastStone (freeware editing program I downloaded from cnet.com) for it's frame effects and picked out a larger mosaic effect in light blue and then I added a light blue border to match and signed it. I really liked the way the edit came out it's much prettier than the dull scene that it started out as. I am really grateful for software that can change and enhance the photos I take. You have to have a good basic photo to start with but very seldom will all the elements of a photo come together for that shot that you really like, mother nature does not always co-operate, so it is nice to have a back-up. Sometimes I just plain like the art edit better; it gives the picture an boost toward that WOW.

Websites from my friends at MSS:
http://talitz2550.multiply.com/
This website is from Lolit. She choose a blogsite that is both unusual and creative. It is a photography site for people to use kind of like blogspot it gives you a template but this template is a collage and gives quite a different presentation. Her site is fun and delightful and well worth checking out. I love the collage approach.

Flower power-Remember

I made up these collages to remind myself that spring and summer will come back again and once again Griffin will be filled with flowers. Thank goodness for Georgia is not nearly as pretty in the winter as it is at other times of the year. The trees are bare, the colors of the landscapes tend to be brown and dull and it tends to be rainy; a perfect setup for SAD. The exception to the not very pretty is the rare snowfall and then it is beautiful for a few days and one can enjoy it because everything else comes to a halt.
In the top collage I took pictures of flowers from my garden and also from the roadside. There are always some kind of flower in bloom from like March through December. The bottom collage are pictures of Treasure Flowers from my garden. I had this one blown up to poster size and framed and it now is up on my wall where I can easily see it and remember. It does help to lighten my mood.

How does my garden grow ?

This is not my best post, sorry about that. I'm tired and my brain is defiantly in senior mode. The pictures are older from my point and shoot camera. However they do show the garden that my husband built for me so I could continue to garden even with all my health problems. It is wonderful to be able to garden again. You can see that I no longer have to bend down or get on my knees to garden. How wonderful is that! I can use my little tricks like the soda bottles as little greenhouses cuz I can see them and lift them if necessary without the deep knee bend exercise. Alright! The soda bottles in the front of this picture are covering the tomato seeds that became the tomato plants in the picture from my earlier post. As you can see the garden did take off and I enjoyed working in it. I am very camera shy and this is probably one one of the very few times you will ever see a picture of me. Even though it was taken a year ago I pretty much look the same except I'm 25lbs lighter and my hair is now down to my elbows. I guess that shows I am getting braver as there was a time when
these pics would NEVER have appeared.Today I got my catalog seed order in. A couple of weeks ago I hit up the local stores for the seeds that they had available (see earlier post) and then I ran out of money and had to wait till today to order the rest of my garden seeds, but now all my garden seeds are purchased. I ordered lots of salad and veggie varieties and am looking forward to getting those wonderful fresh salads and other assorted veggies from my garden that I can't get from the store or can't afford from the store. Yum. I also ordered some different flower seeds from usual so I can have unusual flowers to photograph. Some of them are heirloom varieties. I am really looking forward to that aspect of my garden, also. This all makes me feel like I'm making progress on my garden even if it is too cold outside to really work in my garden. The seeds I purchased a couple of weeks ago I already started and now the plants are ready or almost ready to be transplanted into larger pots so by the time these seeds arrive the seed trays will be empty and ready to start the new seeds, so I guess that worked out well.

Found on a Garbage Truck

SNOW DAY !!!!

When it snows here in Georgia the crazies begin. Even the threat of snow freaks people out down here. There is probably good reason for it though. We really don't get much snow here in fact we may go years with no snow or with just a flurry. Nobody has snow tire so everyone without 4wheel drive slides all over the road; if you add to that the lack of experience in driving in the snow and it is a recipe for disaster. Most people do not have proper clothing for the cold and wet, in fact it is hard to find warm clothing to buy here. When we were buying clothes for Emily to go to school out in Utah we had to order from catalogs or buy it there. For kids who are not dressed warmly standing out in the cold and wet; waiting for the bus is torture. I think you can get the idea of why Georgians freaks out. Just the possibility caused them to call off school today. By mid-afternoon businesses were sending their people home. We probably got about four inches which for down here is a lot. The first year we lived here, having moved from Utah where the kids went trick-or-treating in the snow, we had a snowfall where the grass was still sticking out from under the snow and they called off school. I laughed and laughed and the whole family thought it was nuts. We've lived here long enough now to understand.

Photo edits:
All photos had basic editing done in Picasa 3 (freeware downloaded from cnet.com) They were cropped, straighted if needed and the color balance set.
Photo 1: I finished editing this photo in picnik (free Internet editing software)
Photo 2: Went from Picasa to FastStone (freeware downloaded from cnet.com). I used the frame mask function and just experimented till I found one I liked. Then I went to picnic where I framed it using the Museum matte frame function, changing the color of the frame. I then signed it using the text function.
Photo 3: I used picnik to finish this photo. I went to the effect function and picked out the mode that edged it with white, I then put the border on it and signed it with the text function.
Photo 4: I used Photoscape (freeware downloaded from cnet.com) using the filter key I went to vignette setting to edge the photo then to the frame function to put the border on. The keys on the bottom of the frame function adjust the border. It was signed using the text feature on Picasa 3.
Photo 5: Signed using Picasa. Framed using the Frame function in PhotoScape, I used both an inner border lighter color and a regular border darker color.

Serendipity Super Webs

As I was organizing my photos today I was surprised by this photo. I didn't think I got any pictures of this spider, because my hands were shaking so bad that day all the other pictures I took were too blurred to use. Seeing this picture as crisp and clear as it is really made me feel good so I cropped it, adjusted the colors a little, signed and framed it. A pleasant surprise and serendipity in my life again. :^D