It's beginning to feel a lot like...Spring!

It is finally feeling like Spring here!

Well, sorta. Last week was all sun and no clouds, so everyone on campus broke out the shorts and dresses. We all soaked up the sun, and got sunburnt and no homework done. But hey, when the sun comes out, we all emerge from our winter caves in Seattle. It is a holiday in itself.

But then of course, this weekend it poured (perhaps to make up for the suddenly nice weather?). So hey. It's April showers.

But here are some shots I took during those hot, muggy days (I'm a wimp in heat).

These first two were taken during a walk with The Boyfriend. The walk ended up lasting quite long, but the scenery was really pretty (if a bit hot...heh). We walked around a neighborhood nearby campus.

I know this second picture is technically the same composition of a previous one from Easter, but I couldn't resist. I really like the pattern of the shadows from the petals. And I think this new one turned out better than the first :)

You really know it's spring when ducklings come out to swim! This is in Drumheller fountain.

Because it was sunny for such a long stretch with no rain (3 days, oh my! haha), every slight breeze jostled off seeds from the trees on campus. I'm not sure what tree these are from, but they covered all the sidewalks and gutters. As you can see in the background of the last picture.

I didn't see that car in the background!! Oh well.

Have a wonderful week!

Happy Easter and Sun!

Yesterday was beautiful for Easter. Blue skies and warm(ish) weather. I've been swamped with studying for exams, but even I(!) took a few hours off to see a movie with a friend on Saturday and have Easter brunch with my family on Sunday.

Unfortunately it looks like we're right back to grey skies right now. Boo.

But in taking full advantage of our short burst of nice weather, I went on a walk with The Boyfriend around the neighborhood. I promised I wouldn't take a lot of pictures, so here is just one picture. I love it when the flowers start blooming. The sun lit up these petals with a nice orange glow.

Autumn 2013

We're going to step back a few months to the colors of autumn. If nature is going to give us such beautiful colors, we must take advantage of them, right? Even if it's a few months late...

These pictures were taken on a walk with The Boyfriend a crisp afternoon. And by crisp, I mean really really cold and overcast. That's my city's definition, at least. :)

There was this row of trees across the lake we were walking around, and I really liked the differing colors. They weren't uniform at all, which lent it to such an interesting painting. Since it was so far away, I tried to keep some foreground in the picture.

Apparently mycology is very popular here in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, I know nothing about mushrooms except what I find in Fred Meyers, but this was an interesting mushroom we found in the grass. It looks like a mini table.  I liked the texture of the broken parts.

So here is that row of trees from the first picture. They are even more pretty close up.

 

More mushrooms! I like these ones even more than the first. You can almost imagine what the inverted mushroom cap feels like; the sift tickle of the gills against your fingertip...

And an obligatory "leaves of fall" picture.

Hope you enjoyed autumn!

My Summer So Far....

Okay, so now that I have a bit more time, here is a recap of my summer, as evidence by these pictures! Be warned there is a lot of fun and sarcasm in my personality for this post. I had a lot of fun. I think school is finally getting to me :)

One day, my family woke up and decided to go to the zoo. We have passes because we kind of go crazy about the zoo. So what, we're grown up adults? Never stopped us yet ;) During the penguin feeding, a Great Blue Heron decided to stop by. Such a majestic and HUGE bird!

There was also this classy looking flower-plant by the elephants. The colors look just like the kale from the farmer's market! It makes me happy.

My all time most favorite part of summer are the California poppies. These little kiddos are beautiful from a physical and biological standpoint. When I was in ninth grade, I used to look at all of them in our backyard because they showed dominant, co-dominant, and recessive genes via their color, and I'm kind of obsessed with it. See the orange fading to sunshine yellow? Some of the them are all orange, and some are white! And I think it is so cool that they open and close with the sunrise and sunset!!! Ahhh, okay I'll stop talking about my love affair with these flowers. But just so I can admire their amazingness and beauty, there is this picture above.

A month ago, my mom planted new flowers! This is one of them. I don't remember what it is, but it is so pretty. It sort of reminds me of a lily. I like the seemingly delicate look of the petals. A good flower to give a sweet little girl...

Okay that might have been a slightly weird comment. Sorry. Moving on....

Baby duck! Also called duckling!! I hung out with 3/4 of my old Girl Scout Troop (which was only 4 girls total) at what my city passes for a beach (it is actually a nice one, as far as beaches go). We were sitting on some rocks at the edge of the lake, and this cute little duckling swam by with its [legal?] (does legality apply to ducks?) guardian. We kind of went crazy over its cuteness factor. And discussed other names for baby animals. I had a weird moment when I completely blanked on what a baby dog is called (hint, it isn't doggy). That one goes down in the books for stupid quotes we shouldn't ever repeat :P 

And THIS happened in my house. Yuuup, we are fully capable of producing flowering tropical plants in the Pacific NW. I was fiddling around with the manual a bit here, and this lovely picture happened. Taken at the dead of night (when I finally noticed that something bloomed that wasn't there before. I said we could keep the plants alive, not that we are very aware of them... :P ) with artificial lighting. Looks like it was taken during the day if you ignore the grossly lit wall in the background, eh? 

And on one of our hot (80 degrees F, haha) days, I braved a walk out to this lake near my old high school where I used to sit with The Boyfriend. The Boyfriend suggested I draw a picture of the lake from "our spot" but I couldn't without a picture (Problems of a picky drawer....). So I braved walking on a windy path past scary barking and howling dogs of all sizes and random sketchy guys smoking sort-of-legal substances (i.e. weed) to take this picture and a few others. (Guilt tripping....haha. The Boyfriend better appreciate his drawing when he gets it :P ). A lot of people were out, as evidenced by these kids.

 I liked the resulting framing of the trees and brick detail in this picture. It looks like we are looking through a window into a different scenery.

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So that was my summer so far...how was yours?

The simplicity of Homemade cookies

I made some oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies last weekend, and as they were cooling on the pan, the afternoon sun slanted through the window right onto the cooling cookies. I thought it made for an interesting picture. Looking back, I also realized that though this picture is essentially three colors, the simplicity of it reminds me of what homemade cooking really is: a small gesture that means so much more.

Spring flowers

It's spring! Which means that everything is blooming at once. So here are a gazillion pictures of pretty flowers that were taken in my city's week of spring sunshine. I'm always amazed by how many different flowers there are on campus! They are so bright and colorful.

Have you ever heard of the Bulgarian holiday Baba Marta, where red and white bracelets called Martenitsa are given out as a greeting to welcome the end of winter and beginning of spring? Well my TA for math is from there, and he brought this tradition along to the people who visited him in office hours. Technically the holiday is in March, so we were a bit late, but I still liked the sharing of his culture. Anyways, you are supposed to tie the bracelet around the first blooming plant you see. 

Well, on campus, everything bloomed at once! But I decided to choose a small bright bushy-eyed cherry tree on the edge of Red Square. I was a little afraid I would hurt the tree, so I tied is loosely around the tree, and as the tree grows, I'm planning to go back and cut it off so it doesn't restrict the branch. But it was kind of deliriously exciting to take my bracelet off and tie it on a tree. I'm not sure why, and I'm not going to analyze it, but anyways, here's photographic evidence! haha.

I really enjoy the one part in focus and the seeming zoomed in focal point to that spot. I particularly enjoy the pop of color. These are the brightest flowers I have seen. 

I also like the surprise of the yellow dots smattering the blue.

A lively strip of magenta to break up the monotony...

I wish I could have gotten that little piece of yellow out of the corner, but the wind was waving these flowers around like crazy. I'm actually quite happy with the crisp detail I managed to get; definitely using a fast shutter speed. I also liked the coloring. Yellow is expected, but this young flower is striped with green, which is fascinating to me.

I liked the smattering of colors given by the flower petals blown away in the wind. The bright colors don't overpower each other, which is nice.

The delicacy of dandelions is absurd. But their puffy seeds are so beautiful in the air.

I think this is wisteria. It is beautiful, isn't it? I like the way it catches the sunlight. The white seems to glow, withholding the light.

Enjoy the flowers around you, and the many more to come in summer.

The lovely weather outside

It is sunny outside! But as much as I love the sun, I don't love the heat. At all. The grass is always greener on the other side, huh. I'm also getting over a cold, so not many pictures, but I passed these lovely things along my way to class. And I only had my phone with me at the time, so these were all taken with my phone's camera. Enjoy the sun!

Someone planted all these pretty windmills (I actually don't know what they are properly called...) all along the grassy areas of campus. Aren't they so pretty? In the sunlight, they silver would reflect the sunlight, and the grass became a sea of stars.

The buttercups are blooming! I have a lot of good memories from elementary school of picking bouquets of buttercups. I liked how if you held them under your chin, the sunlight would reflect the shimmery yellow onto you.

These puffy flowers made me entirely too happy for no reason. But they look all plush and fuzzy! I hope you enjoy them as much as they made me happy inside, haha.

Trip to the Greenhouse with The Boyfriend!

On a particularly bad day, The Boyfriend cheered me up by accompanying me to our school's greenhouse. I had been there many years ago--in middle school(!)--but he had never been before. It was a very fun experience, and we saw many beautiful and cool looking plants. Here is a tiny sample of them. Enjoy!

This cactus (I think) was outside the greenhouse. I like the contrast of the milky gray and the dark tips of the edges. I tried to avoid as much of the green grass in the background, but this is as best as I could get. The other picture was a little too zoomed in for my taste.

Fuzzy cactus! I have a special place in my heart for cacti. Maybe it's the thought that they are so poky yet so cute! Their little armor brings to mind the image of a little kid trying to brandish a weapon to protect himself. So little, and yet so hopeful.

But my goodness, these lily pads are freaky. They have SPIKES on the bottom! It's like those people you meet who you think are nice and innocent, and then they turn out to be all claws and biting. For some reason I only remember these lily pads from the previous time I visited those 8 years ago. It's probably because of the scary spikes...

I'm sure I've seen these fragile little flowers before on cacti. But what is interesting about this picture is the line of spikes hiding on the right. Such an unexpected image...

Isn't it interesting how some cacti have flowers that bloom in a ring around the top? I like this contrast between pink and white.

It looks like a pokemon!

This little guy was growing off the side of another cactus. I'm not sure why the cactus looks different though...

This was in the rain forest section of the greenhouse. What an interesting flower...

The rest of the pictures were form the tropical section.

I like the soft washed out color of this flower coupled with the water droplets. But the background washes it out a little, I think.

The flower of a lily pad. It looks a little creepy...But a beautiful color.

This reminds me of a caterpillar. They are tiny little flowers all bunched together. The Boyfriend thought they were cool looking.

The colors remind me of a more delicate poinsettia  But I find the shape of the right flowers intriguing. They look like origami balloons.

This pink little ball was really unexpected.

Plants and animals at the Japanese Garden

Then today, it was so sunny and nice that my family and I went to the Japanese Garden to scope out possible plants for our garden. Unfortunately I left my extra camera battery in my dorm, so about halfway through our trip, my camera died :( But here are some shots I got off before the battery bought the farm :)

These beautiful flowers are such a deep and beautiful shade of purple.

While looking at this picture I notice the unfortunate shadows from the right, a problem due to the bright sunlight out. However, I do like how the sunlight lit up the fuzzy "hairs" on the stems. They create extra light to keep the picture from being too dark.

This butterfly was fluttering all around the Japanese garden. It stopped on a juniper bush near me, and I took a careful step forward and caught a picture when it relaxed its wings. I'm surprised how close I was able to get to it!

The sunlight in this instance really lit up the details and colors of the butterfly. The blue became quite prominent and popped among the black, brown, and white.

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This little bunch of flowers reminds me of a wedding, with the small tight bunch of white and the complements of green. I had to take this picture twice because the first time I couldn't get my shadow completely out of the picture. This second one turned out better though! I find it eye-opening how many different shades of green were able to be captured in this one picture.

I saw this rocks on one of these benches, and liked the contrast of texture and color here. I don't know if you have ever made a rock rainbow, but I made them in Girl Scout camp in middle school. That is when I learned that there are so many more colors to rocks than just blue and gray, as evidenced above.

Once again, I was conscious about my shadow in the bright sun. I actually had to crop out a shadow in the top and bottom portion of the picture. I'll have to work on this!

These are turtles crawling up onto a large rock by an island in the middle of the pond. I love the different parts of the picture; the muddy green/brown water, the gray rock, the bright scraggly line of turtle shells, the green moss... Also, usually as a rule of thumb, I observe the Thirds rule. For this picture, I positioned the turtles slightly above center. 

My dad likes Vinca minor, a crawling ground cover with periwinkle flowers. We found some, and I thought I would try a picture with the sun "lighting up" the flowers. I like the resulting effect, as well as the positioning of the single periwinkle flower in front with the sea of other out-of-focus flowers.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weather whether it is sun or rain or snow!