A richly colored purple coneflower blossoming in the shade of our front yard.
A shadowy entrance gate to an adjoining subdivision.
On a hot day there is nothing like getting in the cool shadows of a tall tree.
Check out more shadowy things at Shadow Shot Sunday
Last week, Heather, Logan and I loaded up and went to the Tulsa Botanic Garden north of town in the Osage Hills.
They have thousands of flowers there, lots of daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths.
All different colors!!
And a bunch of trees including this redbud variant.
Heather taking a break during our wanderings.
It was a nice sunny day and the flowers were beautiful.
We spent a couple hours wandering around
Purple and White (with purple stripes) was my favorite, maybe.
They had some variant of cherry trees with their subtle coloring.
And an agave cactus plant. I had to try my lensball on that.
All in all a great outing!!
And a bonus!! I finished another jigsaw puzzle on my ipad. I am addicted.
One of the many things I’ve learned from my fellow bloggers is to appreciate blooms and flowers through their whole lifecycle. Like these purple coneflowers that are supposedly past their prime. They are still beautiful to me.
The oil and gas guys and gals that I follow on twitter talk about their favorite cocktail, Ranch Water. We saw a recipe in the paper yesterday and decided to try it out. Silver tequila, lime juice, and sparkling mineral water and rim the glass with Tajin. It’s a really good drink but take my advice, one is plenty for the day!
We found some Topo Chico water and the Tajin. You rim the glass with Tajin and it really gave the drink This may be the first recipe that I have shared in a gazillion posts. Am I turning into a mommy blogger?
I did my handyman thing yesterday. Turned on the dishwasher and a short time later noticed a small amount of water on the floor and an E-15 error code on the panel. YouTube to the rescue! The door hadn’t closed all the way so the dishwasher leaked out the top, some of it got on the floor the rest went back into the dishwasher but underneath. Cool thing is that the manufacturer has a pan down there and if water collects it raises a float and flips a switch and turns the dishwasher off. Pretty clever I think, saves from making a big mess. So figured it all out. I’ll be strutting around the house for a month now. I would strut anyway but now I have a reason to do so. At least in my own mind.
Joe’s Farm in the Tulsa suburb of Bixby. All sorts of organic produce. Joe’s good at marketing. He was a chef in New York City at several restaurants so he quit that and now raises vegetables. He works his store. Circulating with the customers and providing ideas on how to cook the more exotic items.
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday 2 by Magical Mystery Teacher..
My wife is an exercise instructor at several different health clubs in Tulsa. It’s a part time gig right? Except she spends a lot of time at home putting together her routines and figuring out choreography. Music is important her and she doesn’t hardly ever use the same routine twice or resort to generic music as some instructors do.
All the health clubs have closed during the pandemic and so she had some time on her hands and so she launched back into gardening. She is a certified Oklahoma State University Master Gardener and used to be active doing that but motherhood and the exercise instructor career took most of her time.
So she went at it hard this spring. Buying soil to rebuild the beds and an bunch of plants. Gardening is hard work. Me I love the result. I help out carrying the heavy stuff.
So now we have all these beautiful plants to look at.
I didn’t photograph the right plants but she has got a butterfly garden going. We’ve only seen a couple so far.
Does anybody out there not love flowers? I think it may be an international language.
I don’t know the names of all these. I’ll get her to help me out when she has time.
What they hay, you could help me out also if you felt led to do so.
I’m linking with Our World Tuesday
Saturday, my wife Heather and I went to Tulsa’s Woodward Park. I wanted to check out the Azaleas. That’s Heather above with her hands on her hips like she is ready to do something. She is always ready to pitch in!
The Azaleas were nice but not like last year but we loved it anyway. Above is a photo using my lensball. It is a spherical piece of glass that I keep in my car. It sure makes for nice photos, once I learned how to use it. One trick is that most of my photos with are inverted since it inverts the scene in front of it.
Here is a two tone photo of Azaleas in the shade. I have learned how to do manual exposure and blah, blah, blah with my camera but I forgot to set the white balance to shade and it is hard (for me) to correct for that after the fact. Oh well, I’ll take it anyway.
The Linnaeus Demonstration Gardens at Woodward Park had a butterfly garden. Heather had her notebook out and was making notes. I think we might have one in the near future.
Woodward Park had some iris’s also. I love them!!
We saw lots of flowers, and stopped and chatted with a couple from out of town who asked about what to see in Tulsa. A great time was had by all!!
This is one of Heather’s day lilies in front of our house on Sunday morning after a night’s rainfall. I just love rain drops on flowers.
Saturday I went hiking on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain and found some color. Or some color besides green. The mountain is covered in bright green and I love it but I also love other colors also
And here is some yellow flowers. I have no idea about flowers so I call these yellow flowers.
And here is one of the trails I ran. You see what I mean about bright green?
And here is a purple wildflower.
After years using a Toshiba I finally got a new computer. The Toshiba was still working but the pentium chip just wasn’t up to the demands of Lightroom and Photoshop and other photo software I use. so I got a brand spanking new Dell with a fast processor. I also have a solid state hard drive that is about half the size of the one I had but I don’t keep much data on machine. I got it at Staples and had them move the data and programs from the old machine to the new and you know something they did a great job and the cost was very reasonable.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday.
An hibiscus in my MIL’s back porch. I just love flowers. Don’t know a thing about them but I don’t need to to with a certified Master Gardener in the house.
An old water tower with a crumbling old bridge over the Snake River in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I just love mid century infrastructure. Everybody thought back then that we were headed toward an industrial nirvana. Sorry, now its all apps and industrial worries. Where I lived in the west we didn’t have water towers. We had water tanks but they were on the hills or mesas just out of town.
Red hearts on a rock in Idaho Falls. Sorry for reposting a photo. I cheat like that all the time. I’m liking the finding rocks thing and I hope that people are sensible in what they hide and where they hide them.
I took my “good camera” to work Tuesday just do I could check out Tulsa’s Woodward Park at lunch. The tulips and azaleas and other plants are blooming right now and the old park was putting on a show.
There were hardly any people there and I had the place pretty much to myself. I ended up taking 72 photos. Makes me glad for digital photography. I love film and have several film cameras but it is an expensive habit to get into.
It is such a beautiful time of year.
Even the hula hoopers were out.