Tag Archives: Tulsa Garden Center

Our World Tuesday – Nature Photography Class – Spring 2018 – Chapter One

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I am all excited!! I did a one day Nature Photography class by Tulsa Community College.  We met early in the morning and then headed off to several venues, the Linnaeus Gardens, Tulsa Garden Center, Tulsa Botanic Gardens, and Oxley Nature Center.

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So the over a dozen of us, clicked and snapped away and we walked, and walked. My little garmin wrist device tells me that I walked 7.76 miles today. I believe it. My dogs are barking, you know what I mean. I do trail running, and this was about the same except I had a camera and was clicking happily away.

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This is at Wooward Park, before the class really even started. So what do you like best, pink tulips in front, with yellow in back?

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Or the other way around? Without cars in the background. Ignore the cars in the background.

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Or how about the Redbud Trees.

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How about some ancient stone steps.

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At Oxley, do you like the little snake my fellow students found?

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Or do you like the bigger snake a few hundred yards away. They said, don’t worry, no triangular head, and the eyes are round so it is not venomous. Like I even cared. Who is going to get close enough to snakes to figure out the roundness of its eyes?

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I forget where this is from. It is pretty is all I know.

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I love this also. No idea what it is.

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Anyway, the more I learn about this photography thing, the more ignorant I get. I am firmy entrenched into manual mode, and metering the photos and all that but the complicated things get me. Like the above. Sunny on one side, shady on the other, overeposed on one side, under on the other. Who you going to call? Nobody, suck it up big guy, figure it out.

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Or focus on the blossoms. The yin and the yang. Big picture, small picture. I am so confused.

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Here is a redbud up close.

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Linnaeus Gardens

How about a flag reflection. The reflection looks okay, but the sky is blown out.  No editing done anywhere on this post by the way.  Haha you say, we could tell that.

That is all for now. I took over 200 photos and I store them all in cloud and it is painfully slow to get them there. I used to store them on an external hard drive. Big, huge mistake. It cratered.

I really enjoyed the class. Kudos to my fellow students who really got into it, the various venues, who welcomed us with welcome arms and the instructors, Larry and Natalie who spent a considerable amount of time scheduling us into the various places, and led us around making sure that everybody had a fun time. I’ll be taking more classes from them again.

I am calling this Chapter One because I have so many photos to upload and don’t want to  wait until they are all uploaded before I post something. Call me impatient.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

 

Our World Tuesday – Tulsa Garden Center

The Tulsa Garden Center is housed in the former David Travis Mansion on Peoria Avenue.

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It was built in the early 1920’s by David Travis (formerly Rabinowitz) an early day Tulsa Oilman and immigrant from Russian who in true wildcatter fashion didn’t get live in for very long and lost it  because of an oil price crash (I have to say that he wasn’t a wildcatter but he was in the oilfield supply business). It had various owners, finally ending up with another oilman who sold it to the City of Tulsa.

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It’s a busy place as it hosts thirty gardening groups plus countless weddings and fundraisers during the year. My wife during her Master Gardener phase worked in the library and then later taught children during weekend programs. I have been all through the mansion while helping her carry stuff here and there including the attic servants quarters where the children’s supplies were kept. Supposedly there is a ghost present and if I were ghost I would haunt this place as it is absolutely beautiful.

Mr. Travis was Jewish and the first Jewish services in Tulsa were held in the basement. Also in the basement is the mikvah in the basement right next the ballroom. If you catch a staff member or volunteer with a key in the right mood they might show you the mikvah and the attic where the female servants slept.

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This is the back side of the Conservatory of the Garden Center. The front of the building gets all the attention but I find it rather bland. I much prefer the rear. Mainly because of the red tile roof of the building attached to it.

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Four years ago in that same corner, Heather and I built a Children’s Garden for the Garden Center. It doesn’t look like much but it was a lot of work. They didn’t have a place for the kids to work with soil and Heather didn’t think that it didn’t make too much sense teaching kids about gardening if they didn’t  have a place of their own to plant and tend plants.

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It took off and grew though!! Heather left the program and moved on to other things and so did the Garden Center and all that she put in got taken out. Which, if you know anything about gardening, is the way things go.

The Tulsa Garden Center is a great organization and a great place check it out.

Linking with Our World Tuesday

Previous Posts on Tulsa Garden Center: here, here, and here.