Archive for August, 2007
It’s been a busy summer with many long days out photographing gardens. Now that mid-August is here, I have a little time to catch up on captioning and updating web galleries. I’m running about a month behind in captioning, so just finished preparing the galleries from my July trip to Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. I uploaded over a thousand new images to Inland Northwest Gardening last night and they’re now ready for viewing. I photographed in 22 different gardens between July 6 and 15.
This nice waterfall and pond are in Mary Carson’s Coeur d’Alene garden.
August 16 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
I’m working on shooting for a new book about gardening east of the Cascade mountains. Since I live on the west side, it means long road trips and concentrated photography to maximize the return on my time and travel expenses. I try to photograph at least a couple of gardens a day, one in the early morning and one in the evening. That’s the fun and creative part of this business.
When I return home then I have to edit and caption the take, which can require almost as much time as the original photography. At this point in 2007 I’ve already created considerably more new images than I did in all of 2006 or 2005, years when I was not shooting a book or doing a lot of travelling.
Many of these new garden images are online on the Inland Northwest Gardening website. The site will continue to grow as I keep shooting and captioning.
August 01 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
After writing about the goodness of people I’ve met along the way I’ve encountered the bad egg. I don’t know who this person is, but they’ve made us feel violated.
One morning recently I went out to wander around the garden and noticed that something was missing. Actually, several somethings were missing. During the night, a person unknown had broken off three stems of ‘Stargazer’ lilies that were in bud, all of the stems of a nice pink mallow, some delphiniums, astilbe, tall bellflowers, liatris, and hosta leaves. To do this, they had to enter our yard, not just pluck stuff from the sidewalk. Natalie discovered a plastic box out at the corner of the garden with some of the broken-off flowers and foliage that the thief had left behind. She put a sign on it, “Monday Night Vandalism,” and left it by the sidewalk. Several neighbors asked about it, but hadn’t seen or heard anything in the night. There was enough broken off and left behind to make a nice bouquet for our dining room table.
On further inspection, I found that the thief had pulled two plants up by the roots — a Mexican feather grass and a little variegated yucca — that we’d just planted last spring.
Occasionally we’ll have someone knock on the door and ask if they can have a few flowers to give to their mother or some such thing. We’ll often oblige them. But this is the first time someone has helped themselves wholesale to our garden. I hope it’s a one-time thing because I still believe that overall people are good.
August 01 2007 | Gardens and Human Nature | 2 Comments »
