The Weekend in Black and White: Dogwood Blossoms

The wind was blowing the dogwood tree limbs back and forth. Although I didn't catch the movement in this shot, I thought it turned out pretty well.

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SkyWatch Friday: Blooms, clouds, blue

When I drove up my driveway the other day and glanced at the side of my house, the blue sky was so vivid it made me pull out my camera.

On an overcast day my dogwood tree was blowing back and forth.

The way the dogwoods branches mingle with the oak tree branches make it hard to tell where one starts and the other stops, although the dogwood is much shorter and smaller than the oak.

I have a cherry tree variety which has very small blossoms.

The dogwood on the left reaches across my driveway to the oak on the right.

Another intermingling between the dogwood and oak.

In the next shot my azalea is reaching up towards the oak trees.

The next shot is of my neighbor's pink dogwood tree.

The rufous-sided towhee below is singing in my pecan tree.

We've had some magnificent clouds lately.

The sunset below was accented with a lot of little clouds.

Another monster cloud against a vivid blue sky.

Below is a cloud around sunset time.

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ABC Wednesday: K is for kolkwitzia

My kolkwitzia amabilis won't begin blooming until late April unless it's early this year as other flowers have been. I picked shots from late April 2010 and late April 2011 for this post.

According to Wikipedia, kolkwitzia amabilis originated in Central China. It was named for Richard Kolkwitz, a Professor of Botany in Berlin (1901 to 1938) and in 1954 he became a Professor of Botany at the Free University of Berlin. He died in 1956 at the age of 83. A devise used to determine the quantity of cells and cell aggregates of phytoplankton, the Kolkwitzhammer, was also named after him.

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Our World Tuesday: late March

My next door neighbor Gamma likes to hang out in my bushes.

Close to sunset I was drawn out by the lighting and the interesting cloud.

It almost looked like the cloud was going to take off like a rocket.

This has ended up being a pretty March in spite of the ups and downs of the weather.

The sparrow below was finding something to eat

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The Weekend in Black and White: Drive by Shot

If I hadn't been shooting from my car at a stop light, I would have tried to get a better composition.

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SkyWatch Friday: So much to look at this time of the year

This week I'll start with two shots I took at sunrise.

Sunrise that day was the prettiest time because the sky turned gray and rainy later.

I find it startling when half the sky is blue and half is white like it was in the next shot.

The next two shots are ones I took one day at the end of sunset.

The dark band almost looks like a mountain range to me but it's just a cloud block.

I've had lots of clouds to look at over the past few months.

I could stare at the clouds for ages, sometimes even when they are only in my head.

I like the different shades in the clouds in the next shot.

The cotton ball type clouds like the ones below are favorites of mine.

The changes in the trees are making each day different even without the sky show that has been going on.

I like the little tiny leaves like the ones in the next shot.

It makes it easier to see the sky when the changes are just starting on some trees.

I like the way the changes on different trees are at a different rate.

The male cardinals are starting to get territorial and it's harder to catch a still one like the one in the tree below. They are chasing each other a lot.

The next shot of the sun trying to break through has been a common site.

The white dogwoods are finally beginning to get fuller flowers.

The next shot is one I took right before it started raining buckets of water.

The clouds with a break in the middle caught my eye.

One good thing about all the rain is the pollen is getting knocked off daily and it isn't as bad as it would be otherwise.

Spring has definitely arrived in my sky.

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