hellooo november :)

today is my mom's birthday, she would have been 84 yrs old.

she died of lung cancer 11/13/08 and I miss her terribly every day.

when she died, my sisters and I divided up her plants.

I have one of her Christmas cactus plants.

and in honor of my mom's birthday, it has this beautiful flower today

:)

 

this is also the first November since 1979 that I am not overloaded with retail stress.

I am going to see this month and all it's beauty :)

I am going to see the gray stuff,

the temperature drop, the election signs,

the wilting pumpkins,

the rusty dried leaves

and smile...

hellooo November, I hope to enjoy the hell out of you this go round 

:)

one more image to add -

I bought an annual for the front step this spring, and it barely made it through the season.

I brought it inside a couple of weeks ago and it now has a few buds!

it feels like an omen, a message of new life...

:)

so hellooo November :)



mums...

 

 

watery softness...

 

 

enhanced with Kim Klassen's 'heartbeat' texture

and Pioneer Woman's actions...

 

sharing with Texture Tuesday (click for link)



blooming trees...

i love april.  the trees are in bloom :)

 

 

all three images were enhanced with kim klassen textures and french kiss textures

 

sharing with...

 

Mona's Picturesque...Friday Floral Love 



spring sprung :)

when you see dandelions, you know that spring is finally here :)

 

and then there is this teeny tiny weed...

 

and the forsithia bushes are in bloom :)

 

the pink magnolias are opening up to the sky...

 

the smell of hyancinths fills the air :)

 

 

i love spring, i love flowers and more than anything,

i love my macro lens which lets me see things that escape my eye otherwise :)

 

sharing with Floral Love at Mona's, below...

 http://monaspicturesque.blogspot.com/

 

 



petite petals...

spring comes a little bit earlier on the cape than it does in enfield...

the andromeda bushes have rows and rows of tiny blossoms. 

from far away, the bushes look messy,
but up close, the little flowers are just beautiful :)

 

 

 

all images were enhanced with kim klassens's textures - ToBe and Sunkissed :)

linking up with Mona's Picturesque, friday Floral Love at

Mona's Picturesque :)



friday has a feel...

when i was dreaming of retirement,

i wondered if friday would still be special on the other side.

i am happy to report that yes, yes it is :)

 

today is friday.

it's going to be a beautiful spring day here in enfield connecticut.

i don't have to punch in.  at all.

i can wander and ponder.  or not :)

and tomorrow is the weekend.  (which is also all mine. hah!)

 

and today is Floral Friday at MONA'S

yep. it is a good day :)

 

simply white...

image above and below enhanced with kim klassen's 'take heart' texture...

 

we have a few early spring flowers blooming - but very few. 

a sprinkling of crocus, and a couple of daffodils...nothing more yet.  this is one of the latest springs i can remember.

 

however i have bunches of flowers inside :) 

thanks to many well-wishers on my last day (omg i retired),

i am surrounded by beauty.

ok, maybe not surrounded - the flower arrangements are locked up in the bathroom so the cats don't eat them - but i take them out and photograph them constantly :)

its been the perfect transition from work to play

here is a link to more flowers :)   flickr

 

thank you to my lifetouch peeps, i love you all



for the love of flowers...

one of my favorite blogs,

Mona's Picturesque, found here, 

is hosting a weekly salute to flowers on fridays :)  

 

i've been waiting all week to see what is posted there.

her photography takes my breath away

and i am sure those that join the 'floral love' link up will be beautiful...

 

 

 

 

 

 

going green :)

 

spring is just a tease this year. 

it is coming, but the wait has been hard on everyone. 

it may not have been the roughest winter we've had,

but i believe it might be one of the longest.

 

so yesterday, i went looking for a little piece of spring, looking for anything green and found, instead, some beautiful pussy willows...

 

 

i never saw pussy willows in the wild, only in a store, so it was a sweet find :)

but there really was no green. 

 

so i went back home and dug into the photo archives

and found just enough spring there to hold me over....

 

 

spring dreams :)

to everything
there is a season
and a time for every purpose under heaven...

image was enhanced a bazillion ways,

with pioneer woman's actions,

snapseed software and

multiple textures from kim klassen, including 1402magic and canvasback...

 

here is the original image...

beautiful...

as the journey of Beyond Layers comes to an end,

one of the final assignments is to take this image

and enhance it in whatever way seems to fit..

my favorite kind of challenge :)

 

 

i used several actions from pioneer woman and

also added layers of 'evolve' and 'wonderfulmagic' textures,

along with multiple brushes from kim klassen...

to create a collage-type feel...

 

 

late bloomers...

cosmos, blowing in the wind at sunset

 

flowers...

sunshine...

breezes...

perfect :)

31 days...

november is coming...

the time of year where work takes over every minute. 

awake or asleep, there is no escape. 

so for the next 31 days, i plan to absorb, appreciate and

embrace AUTUMN...

 

I am going to enjoy the flowers while they are still here.

and i am going to watch nature in all its glory as the world turns to

orange and yellow and reds...

it's gonna be a blast :)

 

 

i am going to play with the pictures

in photoshop and snapseed and picmonkey and whatever else i can find...

and then, at the end of the month,

i am going to be all filled up with color :)

 

and that should help when it comes time

to face november...

 

 

 

bring it on,

october,

i am ready for you

 

 

triplets...

this week, the beyond layers challenge was to create one image, three different ways. 
this fed my indecisiveness and probably wasn't good for me :)
eight images later, i struggled with narrowing it down to three.

soft surroundings...

the Texture Tuesday challenge this week is SOFT...

 

all images were enhanced with Kim Klassen's textures,

including little things, grungedup, plaster squared, not-too-shabby.

you can follow Kim at http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe/

orange day

today, the word to photograph was orange...

my first thought was that orange is not an easy word to find in spring,

much easier to find in summer or fall. 

but it was sunday,

i was off of work and looking for orange was a better option

than cleaning the house. so i went for a ride :)

within minutes of hitting the road, i saw a robin with an orange breast...

it flew away too soon but spooked a hawk which flew right up in front of me -

how's that for orange day??

but i really was looking for flowers today

and orange flowers in spring are not that common.

after wandering along the river,

i ended up in a small neighborhood where the residents apparently love to garden :) 

i found a single tulip and lucky for me, it was a deep rich orange...

and across the street, i found those daffodils that have the orange faces :)

these little beauties brought a smile to my face and life to a gray day...

images enhanced with textures from Kim Klassen at http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe/