Why I Wrote This Blog

I have always loved cameras and photography. The physics of light fascinates me. I love the way light is bent and its colors separated by lenses. I am intrigued how modern cameras work their magic recording light waves hitting photographic sensors. I loved the black and white pictures produced by my very first Minolta rangefinder using 35 mm film, and I love the profusion of easily edited pictures one can take using cleverly designed digital cameras. I love the way you can take picture after picture and never tire of taking more.

There is something satisfying about taking and displaying photos of beautiful flowers. I have been invited to show my flower slideshows during cold winter days to groups of winter-weary people. A soldier in Afghanistan follows my Facebook photos of my farm and garden because it reminds him of home. My Master Gardeners' group wants to know what settings to use when photographing flowers. I print pictures of sunflowers and cattails that grow along our irrigation canal for the elderly neighbor recovering in the hospital because she loves them.

From the time I found my first gladiola corm lying tossed aside on the sidewalk in front of a neighbor's house where I grew up in Los Angeles, (and before I found and married my dairy farmer,) I was intrigued to discover I could stick a papery, onion-looking bulb in the ground, and in the course of a summer, it would sprout into green blades surrounding a tall spire of lovely white gladiola flowers. I started planting other things, to see what would come up. At the end of that summer I found myself hooked on flowers, just like I was hooked on cameras.

When I moved to the dairy five children and fourteen grandchildren ago, I found I finally had enough space and irrigation water to grow the kind of cottage garden I didn't realize I craved. When my children married, moved away and started their own gardens, I had more time to add more flowers where the lawn used to be. The trees grew tall and provided a shady microclimate for the permaculture garden I have ultimately ended up with.

This blog is an attempt to bring these two passions together--growing beautiful flowers, annuals and perennials through the seasons, while experimenting with the best ways to photograph them. Please join me!