The Seeds of Summer

I am being buried in seed catalogs. I love it. Last year, I dabbled in the Dried Flower Bed at Rutgers Gardens. It was assigned to me at the last minute, so I had to settle for planting leftovers from the greenhouse. Needless to say, it was not a success. This year, I will be able to grow flowers ahead of time in the greenhouse specifically for the Dried Flower Bed. I’ve found a lot of interesting flowers but need to narrow down my list. It’s a small bed. There’s just not enough room for everything that I want to grow.

The bed is surrounded on two sides by a fence. I plan on growing small decorative gourds on the fence. Yes, I know that they aren’t flowers but neither are the decorative grasses that are already in the bed. I’m such a rebel!

Being a long time volunteer (6 years!) has its privileges. I’ve decided to branch out and try growing veggies. There is a waiting list for veggie beds, but the Volunteer Coordinator allowed me to jump to the head of the list and grab a bed that was being relinquished by another gardener. I will be growing stuff that I cook with such as parsley, carrots, onions, garlic and herbs. I have to have a few flowers so I will be growing edible flowers such as nasturtiums, marigolds and calendulas.

I think I will declare this the Year of the Zinnia. I saw lots of interesting varieties of zinnias in the catalogs that would be perfect for my gardens at home.

This is my favorite time of year when I can dream about my gardens. In my dreams, they always look lovely and never have weeds.

New Years in the Gardens

I love this picture. The trees look so ghostly.

I spent New Years Day in my favorite place: Rutgers Gardens. I was surprised at the amount of snow left over from last week’s blizzard despite the warm temperatures we have experienced since then.

The snow has been melting in interesting shapes.

Evidence of the high winds was scattered all over the floor of Helyar Woods.

Photo of the Day

I love the colors in this shot.

You can see more photos of my New Years Walk in the Gardens on Flickr.

Blowin' in the Wind

Rutgers Gardens is sponsoring a photo contest this fall. It’s limited to amateur photographers. Photos must be taken between January 1 and September 10, 2010. Only one entry can be submitted in each of the three categories: plants, wildlife and people. I don’t do anything with a heartbeat, so I may only be able to enter one photo if I don’t get a good butterfly or bee photo.

I have been so busy in the greenhouse so far this year that I haven’t had time to take any photos at the Gardens. Yesterday, I found myself with some time, so I took a quick walk around. Quick, because the wind was blowing so hard that taking photos was nearly impossible.

I can compensate for a little bit of movement, but when my subjects are being blown completely out of the frame, there’s nothing I can do.

In spite of the dire conditions, I did manage to get two decent photos.

The sky was a gorgeous blue. I took a lot of pictures of plants silhouetted against it. Just for fun, I turned my camera upwards and took a picture of just the sky.

When I downloaded it at home, I burst out laughing. It screams "Windows98", doesn’t it?

This is the first photo that I took yesterday.

I love how it came out. The flower is past its prime but has such an interesting shape.

Next weekend is Rutgers Day . Rutgers Gardens will be selling plants at the event. Look for me between noon and 4 pm. I’ll be the one in the straw hat selling herbs.

See you there!

Back in the Greenhouse

There is no better way to spend a cold winter afternoon than working in a greenhouse. The warmth is welcome as are the growing plants. The greenhouse at Rutgers Gardens has been busy since last fall. The tropicals were all brought before the first frost. Plants have been divided and bulbs have been cleaned and stored. Then cuttings were begun.

If you have ever been to the Spring Flower Fair, you might be surprised to learn that some of the thousands of plants offered for sale started out as cuttings in the greenhouse. In past years, I’ve helped with the coleus cuttings. Today, I was working on scented geranium cuttings. I loved the scent of the rose geraniums so instead of discarding the leaves that I cut off, I brought them home to scent my living room. Kind of casual potpourri.

When I finished, I gave the cuttings a big drink of water. The misting table didn’t seem to be working.  Coleus cuttings were dry and shriveling up. I watered them also then notified the horticulturist via email of the problem with the misting table when I got home.

I remembered to slip a few treats for Rutger into my pocket on my way out of the house. He kept me company while I worked.

Holly

Rutgers Gardens has a large holly collection.

I’ve driven by it many times, but never taken the time to photograph it. The hollies with yellow berries intrigue me.

As you can see, the light was terrible this afternoon. Harsh, washing out all of the colors. I had terrible trouble with shadows.

So no Photo of the Day. I took a few nice ones, but nothing that really stood out.

I thought this was kind of fun:

You can see all of my photos from today on Flickr.

Cabin Fever

The unseasonably warm weather is causing intense cabin fever. I can’t stand being cooped up in the house. I must be outside. It’s too early to do any gardening so I took my camera on a walk around Rutgers Gardens. It was a great day for photography. I came away with a record three Photos of the Day.

All of the ponds were still covered with ice. This, the largest, had a few areas of open water.

I didn’t realize that bamboo is evergreen. I love the contrast of the browns and grays with the green of the bamboo. It gives the appearance of a hidden garden.

The pond in the display gardens was full of acorn-like nuts, leaves and if you look carefully, you can see fish just below the ice.

The drabness of the winter landscape made details that I might ordinarily overlook really stand out. Like this bright orange fungus.

I’ve photographed this tree many, many times in the spring, summer and fall but it wasn’t until it was stripped bare that I saw how intertwined the branches were.

I ended my walk at what has become my favorite place in the gardens, the old greenhouse.

It’s boarded up now and the broken panes of glass have been removed but it still draws me back every time that I visit.

The Last Gasp

One of the advantages of the long growing season in NJ (zone 6), now prolonged thanks to Global Warming, are the number of plants still in bloom in October. Not shocking, I know, to those of you in warmer climes but still a wonder to those of us who were raised in much colder areas of the country. I brought my camera with me today so that I could capture the beauty of the Display Gardens at Rutgers Gardens before the plants are removed and the beds raked next weekend in preparation for winter.

Photo of the Day

I love that the seedheads are all leaning to the side contrasting with the rigidly upright stems. The ornamental grasses in the perennial borders captivated me. I have a love/hate relationship with ornamental grasses. In the spring and summer, they repulse me. I wonder how anyone could possibly plant such ragged, weedy plants in their flowerbeds. But in the fall and especially the winter, when they come into their own, I am bowled over by their beauty. I am determined to add them to my landscape. I carefully choose spots where they will look best in my yard. And then, in the spring, the cycle repeats itself. I find myself at the nursery, staring at ragged, weedy plants in pots wondering how anyone could possibly plant such ugly things in their flowerbeds.

Look at the color! The patterns! Who could resist this?

Personally, I like this photo more. It looks like a child scribbled on it.

I’m still struggling with light. Since I was photographing in strong afternoon sunlight which I dislike, I tried getting around it by shooting shaded subjects like this:

That same harsh light, though, produces magical photos like this:

The Yellow Garden Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) in my plot is finally blooming and yellow:

The earliest flowers were white, but like the Seashells Cosmos which curled as the season grew later, these cosmos have become yellow at the end of the season. I like them so much that I think I will grow them at home next year.

Another flower that I would like to grow at home is lantana.

I haven’t figured out how to use it, but after seeing these berries and falling in love, I’m going to try harder to find a way to include it next year.

Just like in my own yard, insects were everywhere.

The sky was an incredible blue today, as you can see from the first photo in this post. While I was photographing the bee, I looked up and saw this:

September in The Gardens

Look up the word blowzy in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of the Display Gardens at Rutgers Gardens in September. Still colorful, the formerly neat beds overflow onto the lawn. Once straight stalks are now bent under the weight of a summer’s worth of flowers. There is color everywhere. It’s as if the entire garden is desperately trying to hold off the inexorable march of the season towards the killing frosts of fall.

I brought my camera with me today to try and capture the glory of the gardens in September. After I had done some much needed work on my plot, of course. The cleome, now gone to seed, was removed and the cosmos, calendula and marigolds deadheaded to prolong their flowering for as long as possible. Then it was off to enjoy and record the late season beauty.

First, I give you the Photo of the Day:

Lion's Tail

I love the strong verticals set off by the horizontal leaves. The flowers haven’t opened yet so their vivid orange is just a splash of color amongst the bright green of the foliage.

Backgrounds are a big problem for me at home where my yard is enclosed by an ugly chainlink fence. Because my property is so small, it’s virtually impossible to take photos without the fence making an unwelcome appearance in the rear. When I am shooting in a garden other than my own, I have a bad habit of overlooking the background when concentrating on a particular plant. Today, I made a point of experimenting with various backgrounds.

Not bad, but the background is too busy. Let’s try another angle.

Nope, that looks lopsided. Too busy on one side.

Okay, that’s better although I’ve lost the emphasis on the grass. I do like that background.

Another assignment that I gave myself was to avoid photos like this:

I caught that one in time to be able to take another one without the offending branch:

I missed this one:

But caught this one:

Last week, I checked out a wonderful book on digital photography from my local library, The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography. I’ll do a full review of it when my own copy arrives from Amazon.com. While I’m waiting for it, I tried some of the techniques I read about.

Turn around. The author recommends when shooting, turning around to see what’s behind you. In this case, I always shoot this arbor looking in towards the Log Cabin. Today, I tried shooting it looking out from the Log Cabin.

My first photos included the branch as a framing device, another recommendation. I wasn’t happy with the result, so I moved forward to eliminate the branch.

My subsequent photos used the path to draw the viewer into the scene as suggested in the chapters on composition.

On my way in to The Gardens, I saw stands of golden rod along the entry road. On my way out, I spent some time photographing them using different apertures, focal lengths and shutter speeds.

You can see all of the pictures I took today on Flickr.

Froggy Fun with Photoshop

I don’t bring my long lens with me when I go to Rutgers Gardens. I don’t have a camera case (yet) and even if I did, I’m already carrying a bag full of garden tools, sunscreen, seed collecting containers, tissues, water … you get the idea. It’s just easier to sling my camera around my neck.

There are frogs in the pond in the Display Gardens. Without a long lens, I haven’t been able to get a good shot of them. Last month, one of the frogs obligingly sat on the edge of the pond and allowed me to get very close to him.

I took several shots as I moved nearer and nearer. I wasn’t happy with any of them because the day was overcast and very dark and the flash kept popping up on my camera. I am still so new to digital SLR’s that I couldn’t remember how to disable that function in the heat of the moment.

After my success with the cleome, I decided to see if I could work a little Photoshop magic with the frog. First I cropped the picture to emphasize the frog. Then, after searching a few Help topics, I started playing with filters to lighten the colors.

I think that came out rather well, don’t you?

Fun With Photoshop

Back in August, I worked the nightshift for three weeks covering for vacationing employees. That’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. Nightshift at my company is 3 on, 3 off and every other Saturday. In plain English that means I had a lot of time on my hands. I wish I could say that I used it constructively, attending to my house and my gardens. But of course I didn’t. Instead, I found lots of ways to waste time. Like playing with Photoshop.

Photoshop has been installed on my computer for quite a while now but I haven’t been using it. It’s so complex that I find it intimidating. Books about it either assume way more prior knowledge than I actually have or are so densely written as to be unreadable. Everyone tells me that the best way to learn the software is by using it. I decided to start with something simple like cropping.

I like this shot of cleome in my plot at Rutgers Gardens a lot. I like that it is a different angle from my usual pictures which tend to be carefully centered straight on shots. I like that it is slightly off-center: is the picture about the flower or the insect? But I also like pictures that don’t look exactly like what they are. And this one has the potential to be one of those if cropped.

I love this! It’s nearly impossible to tell what kind of flower this is. But the pattern of the petals is fantastic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the other half of the photo. The bug has definite possibilities. With a little judicious cropping . . .

Voila! Another one of those pictures where it is difficult to distinguish the type of flower that the bug is investigating. Even better is that I got three great photos from one shot.