Category Archives: Friday Flower Fiesta
Friday Flower Fiesta (5/24/13) — From the campus of San Diego State University
Schools are getting out for the summer, and this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the official start of Tourist Season in San Diego.
Today’s Friday Flower Fiesta comes from the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU). A couple of years ago the campus seemed to have undergone a transformation that made the campus into a botanical garden. Right now it seems pretty barren since 32,000 students have taken off for a couple of weeks before summer school starts, but that makes it easy to walk around taking pictures without having to clone people out of the pictures!
Flowerus orangii
Flowerus yellowii
Flowerus unknownii
Flowerus whoknowsii
Begonia
Ice plant
Confused poinsettias
Hollyhock
Iris
Iris
Aloe
Clivia
Coral tree
Rose
(This might be my #1 rose picture)
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (5/9/13) — The best for the best
I would like to dedicate this Friday Flower Fiesta to two people:
First, to the memory of Wendy Stone, 41, of Riverside, who was killed in an automobile accident on Tuesday, April 23. Wendy was riding her motorcycle northbound on Interstate 15 at Indian Truck Trail (halfway between Corona and Lake Elsinore) when a truck going southbound veered into the center divider, hit the K-rail, jumped it, and flew into the northbound lanes. Debris from the K-rail hit Wendy Stone, throwing her from her motorcycle and killing her; the motorcycle traveled another 1,000 yards (that’s over half a mile!) before crashing.
Second, to Harvey Oshrin. Harvey was driving a Mercedes in the northbound lanes in front of Wendy that was destroyed when the truck landed on it. Harvey is my mother-in-law’s boyfriend. Here is Harvey’s car after the crash:
Harvey spent a few days in the hospital due to injuries but he’s at home now and apparently feeling well enough to go out this afternoon with me, Jim, and Joan (my mother-in-law) for a Mother’s Day meal at Famous Dave’s in Vista, best barbecue in San Diego County.
I’m a firm believer that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. If it’s not your time to go, you can say prayers of thanks to God, thank modern medicine, call it a miracle, whatever. All it means to me is that it wasn’t your time to go. If you look at Harvey’s car, the passenger area is completely destroyed. That’s normally where Joan sits. She wasn’t with Harvey that day, so it obviously wasn’t her time to go.
Here’s an NBC web site report on the crash. I think it’s interesting that the last line of the article says, “The drivers of the truck and sedan were not seriously injured.” Granted, any injury won’t be as serious as death, but personally I think a few days in the hospital due to injuries would warrant calling them serious injuries. Of course, NBC didn’t know how serious the injuries were at the time they posted the article.
Readers who have been with me a long time might recognize the following pictures. All have been used in Friday Flower Fiestas before. I consider them some of my best and I use them here for two of the best people in my life: Joan and Harvey.
Angel’s trumpet
California poppy
Bird of Paradise
Iris
Aloe
Protea
Columbine
Columbine
Pansy
Rose
Clivia
Aloe
Iris
Blue Agave
Tulips
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta — Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden
Located at 2525 Park Boulevard, the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden in Balboa Park is an All America Rose Selection Display Garden with over 2,500 roses representing 200 varieties on three acres.
Park your car in the southeast corner or the far east row of the San Diego Zoo parking lot. Those areas are well away from the Zoo entrance and are often available. Walk across the street and south towards the rose garden. The first thing you’ll see is a beautiful tree dressed all in pink.
Roses bloom from March through December, but April and May are the best months with roses at their peak beauty. Let me know which rose (or rose picture) you like best.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (4-19-13) — Peace
I have many flaws but one that has always bothered me is that I have never had much capacity to express sympathy and sorrow.
I remember when my granddad died in 1978. He had suffered through about 70 heart attacks during the previous ten years but kept on going…. Until the day that I told him I was officially going to graduate from Texas A&M University. He died in his sleep that night. I was a serious juvenile delinquent when he and grandma adopted me, and I think he knew that I would be alright once I graduated from college.
When I attended the funeral — I was 23 — everyone except me was crying. I tried to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. Granddad was 69. At the time I thought he had lived a long life; he was dead. Move on.
Same thing happened in 1983 when my best friend died of leukemia when he was just 25.
I finally cried on 9/11, and the tears have been flowing again since Monday.
For today’s Friday Flower Fiesta, I want to share nothing but predominantly white flowers, the color of peace, and I want to dedicate this Friday Flower Fiesta to the 264 injured in the Boston Marathon bombing; the three dead: Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, and Lingzi Lu; and Sean Collier, the MIT officer, killed last night.
Peace Lily
Martin Richard
Krystle Campbell
Lingzi Lu
Sean Collier
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta quiz
For today’s Friday Flower Fiesta, I thought I would conduct a quiz.
I think it’s pretty easy so everyone should score a 100.
Of the following ten pictures, nine are of flowers; one is not.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me which of the ten pictures is not of flowers.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (3-29-13) — Groups
Just a short drive anywhere in San Diego County right now will provide you with a vast array of flowers and colors.
Take enough pictures and you can test whether or not your computer monitor really can show 16.2 million colors.
Here are a few of my favorite flower groups from this past week:
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (3/15/13) — Imperfect orchids
Okay.
Back to orchids for our Friday Flower Fiesta today.
One of the problems with orchids is that the flowers last so long.
Long-lasting flowers are subject to greater physical damage than a day-blooming flower.
The following orchid pictures all had something wrong with them, usually a big dead spot on a petal (which I fixed using the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Photoshop CS6) or a piece of a petal missing (which I repaired using the Clone Stamp Tool).
In some cases, the flower was in front of an extraordinarily bright window, or there were weird colors around the flower that drew your attention away from the flowers. I guess a little fashion sense can teach you when flowers clash with their surroundings…….. When I had weird colors in the picture, I often highlighted the flower I wanted to focus on, inverted the selection so that the flower was the only thing not selected, and then added a Black & White layer. Sometimes the effect is striking, as I discovered in a recent post where I had this picture:
Look carefully and you can see that the white areas were blown out in the original picture. Changing the background to black & white, though, allows you to focus on what I want you to focus on.
In other cases, a completely black & white background didn’t work (in my opinion), so I played with the opacity of the black & white layer to bring just a wee bit of color back into the background.
Usually I can just add a background layer and decrease the brightness and increase the contrast to make the focus flower stand out.
Remember that, as my wise old grandmother used to say, “What comes out of the camera is just the basics to start with.” Don’t be afraid to experiment to make your pictures better, and don’t be afraid to be a photographic artist.
In the following pictures, I’ll tell you what I did to the background.
Without further achoo adoo adieux, today’s Friday Flower Fiesta:
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.)
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would also have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.
This was the picture that caused me to explore black & white layers.)
This was my first attempt at a black & white background
layer with just a wee bit of color being added back in.
I liked the previous picture so much that I decided to do
the rest of the pictures using the black & white background layer
with a little bit of color being added back in.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (3/8/13) — Flowers on stamps
I thought I would take a break from orchids today (we’ll get back to them next week) and combine my love of philately with my love of nature.
Here, then, are some flowers from my photograph collection and a United States postage stamps featuring that flower.
Kansas entered the Union on January 29, 1861, and its 100th anniversary of statehood was celebrated with the release of Scott #1183 on May 10, 1961 — why the Post Office didn’t release it on January 29, 1961, is beyond me. Its official nickname is the Sunflower State, and the highest point in the state is Mount Sunflower at 4,041 feet above sea level.
The poinsettia is native to Mexico and was introduced to the United States in 1825. The poinsettia industry was started by Albert Ecke in Los Angeles in 1900. His son, Paul Ecke, developed a specific grafting technique that allowed the poinsettia industry to expand, but it was Paul Ecke Jr. who was responsible for advancing the association between Christmas and poinsettias. Paul Jr. changed the market from mature plants shipped by rail to cuttings shipped by air, sent free plants to television stations for them to display on air from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and appeared on The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials to promote poinsettias.
The Ecke family poinsettia operation moved to Encinitas (that’s right here in San Diego County!) in 1923.
Left to grow on their own, poinsettias will grow tall and scragly. The Eckes developed a grafting method, known only to them, that allowed them to create a compact, bushier plant. In the 1990s, a university researcher discovered, and published, the grafting method, allowing competitors to flourish, particularly those using low-cost labor in foreign countries.
In 2008, Paul Ecke III decided to stop producing plants in the U.S. The Ecke Family operations still control about 70% of the United States market and 50% of the worldwide market.
Roses are used to make perfumes, jams, jellies, marmalade, tea, rose syrup, and skin products. Some rose petals are candied, and rose creams are a traditional English confectionery.
Several Camellias are used to make tea, Camellia sinensis, known as the “tea plant,” being the most popular because its tea is considered the finest made from Camellias. Camellias also produce cooking oil for hundreds of millions of people in China and Southeast Asia. Camellia oil is also used to clean and protect the blades of cutting instruments.
There are a great variety of dahlias, resulting from their eight sets of chromosomes; most plants have only two sets of chromosomes. The best place to see dahlias in San Diego County is at the annual San Diego County Fair in June and July. For as long as I have been going to the Fair (18 years), there has always been a dahlia show with hundreds of beautiful flowers on display.
Some lilies, especially Lilium longiflorum (the common Easter Lily), are toxic to cats. The mechanism of toxicity is not understood but it involves damage to the renal tubular epithelium, causing acute kidney failure.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (3/1/13) — Mostly white orchids
Last week I promised more orchids for today’s Friday Flower Fiesta. I decided to go with a mostly white theme today. I don’t normally like white flowers, but most mostly white orchids have some beautiful accent colors here and there, as you can see.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (2/22/13) — Orchids for everyone!
It’s orchid season here in San Diego. The Orchid Society had their show last week and the Botanic Building at Balboa Park is full of orchids. Here are a few:
The last three are my favorite orchids out of this collection.
I took a few hundred pictures last week of orchids and since I’m having so much fun looking at them and cataloging them, I’ll have some more orchids for everyone next Friday. Hope you’ll come back!
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
