Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: jonquil

(+4 insets!) Whew! It's nearly 4pm and I haven't stopped running! Finally got a break to write my post for the day. :) I'd like to start off by thanking all of you who've been letting me know how much you've been enjoying the beginnings of our RV adventures. I want to document it because it's kind of a big deal. It's also been a lot of work, so I also appreciate your patience with the fact that I simply don't have time to comment right now. I really hate that because it's such fun to go on my virtual trips around the world when I visit you all. Well, hopefully I'll be able to get some commenting in sometime soon. And of course, huge thanks to everyone for your amazing comments and stars for my pictures. It makes my day to read what you have to say, you're all just so very wonderful. :) Today is Macro Monday!! The theme this week is another seemingly "hand-picked for Janet" theme…Flower Buds! I am a little bummed that I wasn't able to get all the different bud pictures I was planning on. The plan was to go out today and take more pictures but it's literally been drizzling and raining all day long. I keep checking every hour and there is no end. So, sadly, I ran out of time for more buds. Boo. My main picture is a cluster of jonquils that grow in a thick patch next to our traditional daffodils. They are so fragrant! And of course, lovely too! How nice that the buds were covered with rain drops...BONUS! I have two more picks as insets: a trio of jonquils with daffodil and jonquil bokeh and also a rhododendron bud which is just thinking about what it will be like to flower in a month! I hope you like my week's Macro Monday contributions! You'll also see a couple of panoramas from our faux campsite! The first one was the lovely sunset at our "campground"! The second one was the view from the doorway of our trailer first thing this morning! :) LOL, isn't it funny that we're just here on our property and I can still get some wonderful pictures to share?! :D I don't forget for a moment how fortunate we are. Our Faux Camping Trip Continues! Our second night at the trailer was a great success! We had another dinner like the night before (perfectly amazing and delicious! :D) and afterwards we worked on putting LED lights in cabinets and wherever it made sense. One of the problems with RVs is that they can be quite dark but we're just about done and it's been a great improvement. Both Pumpkin and Molly were there with us from dinnertime and on. That was really nice and both of them enjoyed being in the trailer. Once Pumpkin got used to the new space, she's been fabulous! Whistling, singing, and of course laughing her head off at us whenever the mood suits her, we are confident that traveling with both our bird and dog will be very easy for all of us. We all slept really well and after we got up, Steve and I took our first showers there! One must be extremely conservative with water in an RV and one of the first upgrades we added was a proper shower head that has a button to instantly stop the water flow. This way you can turn on the shower, douse yourself, stop the water, soap up, turn on the water and rinse. I didn't wash my hair there because I wanted to keep it simple but that will definitely use a lot more water. We have exactly six gallons of hot water so there can be no lollygagging about. After one of us showers, the other waits for 15 min for the next 6 gallons of water to heat up. I chose to have the second shower so Steve could let me know what to pay attention to. That's why I got on better than Steve; he ran out of hot water so I was in and out in a mad flash. I also didn't wash my hair but he did. We shall see how well I manage with that addition. I just didn't want to risk running out of warm water…we all know what that's like and it being April 1, I didn't like the idea of some gremlins pulling a prank on me! :D After my shower I made our espressos there because we brought our machine over and will be bringing it with us. We've experimented with the new faddish "pod" machines but the US coffee pods are total watery garbage from our experience. We learned about these compact and convenient coffee machines in France and fell in love with L'OR pods. Intensity 12 are AWESOME but they are expensive in Europe when we found them and stupidly outrageous if purchased in the US so forget it. We'll bring our tried-and-true Rancilia Silvia and stop fussing about it! Testing the camper has been incredibly valuable and we'll keep it up until we run out of issues. Steve learned that he needs a longer shower hose to work for his 6'2 frame…he has to hold the hose up and lean over to get his head wet. That totally sucks. It's perfect for me though, I'm only 5'4 and don't need to make any adjustments. With a longer hose he'll still need to hold the hose up but at least he won't have to bend over! There are lots of little things that we need to change, buy, add, adjust and build but with each passing day we're slowly getting the trailer ready for the road. It's also totally exhausting! So much thought and consideration and shopping and decision-making. We're going to be happy to take a break once we're satisfied so we can recuperate. I think I might have mentioned yesterday that it's like a combination of moving to a new home and going on a trip. But in the end, we'll be confident that we can go on a real trip and it should go smoothly! Pam, it tickles me to no end to learn that you're a very experienced camper girl yourself! I love it! Our digs may be larger the van you were in but the experiences we have will ring true to the ones you have had! How cool is that?! (Plus, vans have some incredible advantages!) :D You know, in all the years that Steve and I have known one another (2000), we've only officially been camping once. We decided that it's just a bit too much work--even though the reward can be so sweet. We thought that someday we could save enough money for an RV and take a proper home with us without needing to break everything down and set it all up again at the next place. And here we are at the very beginning of our adventure. I'm so happy you're enjoying the show…I plan to write about the whole kit-and-caboodle so get ready for the ride…it's going to be AWESOME! I looked in your stream for a lovely place and landed on your Mt. Jefferson State Park picture…holy cow is that lovely. We are hoping to get to the Blue Ridge Mountains in our travels so this picture makes me so excited! So lovely!! Thank you for adding to my wanderlust with this gorgeous autumn landscape! *BIG, BIG HUGS* (Your panorama is a total jaw-dropper too, WOWZERS!) Explored on 4/2/19, highest placement, #1.

Our springs are often very rainy, and it's wonderful to sneak out between showers to get pictures of the flowers with droplets on them. Here are some jonquils drenched after a storm. :)

Our amazing display of daffodils and jonquils was so pretty that I found myself taking endless pictures of them! Who can resist such perfect flowers?! Here is a close-up of a jonquil's beautiful face right after a spring shower!

Yesterday I posted a picture of our lovely yellow daffodils and today, for a change, jonquil buds in black and white! I had trouble with the background when this was in color...I was about to make the decision to retake the shot when I decided to see what would happen if I changed it to a b/w image. WOW! The contrast problems I was having went away and suddenly, the cool shadows on the jonquils really popped out! Once I figured out that b/w was the way to go, I reverted to the color version and carefully adjusted the contrast of the shadows, midtones and highlights before changing it to a b/w image. I have found that doing most of my adjustments to the color version is the better way to go because you have a lot more information to work with. If you're unsure about this process, remember that making adjustments in the color version will make it look "wrong"...you want to increase the contrast carefully, by enhancing the darks and lights and watching the midtones so they don't lose detail on the switch to b/w. Once you're satisfied, final adjustments can then be made in the grayscale version. It's really fun to do this, especially when you understand that most color images will not look good in b/w without these adjustments. I hope I did a good job with this one!! I'm no pro at b/w but I am happy how this one turned out! :) NOTE: I meant to upload the opened cream and yellow daffodil and I forgot! :D :D It will be up to see tomorrow for sure! :D

A week or so ago, I posted a black and white image of a cluster of our jonquils growing in our front yard. Here is an open blossom, just after a Spring rain! :) This image was taken in March, 2012. Explored on April 8th, 2012.

I wanted to take a moment today to say thank you to all of you who come to visit my photo stream, look at my pictures, leave comments and favorites. You have made me smile from ear to ear, you have made me glow, you have made me laugh out loud! You have encouraged me to try as hard as I can to always try to take better pictures, to learn new techniques, to think about taking pictures in different ways I never thought of. You guys make my day, every single day, and I cannot possibly thank you all enough for your support, enthusiasm, and good cheer! As much fun as I have reading your comments, visiting your photostreams means just as much to me! Every day I get to see the world through all of your eyes, and it's an amazing experience! You guys live ALL OVER THE WORLD!! I have friends everywhere it seems, and if I started listing locations, you'd be reading countries for the next hour! :D I LOVE IT!!!! I get to see so many incredible sights that I may never see in my lifetime. I get to see special moments captured by your talented skills which amaze and delight me and literally cause me to exclaim out loud, "WOW!!!!!!" I have seen images that make me cry and others that make me squeal with laughter! You show me awe-inspiring pictures that take my breath away. And, your pictures fill me with inspiration with countless ways to think about photography in a new way and to help me be better too. I have made so many friends here! It's funny, because in person, I can be quite shy until I get to know people. I don't like parties and my idea of the perfect get-together is only a couple of other people so I can really pay attention to each person. But here on ipernity, I can be outgoing and I love crowds! I enjoy getting to know everyone that comes by, and as each month passes by, I'm getting to know so many of you to the point that I truly consider you good friends! Amazing for a person who's always kept to herself, a loner. Thanks to all of you, I finally know what it's like to have lots of great friends, and I always have room for more! :) So, this bright and cheery picture of the daffodils and jonquils in our garden made me think of all of you, and how incredibly happy and fortunate I am to know each and every one of you. Thank you so much for everything. You make my day every day, and I will always do my best to do the same for all of you. I would love to give you all a big hug because you make me so happy! THANK YOU ALL!!!

This is another view of the jonquils I took pictures of today. I originally planned to make this one my pick of the day, but after processing the other picture, I thought the composition was better, the focal point not so centered. Still, this doesn't matter sometimes, and maybe this is the nicer pick...what do you think?

Today I spent an hour or two between rain showers to walk around our larger meadow sprinkling somewhere between 5,000-10,000 wildflower seeds here and there. I made sure to only sprinkle them on exposed dirt and some of the larger seeds I pushed into the earth. The thing that's a shame is that these seed are very old. From 2007 to be exact, so I doubt that many of them will sprout. I hope that a few will though, and what a colorful surprise that will be! Tomorrow I'll be sprinkling shade-loving flower seeds around the trees in our smaller meadow and planting a whole bunch of (currently soaking) morning glory seeds near some fencing. Wish us luck! It would be so nice to have some new wildflowers to appreciate! :D It's been raining all day on and off, so I decided to take pictures of the beautiful jonquils which pop up right next to our display of daffodils. They smell sooooo nice!!! Such a strong, sweet smell, I just love them! I also took a picture of our orange-cupped daffodil which fell over last year and needed to be snipped and brought inside for pictures! :) I was so happy to see that now there are TWO of them! :D John Hoyer Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Wikipedia: John Updike