throwbackthursday

Back to Spring

Three tulips rise from a blurred background with a soft mauve-tinted bokeh. The tulips are pink, not very open, with white highlights and slightly crinkled petals.
Pink Tulips

Following on from my last post, where I referenced the fact that I had no longer been seeing the beauty around me, here is solid evidence that I was seeing it. And I was photographing it as I found when I went back through my catalogue. I must have just lost focus in the humdrum of the everyday that takes over our lives. So for a Throwback Thursday (not very far back, admittedly) here is a splash of bright spring colour from our garden. Aren’t these delightful? Have a great day, friends.

These are in my Flower a Day gallery (which is not a daily thing, you now realize) which you can see here: https://www.elliekennard.ca/ekgallery/flower-a-day-2024/

Sunset Geometry

A sunset scene of a playground with the vertical and horizontal poles of the equipment lit by the setting sun, creating geometric lines. The playground itself has white circles and curved lines for basketball, and the basketball hoops are in the right of the image. The school building itself is a pinky orange block with window and structure lines.
Sunset Geometry

Happy Thursday! Who liked geometry at school? Actually, I did. This is full of just the sort of lines and shapes that I grew to love in those classes. A sunset picked these elements out perfectly, at the same time putting a rosie glow on the school. That’s a colour that I don’t imagine too many students associate with their school days, which is a shame. I hope this brings back some good memories of fun times.

Monarch Butterfly Larvae and Pupa

There are two monarch butterfly caterpillars, striped white, black and yellow with black antennae, on green leaves of a milkweed plant.
Monarch butterfly caterpillars

There is a wonderful children’s garden in the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, where I discovered that I am still a child as I enjoyed it just as much as any of the youngsters. When I visited there in September, 2015, I was thrilled to see these colourful monarch butterfly larvae as well as this pupa, on true milkweed.

a hard looking almost cylindrical case is hanging from a stem of a plant. It has a rim of what looks like small white bumps two thirds of the way up, before the cylinder comes to a rounded point at the top.
Monarch butterfly pupa

I had never seen either of these and only identified them with the help of the guide who was happy to explain all about the life cycle of this beautiful (and threatened) species. The guide, herself passionately interested in and very knowledgeable about monarchs, showed us the plants that they preferred and helped us hunt until we found what we were looking for. It was a windy day, though still warm and it was not easy to get a photograph as the plants were blowing around so much, but I was glad to get these to share.

More information about the life cycle of the monarch butterfly can be found here:
http://monarchlab.org/biology-and-research/biology-and-natural-history/breeding-life-cycle/
And about the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens here: http://www.mainegardens.org
My posts are all on my blog: https://www.elliekennard.ca.

An Un-Anniversary Celebration

An older couple are seated at a round table in a restaurant. They are kissing each other , but slightly smiling as they do so, aware that people are watching. The walls of the restaurant are stone, the table is covered with a check tablecloth and has part of a meal left on it and a bottle of water. They are casually dressed. Both have grey hair.
An Un-Anniversary Celebration – Ellie Kennard 2014

Memories – from 2014 – a fun throwback story if you want to read on…

We are in Quebec city, having a great couple of days on our way home from a bit of a tour around friends and family in Ontario and Quebec. Last night we found a little restaurant, the Café de Paris, not far from the Château Frontenac in the old town and were sitting, waiting for our meal to be served. I was taking pictures of various things in the restaurant when the owner came up and asked if I wanted him to take a photograph of us… Um… Sure, I agreed. He then proceeded to stand on a chair with my camera and tried to zoom in with the lens (he couldn’t as it was my prime 40mm) and then he complained when the lens was moving in and out (trying to focus). I asked him if he knew what he was doing and he said he did. Then he said that the picture was looking blurry. I told him how to focus and all seemed to be well. Suddenly his hand holding the camera dropped and there was a crash! He had dropped a metal cup just to give us a fright. 😀 What a great sense of humour. He was Italian, perhaps that had something to do with it?

For some reason he had decided that it was our wedding anniversary and wanted us to gaze lovingly at each other, then hold hands, then finally we had to kiss and Steve was told to ‘take your time’. So here is the picture. What a clown he was! He then asked us if we wanted an after dinner drink, on the house. That sounded good, so we sat and waited… But those promised drinks never arrived. Eventually we paid the bill and left. Anyway, here we are on our very merry un-anniversary.

We will soon be home, with lots of photos and good memories.