Drought and Orchids

We had a drought last summer.  I don't know if the drought has been officially declared over yet, but with the amount of rain we've been getting in the hills so far, and the snow in the mountains, I'm guessing it'll be over this year.  But we'll see what kind of weather we get the rest of winter and this coming spring!

The wetter it is, the more the rivers swell.  I've seen Willamette Falls become almost not even a water fall because of how full the river was.  As in, the river's level was as high as the upper part of the falls, so there was no water falling over a ledge anymore.  This past summer, it was just about the opposite.  In my 3 decades of life, I'd never seen the water fall reduce to such a small trickle.  The rock and man-made structures typically hidden by water were completely exposed.  It was so historically low that I decided to document it.  These photos were taken just up the way from the old paper mill, and across the river from the water treatment plant and the old locks.  Take a look:

As usual I had some orchids blooming at various points during the summer.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Brassavola Nodosa

Flowers from Last Summer

I probably say this every time I write a blog post, but I'll say it again.  I haven't posted in way too long and I'm trying to catch up on some photo editing!  The ever-growing stash of photos to edit is continually getting bigger instead of getting smaller, which isn't a good thing.  Maybe I'll make a New Year's Resolution to post twice per month.  Or maybe not.  I've never been big on making resolutions like that.  I'm always trying to improve myself and I don't think it's important to time it relative to the start of a calendar year.

Anyway.  Last spring and summer I had a few orchids blooming and was fortunate to have some beautiful evening sun for "posing" my plants.  I also captured a few roses from the bushes in my yard.  I love roses and would live in the Portland International Rose Test Garden if I could.  What a dream that would be!  Minus the crowds, of course.

If you're reading from my home page, be sure to click "read more" for more photos!

Encyclia Radiata -- a non-resupinate flower (the blooms look 'upside down'
but they are truly right-side up; most other orchids are resupinate, where their
buds rotate during growth so the flowers open upside down)

Roses for a Birthday

One of the big reasons my husband and I moved to Oregon was to be close to family.  Neither of us had family in Indiana, and Oregon offered a much larger job market and a relief from winter, unlike northern Michigan.  I have loved getting to spend significantly more time with family as a result.

My mom's birthday is at the end of May, and this year it was on a Saturday.  It worked out perfectly to take her on her actual birthday to explore the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, right at the peak of the roses blooming.  Almost every plant had at least some fully open blooms, and most varieties were filled with beautiful, fragrant flowers.  The sky was a patchwork of clear blue and white puffs and the temperature was just right for jeans and a t-shirt.  The day could not have been much better.

Being that the gardens are so popular and it was peak season, we had to start pretty early because it gets crowded fast during the peak season, so we arrived around 9:30 and got a parking spot right up front.  As we wandered the rows upon rows of roses (ha!), time flew by and the crowds got thicker.  We ended up staying for over 3 hours!  I think we saw every variety of rose.

Of course I took loads of photos.  It's hard to resist when you have such great subjects at your disposal.  When editing the photos from the Tulip Festival, I feel like I used a bit of a heavy hand with some of the vibrancy and color saturation adjustments.  So with these, I only edited the exposure and nothing else (except removing an occasional speck or something like that).  No adjustments to contrasts, vibrancy, or saturation.  I really wanted to let the flowers speak for themselves.  Here are some photos of my favorites.  (Click "Read More..." to see more)

It may look like a peony, but it's a rose!

Tulips in March

Oregon's Willamette Valley is incredibly fertile land, home to countless farms that grow a giant variety of produce, hops for beer, grapes for wine, and plants and trees for landscaping.  One such farm produces acres upon acres of tulips.  Each year during peak tulip blooming season, this farm hosts the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival where thousands of visitors come to take in the vast array of tulips.  Nick and I visited the festival on a crisp Sunday morning last March and of course I took loads of photos.

Tulips happen to be one of my favorite flowers (besides orchids and roses!).  I particularly love the pinks and purples, and there were lots of both!  So many gem-toned blooms!  I couldn't get enough.  But eventually the crowds were getting a little annoying so I called it a day.  Thankfully we went early in order to beat the majority of the crowds.  Here are some of my favorite photos from that morning.

More after the break...

Cattleya Crazy & Crazy Fog

Two of my cattleyas are blooming right now.  One is a large red/magenta one I bought a few years ago and practically tried to kill it (kept knocking it over, the shock killing the roots).  Thankfully I managed to nurse it back to health and it has bloomed for me the past couple of years consistently.  This time it has two blooms out at once!  Here you go:

Catt. species unknown

Frilly lip!

Frilly lip!

This is my favorite cattleya, and I'm sure you can understand why.  These blooms are 4.5-ish inches across at the widest part.  Their color is so incredibly vibrant.  And I know you don't know this through your computer screen, but they smell amazing!  Wouldn't scratch-n-sniff computer screens be awesome?  During certain times of the day, the smell is much more potent than others, and it's this lovely sweet/spicy scent.  My one regret is that I lost the tag so I don't know the exact species/hybrid of this particular plant.

My other cattleya that is blooming is a mini that came from dividing my mom's plant when it overfilled its pot.  This is a cute little one that is a vigorous grower and often puts out multiple canes of new growth at once, producing several blooms.  I currently have 7 (SEVEN!!) blooms blooming on this little guy!  I've never had a cattleya that produced so many flowers in one go!  These flowers are about an inch to 1.5 inch across, and I haven't noticed any smell from them.  Anyway, here's a peek:

Catt. species unknown

I love the bright yellow with the red lip.  So cheery!  Thanks, Mom!  Have I mentioned that we enable each others' orchid addictions?

Changing gears here, we have been experiencing intense fog lately.  The past few days not so much, but there were a couple weeks off and on where on the way to and from work, it would be so densely foggy that visibility was reduced to about a tenth of a mile, sometimes even less.  There were a couple evenings coming home from work where I couldn't tell how far down the road I had gone, whether I'd passed my street or not.  Crazy!  There's a street light and a tree across the street from my house and it produced some creepy shadows and light rays that I wanted to capture.  It didn't work out quite as I'd hoped (the light rays through the tree branches are a lot easier to see in person than in the photo) so I'm going to try again the next time we get some pea-soup-fog, but I'll share a photo that I took anyway:

Fogggggggggg

Star Gazers

My birthday happened recently and my in-laws got me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers: roses and star gazer lilies!  And over Christmas, I received a lens capable of taking macro photos, which has been a lot of fun to play with!  So I got up close and personal with the star gazers for a photo shoot.

I love star gazers.  They are so tall for lilies, and I love their vibrant colors.  And the smell!  Their smell is so strong but incredibly delicious!