Collage Favorites

I have hundreds, maybe thousands of photos on my computer.  Some files have more than a hundred photos of one subject.  Yikes! What better time to organize all those files than now before the  new year begins?  Each photo is placed in one of thee files:

1. Really bad...delete without haste 
2. Love, love...place into favorite file
3. Not that great of a shot, but tells a wonderful story none-the-less...keep in monthly or subject files

So that's my process. 

One of the cool things I learned in 2010 is how to create collages with photos and other images, including backgrounds, textures, and text.  Here's my favorite collages for 2010.

March Rain

What's not to love...cupcakes, a favorite cup, and jumping in puddles.

While many attack dandelions in their yards with hoes, chemicals, and cursing, I rather like dandelions, the unloved recovery plant that smiles at the world in sunny yellow and eventually sends off downy kisses on spring breezes. 

My two sisters and I spent a couple June nights in a cabin. Not far from the cabin was a stand of pine trees shading funny, magical mushrooms that popped out of the ground with exuberance.

Pink...soft, sweet, happy, feminine, elegant, sexy.  Pink is one of my favorite flower colors and nothing says pink with a pinch of panache like coneflowers.  

Yes, I created many collages over the year.  Some for the Cottage, others for Write in Amazement, and others for fun.  There were collages with people, places, and things; animals, flowers, and food.  It was a new way for me to share photography love with all of you.

As I file away 2010, I'm planning to share my favorites of the photos I took throughout the year.  Then I can open a new page in the book of 2011 and begin telling a fresh story. 

Rainy Saturday

And there will be rain and rumors of rain with wind skittering across the landscape in a whirling dance dodging the bolting light shows that strike the earth as thunder claps an encore. The air, heavy with humidity, bears down and once chirping birds now roost in silence on twiggy nests. Like the winged creatures, I feel it too, the breathless waiting knowing that something is on the horizon.

My newly sprouting garden with seeds popping beneath a thin blanket, await the coming shower, ready to wick the life-giving moisture from its earthly walls. For the sake of my little garden, I welcome the rain foreshadowed by low-hanging clouds, hazy and gray in the sky.

I only have one request I most humbly ask of Mother Nature…let it rain today and quench the thirsts of gardens and plants everywhere, but please, tomorrow may we picnic in sunshine?

Rain, Rain...Go Away

Another day of rain in northwest Ohio, but the weatherman informs me, we’re not alone. It looks like half the country will be enjoying summer rain. I know all about how important rain is to gardens, fields, and everything under the sun, but enough all ready. I need to mow the lawn and can’t find a dry day to do it and I have more pots to plant!

So what do you do on a rainy day in June when uncooperative weather keeps you indoors? Here are a few rainy day ideas for gardeners:

Things to Do on a Rainy Day



1. Stare out the window looking over your garden and wishing it would stop raining.
   
   
2. Do a rain dance in reverse.
   
   
3. Put on a plastic poncho and rain boots and walk around the garden pretending to be Mother Nature watering her children.
   
   
4. Search the internet for garden blogs, gardens to visit, and recipes to use up all those zucchinis you’ll be picking later this summer.
   
   
5. Design a new flowerbed on graph paper.
   
   
6. Search the newspapers for a pick-your-own Strawberry grower.
   
   
7. Head to a nursery or garden center and check out what’s left and what’s on sale.
   
   
8. Take your camera outside and try to capture a photo of rain falling. Get wet in the process and take a photo of flowers covered in drops of rain, instead.
   
   
9. Call a gardening friend and commiserate together.
   
   
10. 
    
    Take the day off from gardening and pamper yourself doing whatever it is you love best…oh that IS gardening.
    
    
    
    
    “The real secret of luxuriant gardens is plenty of water.”
    -Richard C. Davids, Garden Wizardry
    
    
    Now get out there and…oh forget it.