Day 359

Since there is less than a week left of this project, I want to finish it by taking photos of some of my favorite natural things from the project. While outside a restaurant, our daughter noticed this tree had no leaves. After further inspection via a lens, I realized it was a dead pine tree. There were a sparse amount of dead pine needles left on these spiky branches.

Day 295

While at Alex's school to meet her teacher, I noticed a pine tree had been chopped up near where I parked. It smelled great!

Day 232

Today Alex and I went to the pool.

There are hawks that live in our forest and marsh area.

Day 196

Today, I took photos of a pine tree.

Day 181

On the way back from the bus stop, I took a few photos.

Lately, the chipmunks have been very brave around me. They are so cute.

Baby pine cones and needles

Pine needles

The Japanese Maple has been nibbled on by caterpillars.

Day 151

Lots of flowers and plants have been sprouting up new growth. Tis the season.

This mushroom sprung up through the dead pine needles at the school bus stop. My neighbor's toddler found this. She's a great helper.

This large tree is covered in pink flowers and buds.

This is an Azalea partially open.

This is a cluster of buds. I forget if they were from another Azalea or something else. Either way, they are from a bush of some sort.

Azalea

Azalea with a tiny bug on it.

Day 146

Today, I photographed plants that had fallen.

I liked the colorful cluster of baby pine cones on this fallen twig.

I like the spiky shadow and needles this fallen pine twig has.

I'm not sure if these are pollen or flower buds.

A different type, but I'm also not sure if it's pollen or for leaves.

I like the colors and pattern of this fallen bark.

Day 117

Today, I stayed at our house, with the exception of walking Alex to and from the bus stop. On the way back from the bus stop, I took a few photos of new things along the path

These yellow wax like flowers have bloomed on a bush.

These leaves for flowers have grown, but no flowers yet.

There had been rain earlier in the day. These wet rocks showed colorful patterns.

Because the day was also cold, the flowers had closed up.

The sun in the back yard was shining bright. I like the way it glistens off the water in the creek.

Day 107

Today Alex and I went to Maymont Park, to meet up with the 365 ladies. Amy Whitehurst of Snow Globe 365 was the only one able to join us for a bit. The weather was windy and cold, so we didn't stay long after Amy left.

If you've never been to Maymont, it's a huge estate that was owned by the Dooleys and is now a privately owned park, but open to the public. They have lots of events, a large variety of animals, gardens and acres of rolling hills to explore. Today, we started at the main entrance by the gardens. We focused on the Italian Gardens and the Japanese Gardens...mostly the Japanese, as it's a larger area and has a bamboo forest to wonder through.

At the main entrance, there are pansies in a variety of colors.

These yellow pansies are along the right side of the entrance path, below some bushes.

These little bugs were all of the park. They clung to my clothing, but they were so small, they didn't bother me.

We had a picnic under this beautiful tree. In the Spring, Summer and early Fall, the leaves provide shade.

There has been a strong wind lately, so there were lots of limbs on the ground.

This is a fallen dead bloom from the tree above.

After our picnic, we put our picnic stuff in the car (which is when we took the photos by the entrance) and ventured into the gardens.

This is a tree with small red flowers. The tree is behind the carriage house.

Near the tree, the ground was covered with violets.

This dandelion was alone in the surrounding violets.

The upper wall of the Italian garden is lined with flowering bushes. I think they are roses. There were several new blooms, but the bases of them looked dead.

The ground on the Italian garden path had these small purple flowers as a ground cover plant.

The lower section of the upper wall had these dead flowers.

There is this beautiful double stair case leading down towards the Japanese garden path. There is a waterfall that flows between the two stair cases, but it was turned off for Winter. There were these brown spots on the water side railing. I assume they are rust.

You can take the regular path to the Japanese gardens, or you can have a bit of an adventure and go through the bamboo forest. I choose the bamboo forest, since it was only Alex and I. I knew we could do this without a problem. Also, we were just crossing over to the other waterfall and this is the faster route.

This is the ceiling of the bamboo forest. Different sections are tall enough to easily walk through and some less traveled routes you have to crouch through.

This is one of the taller path ways.

This waterfall was turned off  too. This is what the base of it looks like without the flow of water. Some areas were dry and some were muddy. This waterfall flows down into a stream and eventually the pond.

The pond is stocked with koi fish. There were 4 geese and 3 ducks swimming in the pond with the large amount of Koi.

There are many koi in this pond in a variety of colors. We saw orange with black spots, yellow, somewhere in between those two, off white and black. Photowise, I was happy to see so many and I also liked the reflection of the trees on the water.

These are two of the geese.

Something (maybe annoying people) upset the geese. They started honking loudly for about 30 minutes. They were swimming quickly in the water, chasing each other and towards the humans.

The ducks quacked a bit too, but not much. This is one of the two male ducks and the one female. I love the rippled effect in the water, that the male duck caused by swimming quickly.

We headed to the other end of the pond, to escape the noisy geese. I wanted to capture the tall trees and their reflections.

I like this section of the pond, because there are many odd roots. This particular grouping is unusual, as there are two faces. I like to think of them as mystical guardians of the pond.

The trees in this section are very tall, with many spiky looking branches. This photo was taken by setting my camera to a 2 second delay, a landscape setting and placing the camera on the ground, facing up.

I think the Grotto is man made, but the plants are natural. It looks like the mouth of a monster. Of course, I had to temporarily feed Alex to it. She emerged unscathed.

We climbed back through the bamboo forest, up towards the Italian Gardens from a different section. I don't recommend this, as your calves will hate you. The view of the park here is amazing. This is a section of it where you can see the James River and the rail road tracks.

This is a fallen pine cluster, under that tree with the red flowers.