Day 404 - Easter

Today was Easter, so we went to my parents' house for lunch. While Alex was hunting for eggs, I took photos in the back yard.

Day 329

While at my parents' house, I took some photos of their expansive English Ivy.

Day 311

Oddly, I was out in the woods for several hours today at a wedding and for some reason I never thought to take nature photos while out there. While I was at my parents' house picking up my daughter, I took a couple quick photos of these long leafed plants they have.

Day 291

Since we didn't have power, I went to my parents' house to charge my computer, camera and cell phone. After they had finished charging, dad showed me the damage near the house.

This tree fell in between their house and a neighbor's. It fell over the drive way of the next neighbor. By the time that I saw it, someone had cut it up to unblock both driveways. There was a pile of trunk cuttings and a large root ball. There was so much debris, that I didn't want to risk falling on the acorns to get closer to the root ball.

There were acorns and berries scattered on the ground. This cluster of acorns was in a triangle.

In the evening, at our house, a red spider was making a large web on a lower window. However, my camera had a lot of trouble photographing it clearly, so the color of the spider and detail of the web showed nicely. Also, it was a quick moving spider. This is a photo of it resting after finishing the web.

Day 286

While at my parents' house, I noticed this type of tree had started changing colors. Their tree was too hard to photograph well. This one is between two driveways in a cul-de-sac by their house. The wind was blowing the tree around while I was trying to photograph it, but I managed to get these two nice photos.

This is a panoramic of the cul-de-sac from the top where we were standing, across the clouds and down to the road where the trees overlap. This neighborhood is slightly over 30 years old, but it was farm land before that, so the trees are very tall and old. I love older neighborhoods like this because privacy is fantastic, especially during foliage heavy months.

Day 284

I have kitty duty this week, so I took some photos at my parents' house of their foliage.

Gumball tree

A few fallen leaves were red.

Tall fern like plant

Day 156

Today had sporadic rain storms, but that didn't stop us from having fun and from me taking rainy photos.

I love watching the rain from the living room windows. We have huge windows, so the view is beautiful. 

On the way to meet Noah and Jess for brunch, I took some photos through the rainy car windows.

This is the James River and my favorite train bridge.

After brunch, John and I headed to my parents house to take care of their fuzzy kitty children.

When we got home, the rain started pouring harder and streaking the living room windows.

Day 72

I went over to my parents' house to drop off Alex for a sleep over and to have dinner. Before dinner, I went outside to take photos.

This is the early sunset from their back porch.

I went to throw something away and noticed all the acorns covering this part of the driveway. There had to be thousands of them. Squirrels don't go hungry in their yard.

Mom grew moss along the slate path to their house. It's really soft and is growing over some of the slate. This small leaf was laying on the ground moss.

Their garden reminds me of the beach. They have all these yellow leafed beachy plants.

Day 44 - Christmas Day

As part of our Christmas traditions, we went to my parents' house for a large breakfast. After breakfast, I went outside to take some photos.

This is a dead hydrangea. I was still alive about a month ago, but now all the blooms have died. Mom plans on cutting it back soon, which means removing the dead blooms.

This is a beachy plant. I love the fuzzy texture and appearance of it.

Gumball

Dad likes to pay Alex (as he used to pay us when we were kids) to pick up the massive amount of gumballs that cover the yard. They missed this one, but there aren't many left.

This is a dead potted plant.

After 1pm, we headed over to John's parents' house for more festivities. The sky was overcast, but not thick enough that you could not see the sun. Later, it snowed...which we will get to in a moment.

The snow was still falling as we were leaving. This is snow collected on the front passenger side window.

By the time we got home, the blanket of snow was thick. I figured I would photograph some snow covered plants just in case there is a freak thing and there is no snow in the morning...that is doubtful.

This is a Rhododendron.

This is a leaf from a bush.

This is a dead plant.

Day 43 - Christmas Eve

I spent most of the day making a painting for my mom. By the time I was done, the sun had set. However, we headed over to my parents' house for Christmas Eve activities, so I knew I could get nice shots there.

For dinner, we have steak. This is dad rescuing steaks from the grill that flamed up. I figured fire fit in nice to the nature theme of this blog. It's rare if I can take photos of that. This one was so large, it went down and caught part of the deck on fire. Thankfully, dad fixed that fast.

Using flash in the dark, when you're not sure if your camera is really focused, is a difficult thing to do. This is the best photo of the plants in one of the deck rail baskets.

Leaves had fallen in one of the bird bath. The cold temperature, had frozen the water, so the leaves were encased in ice.

They have this tray on their deck table that has grass in it. Snow from earlier in the week was still sitting in, but part of it had melted, revealing the plants below.