Part two of my little ‘photograph every single bouquet I make this year’ project! Quite fun to see them go from almost exclusively yellow/white to exploding with color. This project is only just getting started and I already feel a huge amount of satisfaction. There is truly nothing like growing your own flowers.
See part one of the bouquet project here.
Spring peppers! Pseudacris crucifer.
Without a doubt, one of my favorites sounds ever is the spring peeper. Their chirping call marks the beginning of spring. This is what home sounds like to me.
Spring peepers breed in early spring, typically March and April here in Ohio. Males call from the water and surrounding vegetation to attract females. Their call is a series of high-pitched peeping sounds. Check out the video at the end of this post to hear them!
Their call can reach over 90 decibels which considering that noise above 70 dB may start to damage your hearing over a prolonged period of time is pretty dang wild. It can even be heard up to two miles away. Somehow I got lucky enough to have them basically right outside my bedroom window. I promise that is not sarcasm. It’s the best noise to fall asleep to!
Although I’ve lived near peepers my whole life, last year was the first time I ever actually saw them in my action. Even when calling, they can be incredibly difficult to spot.
After seeing them last year though, it’s now become my spring mission to hunt them down and photograph them in action. It’s incredible to watch them up close!
Shot with a Canon 7D mark ii and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens.
Each year I try to take on some sort of year long project. In the past there have multiple years I did Project 365. In 2023? I am going to take a photo of every single flower arrangement I make!
For years and years, I always said one of my life goals was to live somewhere that I can grow flowers just for the sole purpose of picking and enjoying indoors. In 2021 I made that goal a reality by starting one heck of an awesome garden! The first year I wasn’t so great at cutting my flowers. I just wanted to enjoy them in the garden. I am definitely getting more and more comfortable stealing stems though. It’ll be even easier if I make it into a little photo project too, right?
So, here we go! The first six arrangements of 2023.
Clearly, right now the only thing I have blooming is daffodils. I almost backed out of this project thinking it might be silly if I’m just making arrangements from the same flowers over and over again. BUT I actually think, with time, that will be what makes it really fun. Throughout the series you’ll be able to see what I’ve got growing during a specific period and the main colors and flowers in my bouquets will slowly evolve. xo
Spring has officially sprung and my goodness, it feels good to get outside again.
Since the beginning of this blog, each year I’ve written about how excited I am for spring. It just never ceases to make me feel refreshed, especially now that I actually own property. There’s just so much to look forward to.
It’s been spring for less than a week and in that week it feels like so much has changed! My daffodils are getting ready to explode. The peepers started making noise (truly the best noise to fall asleep to!) I’m seeing more bunnies in the yard. It’s just such a treat to watch the yard wake up and know that in a few short months I’ll have a garden FULL of flowers, as well as a lush green yard.
Anyway, there’s nothing I can say here that I haven’t already said in one of the other twenty spring posts I’ve written in the past. I really just wanted to share some photos from the last week.
Shot with a Canon 7D mark ii and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens.
Taking full advantage of the end of summer, I headed to Lowe’s to check out their clearance perennials. I scored a handful of plants that don’t look so great today but will be beautiful again come spring. I also found a small pal to bring home, a praying mantis!
I placed him in my garden and got to work planting my clearance scores. Afterwards, I ran into the house, grabbed my macro lens and set out to get a few glamour shots. What I captured might just be my favorite photo series of insects that I’ve ever shot.
Shot with a Canon 7D mark ii and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens.
It feels strange to still be posting about May’s road trip but I still have things I need to share. Our stop in La Jolla is one of those things. Before heading down into Southern California, we had made a handful of stops at the ocean. There were a few things I was really looking forward to seeing including sea lions, seals, and tide pools. The last time we drove a portion of the Pacific Coast Highway I fell in love with tidepooling. I’ve been impatient waiting for the day I’d get to do more of it.
Well, we just kept striking out. Let me take that back. We weren’t striking out. I was still very much enjoying the ocean but the stops we made weren’t the kind of place you could play around in tidepools. And the seals and sea lions? They just kept eluding me. In Monterey I could hear them but couldn’t seem to get close enough to see them. (I did eat my first fish taco on that pier though, aaaand that may have trumped sea lions.) With only a day left in our trip I had basically come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to get to explore tidepools or squeal over how cute seals and sea lions were.
…Then we went to La Jolla. To say I loved La Jolla would be a massive understatement. Everytime I thought “holy cow, how could get this better?!” It would get better!
The thing that originally caught my attention was Children’s Pool Beach. I found it while searching online for locations that would basically guarentee me the opportunity to see seals and sea lions. We managed to find a parking spot super close by and almost immediately after shutting my door I could tell I was going to get my wish. I saw a crowd gathered and speed walked my way over to them.
SEALS! They were so cute! They’re just like lazy water dogs. I loved watching them wiggle around, and arch their backs tobrace for the waves. I didn’t realize how smelly seals would be but they were every bit as cute as I had thought they’d be.
I was super pleased after getting to watch all the seals. We still had a bit of time to waste before we were able to check in the hotel so we decided to keep wandering around. After a few minutes we stumbled upon an area where I could see that down below people were on a beach. It was a gorgeous day and I’m always down to dip my toes in the water so we headed down the stairs thinking it was just regular ole’ beach. I got to the bottom and realized that the only other people down there were staring at the rocky ground an awful lot. I casually wandered over their way and realized I’d get to explore tide pools after all!
I’m not super versed in tide pools. I’ve explored a few on both the west coast and the east coast but always have the worst luck. I’m really really great at finding dead things (which I’m not going to lie, is still interesting) This was easily my most successful attempt. I have never seen so many live crabs in my life. I was kicking myself for not bringing along my macro lens – not that that would have helped me since every time I spotted one I let out a little squeal of excitement which prompted them to scurry away.
When the tide started to come back in I figured it was time to move on. We continued walking along the path a little more and eventually found the motherlode! Sea lions galore! They were out on some cliffs that weren’t surrounded by fencing meaning you could literally go a close as you’d like. The 70-200mm lens really came in handy at this stop. I was able to keep a safe, respectable distance and still get awesome shots. It was SO awesome, and so incredibly smelly. It was really exciting to be able to see so many of them in their natural habitat.
I loved visiting San Diego so much that I’m sure eventually we’ll make our way back there and visit La Jolla again. I can’t wait!
xoxo
The whole time we were out I was collection plants to press. I’ve pressed a lot of the common plants we have here so when I press more of those I try to find ones with interesting patterns on the leaves. I spotted some tiny leaves early in the hike that I thought looked really interesting from standing height but when I bent down to pick them I realized there wasn’t a pattern on the leaves, it was dew! Needless to say I spent the rest of the hike with my eyes scanning everything for more dew to photograph. Every time I start to think about selling my macro lens I take a shot like the two above and realize how silly
that would be.
On the way back to the car I was starting to get crabby. We walked for what I felt was too long (told you, I’m not necessarily fond of trails, especially ones that don’t loop) and it was getting really hot really fast. Then we started seeing turtles… lots and lots of turtles. Just chilling in the sun, soaking up those rays. It’s basically a fact you can’t be crabby when turtles are out looking so darn cute. I mean just look at that little dummy with his legs all sprawled out.
Despite me being a total whiner when I’m hot and tired, it was one of the best mornings in a long time. Totally worth getting up at 4:45am for! I want more mornings like this.
xoxo
This is my absolute favorite time to get out and photograph nature. I feel like spring is typically regarded as the season full of life but fall brings out all my favorites things.
xoxo