Day 121

It's been 18 days since I did a back alley pic, can you see much in the way of change compared to the picture on April 11?

Day 120

I haven't been down the alley in a while. Here's a picture from way back in March of all the petals falling from the trees. It was vaguely snow-like back there for a bit.

I wasn't really satisfied with clarity and vibrant so I saved and then did backlit on top of it (thus three pics). I considered doing vibrant again but it was just too red. I don't know why backlit makes things redder. I don't recall what the alley looked like color-wise that day, I think it was overall gray from raininess. The leaves must have been coming in if there was a carpet of flower petals but the weeds weren't too strong yet looking at this pic of the side of the road.

Day 119

It's almost May but it's so cold we're regretting putting our coal fire out over a month ago (when it was in the 80s!). Here's a look a the gas fireplace. It keeps the living room and my parents' bedroom warm enough. It's only the 40s, you can make do with jet a sweater or blankets. In the past people had to deal with a lot more cold with a lot fewer warmth options.

Day 118

Weird vegetable (I assume) I found in a Chinese market in the strip after the free farm to table lunch today. I vaguely worry I'll accidentally poison myself trying random things labeled in Chinese characters.

I didn't get one of these prickly pickles, but I did grab some kind of I think yams. One looked like a skinny yellow sweet potato, the other looked like a big purple one but I could see from broken ones that it had white flesh inside. At the free lunch the presenter talked about eating the rainbow so I wanted to try some different colored things.

I also got some snow peas and sugar snap peas as well as two pears that kind of look like apples. At least I think that's what they are, they were wrapped in tissue paper and stretchy foam netting so really it could be anything under there. They didn't have the real apple shape I'm used to seeing so I may have wasted $0.39/each on just a wrapped up foreign pear. Or maybe I'll unwrap them and it'll be something totally unexpected. If they are those apple pears it was a very good deal because they're usually like $1 each. They're a pretty good size each so if they are just pears $0.78 for more than a pound of fruit is nothing to complain about either. I need to value my food differently but that's a topic for the other blog. :)

Day 117

The tiny azalea bushes out front are finally blooming. Doing any kind of filter on the picture made the red of the flowers blinding and totally unreal looking. I didn't really like the way this picture looked so I tried to take a new picture a day or so later but I think the sun was too bright or I didn't get close enough. The flowers didn't look as detailed as the original picture so I went with what I had. I'll include a rejected newer picture so you can see what I mean.

Day 116

Today's picture is of the stained glass window of the little chapel at the camp. We had the art appreciation class in there on Saturday and then Sunday morning I hung out there to tweet the Book of Mormon while I waited for the bathroom to be free. I'll take some pictures of things that are actually happening currently tomorrow. :)

Day 115

One of the many mill stones they had displayed around the camp. I wish I'd taken close ups of more of them. There were different varieties, ones like this or one that were just a single stone like the one you see in the background.

Day 114

On the way home from the West Virginia YSA conference my phone took me off 79 and up route 19 instead which brought me past the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. I was in the wrong lane to stop there when I noticed it but when I reached my grandma's street I decided to turn in and check out her house. I knew from previous visits they had ripped out all the trees and bushes and changed the double front doors to a single black one but this time they'd done even more. They got rid of the upper balcony (which I assume means they expanded the master bedroom into that area) and changed the upper siding to brown. I really wanted to go take a closer look but an SUV was down in the driveway so I just took a picture and left.

I wish I had a before picture so you could see how much it changed from seven years ago when she died and it was sold. The price has probably gone up $100,000 by now, it was priced really low because it was out of style and could use new carpets and such. I'd really like to see what they've done to the insides, maybe someday I'll have the courage to peak in windows. I thought I might at least have a picture of the house after they ripped out the bushes and trees, but I didn't have room on my phone for as many pics back then so I deleted things once they were uploaded to Facebook. I'll have to see if I can link a pic from there next time I'm on a computer.

Day 113

The actual Jackson Mill. I imagine it had a water wheel in the past. I took this while searching for a geocache. This was such a beautiful place to visit, imagine what it might have been like if it hadn't been so cloudy and rainy.

A side note regarding geocaching: you can't just trust the app, there were a number of other caches right there at Jackson's Mill and it didn't tell me about any of them! Just across the street at a little airport I could've gotten one and somewhere on the camp grounds, too! I need an actual way to see gps readings on my phone not through the geocache app so I can just go by the website info.

Day 112

Here's a picture Braker's Mill across the mill pond at Jackson's Mill camp. It's a really beautiful place, the childhood home of Stonewall Jackson, the first state 4-H club established in 1921, and a place that civil war re-enactors come to play on weekends. I'm having a nice time at the YSA conference, but I'll have to talk about that in my other blog. Here's a before and after shot, just used clarity and vibrance filters. I always wonder since I'm just doing this on my phone if the pics actually look decent on computer screens. My phone is so small lost resolution from editing isn't really an issue but I think it may be a problem on bigger screens. I'm rarely on to actually compare. :p

Day 111

This is where I get to stay for the weekend at Jackson's Mill for the YSA Conference.

Day 110

Our peach tree has a fungus. The contrast of the red on the green leaves is kind of pretty now but it kills the leaves and ruins the fruit. We've sprayed fungicide on it twice now and it didn't stop anything. It turns out you have to totally soak the tree after the leaves fall in autumn to kill all the spores because otherwise they're in the leaves as they develop. I wish I'd known what it was earlier so we wouldn't likely be losing all the fruit again this year. There are already tiny baby peaches visible all over the tree. Maybe the spraying I've done will at least stop the fungi from ruining all the fruit. We've never tried to pick our apples or peaches before but we wanted to this year so we got the insecticide/fungicide spray but maybe the fall is when we need to do that stuff. The apple tree is still blooming so I haven't sprayed it at all because it could kill bees which isn't helpful for anything.

Day 99

From Twitter: "Happy Easter! Here's a dogwood flower. There's some poem about it representing Christ. I got it as a postcard once."

I first saw the postcard on a trip to Arkansas. I took a Greyhound down to visit Susan the year after her family moved there. Apparently dogwood is the state tree or flower or something. Anyway, below is the story from the postcard, very appropriate for Easter.

The Legend of the Dogwood Tree.

Long, long ago, the dogwood tree was tall and proud. Its trunk was as large around as an oak tree and its wood was hard and strong.

Near the city of Jerusalem grew an especially lovely dogwood tree. When the Savior was to be crucified, the Roman soldiers looked at the tree and decided it would be just the right kind of wood they needed. They cut down the tree and made a cross for Him.

The dogwood tree was sad and ashamed to be put to such a terrible use. Now the Lord knew the tree was very unhappy and he felt sorry for it. So He promised the dogwood it would never again grow large enough to be used as a cross. And then, to give the world a reminder of the tree's history, He gave it a very special blossom. This blossom would be a sign of His death.

That is why the dogwood's four petals form the shape of a cross. On the outer edge of each petal there is a dark red stain, as a reminder that He was offered on the cross for forgiveness of sins. And in the center of each bloom is a tiny crown of thorns.

Day 98

For Saturday 4-7-12: My favorite duck from feeding the duck's before Institute Friday. There used to be two white ones.

Day 93: Cherry Blossoms

I took a bunch of pictures of a cherry tree. I can understand Japan's fascination with cherry blossoms, they're pretty enchanting. Before and after pictures, a variety of changes, mostly clarity and vibrant, some shade, flash, HDR, overlay, etc. I think this app may be putting them in random order despite my attempt to do it old/new. Oh well, maybe I'll fix it on the computer.