Day 218

A view of St Basil's church from the back alley. I don't think my phone got all the nice sunset colors I could see.

Finally back to editing pics, for what it's worth. Maybe I'll go back and edit the ones I've posted the last week and a half. Sometimes it just feels like too much of a bother since they end up blurry or pixilated or in other ways not looking as good on the computer screen as I managed to convince myself they looked on the phone screen.

Day 199

Another look at the alley. There's a random wooden fence back there that has been graffitied. Last year it had morning glories on it and I was looking forward to taking some pictures of the pretty and the urban but so far there are no flowers there. There is quite a bit of ivy on one half of it so here's a close up of some of it.

Day 183 Happy Canada Day

Finally I return to the alley. It's harder to pick things to take pictures of which is kind of funny because when I had a plan to map the alley I often wanted to take pictures of particular things and said no, just do the overview. So I go to take a picture of a shed or whatever and I don't have a previous picture to compare. Such is life.

I found some rose of sharons blooming in a yard behind the school. I have mixed feelings on these plants. We used to have tons in our yard at our old house. They always attracted lots of bees which wasn't something I liked as a kid (I'd swell terribly from stings, never breath-threatening but super itchy. I think I outgrew it, the last sting I got sometime as a teenager I didn't really react at all). Plus they'd drop tons of flowers to rot and they send out new trees all over the place and no matter how much you cut them back they'd always return. Once I spent hours trying to rip out some of the bushes at my uncle/aunt/cousins' house as they tried to sell it before they moved to Arkansas. It involved digging all the roots up and hacking at them with an axe. It was rather ridiculous and unproductive.

My mom wants to plant some here at this house and I am rather against it, but they're actually quite pretty I see so maybe if they were confined to a pot or something. We've got a hibiscus and a rubber tree plant, why not a nice rose of sharon? We'll see, it shouldn't be too hard to dig out a shoot or something.

Day 159

Another in the Alley Series. We'll call in 14. Here's some Queen Anne's Lace. It's kind of unexpected but the weeds are kind of dying down. Some of it must be people doing maintenance like the school obviously sprayed all over and killed the grasses (but not the prickly weeds), but maybe the weeds are really a thing of the spring and now that it's getting to be hotter and there hasn't been much rain they're not thriving as much.

Day 146

Another alley picture finally. I think this compares to picture 2 or 3 of the series. It's much greener and more filled with plants than it was in January or February.

Day 129

An abandoned shed or garage in the alley, comparing May 1st to the 8th. You can see how much growth has occurred in just a week. You could easily pass it now and not notice a building there! The weeds are really taking over the alley.

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.