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.