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The Last of my Summer Flowers

I have really enjoyed the beauty of my flowers this summer and am so glad that I built that new flower bed. The summer flowers are almost all gone now.

Bees in the Garden

I planted more flowers this year hoping to attract more butterflies, bees and other pollinators. It seems to have worked and I have enjoyed watching and photographing these guys.

I love the details on this bee's wings.

Blueberry Bush

My blueberry bush is producing berries this year!

Moon

I have a thing for trees and especially love bare ones. I went to take the trash out the other night and the moon was so big and beautiful framed by this tree. The sky was a purply gray and just made everything more beautiful.

Randomness? Or Hearing a Call?

Kip and I had the good fortune to meet this gentleman last night. His name is Steve Jacoby and he is walking from Prescott, AZ to Washington DC to "combat whistle blower reprisal, fraud, waste, and abuse by executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you want to you can read more on his site. We were able to visit with him a little and enjoyed our meeting. 

Here's where the randomness comes in: Kip always has a meeting on Thursday nights. I always have my friend's daughter for a day of crafting and cooking. Kip didn't feel like going to the meeting so he came home for diner instead. Since I knew Samantha had dress rehearsal for her upcoming recital, I planned nothing for dinner (well, popcorn was the plan!). Kip suggested going out and I asked if he wanted to use our gift cards to the Olive Garden. He said he didn't feel like driving over there but would still like Italian food, so I suggested a locally owned place. On the way there we saw this gentleman sitting on the bench at a bus stop. Kip commented "I bet that guy has a lot of interesting stories to tell". He had a sign with him that has his website listed. We went in to eat and Kip looked up his site on his phone while we were waiting for our food (because we are both nerds, that's what we do). After we ate Kip said he wanted to find the guy and contribute something to his cause. We managed to find him and learn a little more about him. Kip and I both came away feeling our lives had been enriched by meeting this man. We also talked about how random it was that we were even together on a Thursday night, that we chose that part of town to eat and that we happened to see him along the way. 

Little Shop, Little Shop of Horrors!

Kip gave me tickets to see Little Shop of Horrors for my birthday and the performance was last night. After it was over, they said we could take photos of the set so here is the giant Audrey II! 

I love musicals and could watch them over and over and over again. I had seen this one stage once before and this one did not disappoint, it was fabulous. I didn't know until last night that on Friday nights after the show the cast will come out and answer questions. We stayed for that too and it was great. 

Two Birds

Here is a photo of two birds that I took today. There is a nest on the back side of the house. 

One bird is sitting on the nest. 

The other bird is standing guard on the edge of the gutter.

I hope the leave my strawberries alone.

Hail

We had some pretty bad storms a week or so ago, including lots of hail. I went out to take a picture since there were some pretty big pieces. 

Red Bird

I was taking the trash out the other day and saw this red bird standing on the wood surrounding my compost bin. I ran in and grabbed the camera and came out and he had just moved onto a branch beside out back fence. He was the only real color back there too, his bright redness against the grays and browns and the not so green winter grass.

More Butterflies

In the Butterfly Garden at the Chattanooga Aquarium.

Butterfly garden

The butterfly garden at the Chattanooga Aquarium.

Mushrooms

I haven't been taking many photos lately, hence the infrequent posting. Going to try and get better though! The mushrooms sprouted up in my front yard after the rain the other day and I decided to take a quick picture of them.

Footprints in my snow

We got even more snow and the kids here had the entire week off of school. I kept Samantha a couple of days last week and then overnight kept both her and her sister while their mom was working. The snow in front of my house stayed pretty pristine since there is no one here to play outside in it. For some reason the unbroken snow bothered Samantha. Not just at my house either, for some reason even when we would drive by a house with no snowman or evidence of people walking made her a little sad and she would comment on it. It is really, because a yard with pristine snow probably belongs to a house that has no children in it. Maybe it is a household like mine that has no children or maybe it is a house where all the children are grown or have aged past the point when playing in the snow is a fun thing. I though it a little strange that even at eight years old she saw that as odd enough to comment on more than once.

When we got home she made sure that my yard had lots of little footprints in it.

I am grateful for those little feet that ran all around my yard leaving footprints in my snow.

Snow Day

We woke up to a white blanketed world this morning. I decided to call it a snow day and spent the day in the house. These were taken in my back yard. I didn't even go out, I opened the door and took my photos and came back in the house!

White Christmas

What a rare treat! It started snowing on Christmas Eve and we woke up to a white Christmas. This is the first one that the Nashville area has had in seventeen years.  an only remember a few of them ever in my life, so this was a rare thing for us. My parents got even more than we did so we were unable to travel to have our Christmas celebration with them. Hopefully that will happen this weekend though. 

I really liked this picture of the Christmas tree in front of the window with the view of the snow covered tree behind it.

My favorite exhibit

My favorite picture that I took is above.

I think this was my favorite Chihuly exhibit at Cheekwood. I am sure it had something to do with the colors, but I also loved the fact it was sitting in the water, the shapes was all different and a lot of the trees reflected in the water have the same color palette.

Cheekwood-Water exhibits

I love, love, love pictures of trees reflected in the water. Pictures of fall colors on trees reflected in the water are even better! These were all taken  in the same reflecting pool (or ponds) of water. 

A close up of some of the Chihuly glass on the water.

View from a little further back to see more of the glass. I love that I got such a perfect reflection of the trees. 

I think one of the purposes of this type of exhibit was to combine the man made glass with the absolute beauty of the surroundings. I think this picture reflects that. Well, all the exhibits were beautifully done, but since I like water pictures so much I liked this one a lot. The pictures I post next time will include my favorite exhibit.

More Cheekwood Pics

Here are a few more pictures I took at Cheekwood from the Chihuly glass exhibit. 

I love the way the glass pieces were blended into the environment of the botanical gardens.

Just gorgeous, I was so happy we got to see both exhibits while they were in town.

Cheekwood

For the next several posts, i will be showing pictures that I took at Cheekwood. If you are not familiar with the Nashville area, Cheekwood is a botanical garden and art museum. Currently they are featuring an exhibit by glass artist Dale Chihuly. I first saw a piece of his when we were in Wisconsin a couple of years ago at the Milwaukee Museum of Art. I started seeing ads for the Chihuly exhibit after the first of the year and after a little googling found out that this was the same artist. There are actually two exhibits in town right now. One is at the Frist Center for Visual Arts and the other at Cheekwood. Kip arranged for the whole family to join us at the Frist on my birthday and then this past week we finally made it to see the outdoor stuff. Wow these are just amazing. Hope you enjoy my pics!