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.