plants

FOTD: Heuchera

/ amoralegria / 1 Comment

I planted this huechera (or hukera) plant last year, my first year with a garden here at the Moorings. I like the color of the leaves on this perennial. Heucheras come in many colors. The flowers are very tiny (called coral bells), and I have found it easier to concentrate on the leaves. I took this after watering one day in June.

Zooming out a little to see the whole plant

Cee’s FOTD 7/12/21

CFFC: The Ground We Travel

/ amoralegria / 1 Comment

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge this week is: Ground: sand, dirt, paths, walks, trails, roads, etc.

Bridges, paths & walkways, desert and mountain terrains, and national parks – these are some of the places to find interesting “ground.” Sometimes there is an added bonus: a lizard, a flower, or a butterfly, or something ugly, like trash. This challenge is a way to showcase the photos I don’t usually publish in other posts!

Chicago Botanic Gardens: bridges, paths, and walkways

Cuba Marsh Wildlife Preserve (Illinois): walkways and grassland

The Middle East (Egypt and Israel): Desert landscapes, markets and farms

Mountain and Southwest (USA) terrain: ground above & below the tree line and rocks at Rocky Mountain National Park; trails and paths at Bryce Canyon National Park

  • SONY DSC
  • SONY DSC
  • SONY DSC

Travel in Green

/ amoralegria / 1 Comment

HeyJude at Travel Words has a Life in Colour Photo Challenge 2021, and the theme for March is green. Here’s my gallery of green:

  • Lincoln, Nebraska
  • Mural in Denver, Colorado
  • Baker, California
  • California
  • bottle tree forest, California
  • Cactus in broken down truck
  • old van
  • Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas
  • Celery soda – yummy??
  • Totem pole park, Oklahoma
  • Old car at Best Western hotel in Missouri
  • Uranus, Missouri
  • Vacuum cleaner museum, Missouri
  • Besaw Island, Egypt
  • Bananas on Besaw Island, Egypt
  • Painted door, Egypt
  • Chicago Botanic Garden
  • Chicago Botanic Garden
  • Cabourg, France
  • Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
  • Rare find at beginning of pandemic
  • Bog – can you spot the green frog?
  • Volo Bog, Illinois
  • Watermelon carving contest turtle
  • Katydid
  • Monet, water lilies series, Chicago Art Institute
  • Still life – glass pottery from Israel
  • Swans in pond (altered photo)
  • Paris, France
  • desert agave
  • Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Mural in Cuba, Missouri
  • Field of wildflowers, Mont St-Michel, France
  • American Cemetery, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
  • Stained glass, Vienna, Austria
  • Buried hydrant
  • Orchids at Chicago Botanic Gardens
  • Camouflage: Frog on lilypad, Chicago Botanic Gardens

CFFC: Homophones & Homographs

/ amoralegria / 8 Comments

English is such a crazy language! I’m glad I don’t have to learn it as a foreigner! We have many words with more than one pronunciation (homographs), and many words that sound alike but are spelled differently (homophones). Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week plays on the theme of red: a pair of homophones RED – READ; a pair of homographs READ (present tense) and READ (past tense); and another homophone pairing: READ and REED. So here are my REDS, READS and REEDS.

RED: (adjective) a bright primary color

Partial view of a park from a large sculpture with a red hole in the middle
An inviting little table at an Airbnb apartment near Paris
Our neighbor showed off his new toy: a snazzy, shiny, red sporty car!
An intelligent take off of MAGA (and red like MAGA hats!). I saw this sticker sign in Chicago.

READ: (verb) past tense of read: I read an entire book yesterday. But I have not read any of the books in the two photos below, which are written in other languages.

I wonder who has read these sacred Islamic books?
I wonder how many ancient Egyptians read The Book of the Dead in hieroglyphics?

READ: (verb) present tense. I like to read every day.

What book do I read in this photo? I don’t remember!
Sometimes I read magazines.
No one can read this book (except the pages I’m sitting on!) – it is a stone monument to the Russian author Pushkin, in St. Petersburg.

REED: (noun) any of several species of large aquatic grasses, such as those pictured below.

CFFC: Nature’s Patterns

/ amoralegria / 2 Comments

Patterns are everywhere in nature. Indeed, humans have imitated nature in creating patterns. Patterns in Nature is the wonderful topic for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week.

Flowers make many patterns.

I love photographing mushrooms, which appear in many shapes and sizes.

  • These resemble flowers.
  • Golf ball shaped!
  • Cluster

Tree branches, leaves and trunks make their own complex patterns.

It is always worthwhile to stop and admire small leaves and plants – often they surprise you!

Some animals have patterns on their skin, tail, or feathers.

Layers painted rock formations over millions of years. In Arizona, there are many examples of this, at the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and in Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona.

Countdown 2 Xmas

/ amoralegria / 1 Comment

I’m struggling to keep up with Tourmaline’s Countdown to Christmas! I got as far as Day 3, so today I’ll have to get four more days done!

Day 4: Movie
There are lots of holiday movies but only two of them have ever been an annual tradition. When I was a kid, every year we’d watch Menotti’s operetta Amahl and the Night Visitors. My siblings and I knew it so well that even today we can quote (singing, of course!) from it.

Several years ago, I acquired the DVD of Love Actually, which is sort of a holiday movie. I really enjoy this movie and we watch it almost every year. There were a few things that made it special:
1. Colin Firth
2. Colin Firth attempting to speak Portuguese
3. the soundtrack
4. Sam, the 12-year-old character
5. the scene where the prime minister (played by Hugh Grant) “tells off” the American president
6. the fact that my mother loved it until she thought about it and decided it was “soft porn.”
7. Colin Firth proposing to the love of his life in Portuguese at a restaurant in Portugal

Day 5: Music

I love carols and Christmas songs, but my favorites are the classical pieces associated with Christmas: Handel’s Messiah, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and others. That said, I love a few Christmas songs that I can’t get enough of.

Oddly, although I don’t believe that it is a fact that Jesus was actually the product of a virgin Mary and God, nor that Jesus literally walked on water, etc., my favorite three Christmas songs that give me goosebumps are:
Mary Did You Know


The Cherry Tree Carol

The Prayer (not specifically for Christmas, but it’s on Celine Dion’s Christmas album)

Day 6: Plants
A poinsettia, what else?? The poinsettia is native to Mexico where some of its leaves turn red (or white) around Christmas time. This happens because of the shorter days of December. I was told that if I wanted my poinsettia to rebloom, I should put it in a dark place, to coax the leaves to turn red again. Instead, I killed the poinsettia because I forgot about it and it was totally neglected! Here’s a photo I took in January of a poinsettia with red & white leaves (obviously it didn’t live in my house!)

Day 7: Fireplace
My son and I never lived in a place with a fireplace when he was young enough to believe in Santa Claus! I would hang his stocking on a nail! By the time we moved into our house with a fireplace, he was 10 and no longer believed in Santa. So then I just hung decorative stockings over the fireplace! Alas, I have not a single photo!