More Long Island Camellias

More Long Island Camellias

Again here are a few Camellia shots from Planting Fields. After a grinding Monday I was so happy to have had a few hours to shoot pictures on Sunday. It sure was relaxing to look at the flowers and snap a few pictures. I can see that work is going to be hectic so this is the first Tuesday that I haven’t done Wordless Wednesday in quite awhile. WW is only fun when you can return the visits to the other people’s blogs. In general I will be probably be a little less wordy here than I was in the winter. I do really want to thank the people that visited and commented over the winter. You helped make my idle time a little more pleasurable.

Yesterday I said what lenses I took with me and I thought it would be fun to post one picture from each lens. This first one is the 60mm / 2.8 Micro-Nikkor. I can’t say enough good things about this lens. It is on my camera 75% of the time. I use it as a walking around lens, too. It was $349 (US) after the rebate when I bought with the D70s. It really has done a yeoman’s service under tough conditions. I would like to try out the Nikon 105mm Macro sometime but this will always be my main macro lens.

The first picture is ‘Latifolia Sport’. More correctly it is Camellia japonica ‘Latifolia Sport’. That is genus Camellia (capitalize), species japonica (lower case) and cultivar ‘Latifolia Sport’ (capitalize, single quotation marks). A cultivar (which is a combination of cultivate and variety) is a plant that is produced in cultivation by selective breeding and is of garden origin (not wild). Now I am not sure if this was a true sport, which is defined as a flower or branch that has an unusual deviation or mutation from the type of growth usually shown by the plant. I didn’t notice anything real different about this plant but I wasn’t looking all that hard. Latifolia means that it has wide leaves.


This next picture is from the Nikon 50mm/1.8 lens. I have enjoyed this lens but don’t use it as often I would like. These are some Clivia (C. miniata) buds that were inside the Camellia House. About 90% of the time I use this lens at F/1.8 but on Sunday decided to try it at some other apertures and found it pretty sharp throughout the range. You can really get some cool backgrounds with this one. The only thing I don’t like about it is the minimum focusing range; it is a little too far. For the money everybody should have a 50mm. One note on Clivias, don’t divide them if you want flowers anytime soon. They can take 10 years or more to flower after division. I learned that the hard way but have been back in business with the ones at work for a couple of years now.

Camellia japonica 'Purity'

Here is a shot with the Sigma 17-70mm/2.8-4.5 lens. I have said that this lens was okay and has taken some really nice pictures. Sigma recently came out with a better and slightly more expensive version of this lens. Overall it is a good trooper having survived a couple of falls and generally nasty conditions. I can’t figure if I like the 18-70mm Nikon lens, which came with the camera, (I gave to Karen for her camera) or this lens. It does seem to auto-focus well and is great in wide-angle low-light situations. This is ‘Purity’ Camellia again; you can see it is a real beautiful white.


Finally here is a picture from what I hope to be a photo series of ‘Flowers in the Dirt’. It is just something I have noticed over the last few years and I think I will start taking pictures of them and see what they look like as a group.

Hyacinths

Hyacinths
Hyacinthus orientalis
(hy-uh-SIN-thus)

Yesterday I went down to Manhattan with the idea I would try out the 50mm/1.8 lens at the Museum of Modern Art. When I got down there at the 10:30 opening time the line to get in was just too long already so I decided to take the subway down to Chelsea and have a walk around. I went by the Wholesale Flower District on 28th Street and see if I could get a few snaps. It was a little depressing as many of the shops have closed and many weren’t open on Saturday. I did manage these shots of Hyacinths that one of the stores had placed on racks outside. These were shot with the 17-70mm Sigma lens, except for the sign picture which I used the 50mm.


Dutch Hyacinths are familiar to most every gardener. They have been in cultivation in Europe since the 1500’s. Their colorful, fragrant spikes are always welcome in the spring. I actually know a few people that don’t care for them but I think they are in the minority. They compliment nicely with Daffodils and can also stand on their own. They are best planted in clumps in well drained soil. They are quite hardy (USDA Zone 4, for most) and are lovely when forced. The blooms are long lasting and make excellent cut flowers. There are literally hundreds of cultivars to choose from. I usually plant annuals over them after they have bloomed sine this hides the dying foliage.

These are a couple of other shots I got when I was walking around Chelsea, it is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Manhattan. I will probably be posting some MoMA pictures and some other various NYC pictures this week. I will be working full-time sine it looks like we are in for a solid January thaw coming up.

This was a florist by the Chelsea Market on 15th Street.

I got a chuckle out of this one. I knew I was king of something! (:lol:)


Its like Tom Petty said:
“Its good to be king and have your own way Get a feeling of peace at the end of the day And when your bulldog barks and your canary sings You’re out there with winners, its good to be king”

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

We decided to cancel our trip to Longwood Gardens since the weather is so bad. We have been having a lot of freezing rain and drizzle. That really stinks as we had so much fun last year when we went. Things are going to be too busy to try and fit going in the next couple of weeks *sigh*. I decided to go to Manhattan and I took the train in yesterday afternoon. I had quite a day. I am nursing two very bruised elbows and a hurt knee from a fall I took in the subway. Not sure what really happened but I almost caught myself but then fell down completely, just glad I didn’t tumble down the stairs also. I fell right on my camera which amazingly enough still worked. The lens didn’t break either which was astounding to me. A couple of nice New Yorkers helped my up and asked if I needed medical attention (dusted me off, too). I had the wind knocked out of me but managed to make it out of the station and after sitting for awhile decided to carry on.


I visited the Rockefeller Christmas Tree and despite the crowds got right up to the fence and was able to get a clear view of the tree. Since I had a nice view people were getting their pictures taken right next to me. That leads to me this next photo. I have been gathering a collection of photos of people that were posing for other photographers. I got about 10 or 12 shots this year. This was such a nice family that I snapped their picture while they posed for someone to take a shot with their camera phone. I ended up taking pictures of about 20 people who asked me to use their cameras. I really don’t mind and I got to check out a lot of different cameras. For some reason I get asked to do this all the time.


The tree was beautiful and even though the area was a total mob scene I enjoyed my visit. I didn’t try and enter from 5th Avenue where you can see the skaters I kind of went around the back. This years tree is a 84-foot tall Norway Spruce from Shelton, Connecticut. According to The Accidental Environmentalist the Rock Center Tree is much more eco-friendly with solar powered LED lights. I read the tree is recycled into 3 tons of mulch nad donated to the Boy Scouts.


In case anyone is interested I shot these photos with my Sigma 17-70mm/2.8-4.5 lens. Hand held at 17mm/2.8. I almost didn't take this lens with me but was glad I did because the 50mm would have never gotten the whole tree in. Also the Sigma seems pretty tough and I was glad it was on the camera when I fell. It is the second major impact it has had and it still works fine.

Peacock Flower (Dietes bicolor)

Peacock Flower
Dietes bicolor
(dy-AY-teez) (BY-kul-ur)
Synonyms: Bicolor Iris, Yellow Wild Iris, Evergreen Iris, Spanish Iris, African Iris, Moraea bicolor,

This is a very beautiful member of the Iris family (Iridaceae). This South African native is hardy to USDA Zone 8 and I have seen it cultivated around here in pots. It is funny that it’s common name is Peacock Flower because so are several other plants. I guess that is where confusion sets in when speaking of plants with their common names. This is strikingly beautiful plant and if you want more information here is a link to an article written by Marc Stern of Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden.
Click Here


I went over to ‘my’ rose garden yesterday and worked for a couple of hours. Good news is I had to deadhead several hundred old flowers and there was at least 150 flowers blooming. I hadn’t been over there in about 8 days, which is slightly longer than I had wanted to be away. Things were okay and the cooler weather and fertilizer I applied has really made the roses start to flourish. Most of the roses are named and have their tags. This one wasn’t of course. I thought it was a nice deep pink. I shot this with my Sigma 17-70mm macro lens. It is a more traditional picture in some ways than my usual rose photos.

Hybrid Tea Rose 'Peace' and Middle Name Meme

Hybrid Tea Rose 'Peace'
Synonyms: Béke, Fredsrosen, Gioia, Gloria Dei, Madame Antoine Meilland, 3-35-40
Introduced in the U.S.: 1945 by Conard-Pyle (Star Roses)
Size and Petal Count: 6 inch flowers with 43 petals
Fragrant? : Yes, strong

I took this picture to please myself. I wanted to take a group portrait of ‘Peace’ for awhile and the opportunity presented itself at the NYBG. I used my Sigma 17-70mm lens and after I had gone through the garden with my macro lens I decided to slap the wide angle on and try a few shots. I am glad I did. With photography I am always trying to challenge myself into doing something a little different (like a group rose shot). However I often find myself retreating into what has worked for me in the past (close ups).

The Peace rose has an
interesting history
and to me it was one of the most important rose of the 20th century.

I got tagged to do a meme about “for each letter of your middle name, list a fact or statement relevant to yourself or your life. So the longer your middle name, the more facts we'll have about you. If you don't have a middle name, pick one” by
avcr8teur's blog
so I thought I would play along and try it. The only problem is I don’t have a middle name (either official or unofficial). In some ways I feel ripped off about that but I guess it I have learned to live with it. Maybe I should have joined a support group to help me deal with it. Actually I am just kidding I don’t think not having a middle name has affected my life either way. Since I don’t have a middle name I decided to use the middle part of my Internet persona Digital Flower Pictures. When I started my photography website a few years ago, which was really just for family and friends, I spent a few hours looking for an available domain name. Finally I typed in Digital Flower Pictures and decided to settle on that, mainly because it was available. It has served me well and I have shortened it to Digital Flower in many cases.

So here is my list:

F is of course for Flowers. In some ways I can’t believe I actually get paid to grow them. Their beauty is fleeting and ephemeral but I still can get a special feeling from seeing the right flower at the right time.

L is for low-key. I am actually a very quiet and low-key person. Some people take this as snobbism but that is far from the truth. I spend a lot of my life observing and usually don’t say much unless I think it deserves saying.

O is for On-line. I spend a lot of time on the Internet. It is my window to the world. It is so amazing to me that I can’t even sum it up with words.

W is for Weather. I know everybody is interested in the weather. I am way serious about the forecast though. Everything at work is weather dependent in some way and I am not just talking the daily or weekly forecast. More like the seasonal trends and long range forecasts. Somebody may say, “Oh, suppose to rain today.” I will be thinking well there is a front across the Midwest but with the split jet stream the upper level winds will probably shear the front off. I will just say, “Yes, it may rain.”

E would have to be for England. I have visited many times and even lived there two different times. The first time I lived there I was a small child. It is hard to explain but I had a lot of memories that just didn’t make sense to me, as I couldn’t relate them to anything that was familiar. However when I returned as a 20 something year old I finally figured out the memories were from England. I would be walking around various places in London and I would have a strong sense of déjà vu and I finally put it all together. I hope to go back soon as I find English life a nice counterpoint to American life. I hope the Pound drops soon so I can afford to visit my friends and tour some more of the country.

R is for Roses. I don’t know if anybody noticed I have posted about a hundred different roses on my blog. For some reason I seem inexorably tied to roses. I have been actually considered stopping taking pictures of other plants and just concentrate on roses (so I could get better at it). I don’t consider myself an elitist, far from it, but I do kind of consider roses to be an elitist type of flower, especially the modern ones. In my career I have managed several small rose gardens and I was thinking this year it would be nice to someday manage a much larger patch of roses. Funny thing is I now have a rose garden with 120+ roses to take care of. In some ways it is a total nightmare and in others I have been longing for such a challenge and I certainly got what I was hoping for.

Here is a photo that is more of my signature style:



Hybrid Tea ‘Chicago Peace’
Synonym: JOHnago
Bred: United States, 1962. Graeme Johnston.
Introduced in the U.S.: by Conard-Pyle (Star Roses)
Size and Petal Count: 6 inch flowers with 45 to 60 petals
Fragrant? : Yes, mild

No one else at Blog Catalog wanted to get tagged so I guess I am on my own. I will add links if anyone else wants to get tagged.

Old Westbury Gardens

Old Westbury Gardens
71 Old Westbury Rd
Old Westbury, NY 11568
http://www.oldwestburygardens.org/

On Saturday I went over to Long Island and visited a two gardens. Now I remember why I usually take the Bridgeport to Port Jefferson Ferry as the traffic was a nightmare. I must have been in 10 different slowdowns and 2 or 3 major jams. When I finally got onto the island and made to Old Westbury Gardens all was forgotten. From the moment I pulled off the road I was amazed at the huge Linden Tree allée (it is the driveway, which is slightly curved to give an infinite look) and things just got better after that. I spent most of the afternoon wandering around shooting pictures and enjoying the beautiful day. I would have to give this place a 9 on a scale of 10. The only reason I wouldn’t give it a 10 was it was a little lacking in the shrub and perennial collection. The other thing is I don’t think it had an irrigation system (I might be wrong about that) and it lacked a certain lushness that I like. Overall it was nicely set up and the allées in the back and front of the house were amazing. You just don’t see that too often in the U.S. Please don’t get me wrong on the rating, it is a wonderful garden that is well taken care of.





I think the walled garden was my favorite as this is probably the most intensely gardened spot. There was a nice collection of David Austin Roses, probably more than I had seen in one place before and a good mixture of perennials and a couple of nice annuals. The water garden at the end was simple but elegant. The rose garden was small but had a good selection of shrub and climbing roses. The lakeside trail was interesting and had some nice features and trees and a nice bridge. The lake itself was the strangest color I have ever seen. At first it was a turn off but later I thought it looked pretty unusual. I didn’t go inside the house but it looked really big and well maintained.



:lol; Since I was carrying both my D70s and Karen’s D80 people kept asking me if I was a professional photographer. I guess I did look geared up. It was fun because it was a way to open a conversation with people. I had the Sigma 17-70mm on the D70 and the 60mm macro on the D80 so it was the best of both worlds for me. I wanted to try some more landscape shots so I was using the D70 a lot. Having the two cameras solved the problem of switching lenses and getting dust inside the camera. The Sigma has a Circular Polarizer on it and that was good as it was really sunny out. So when I was asked if I was a pro photographer I would answer no that I was a professional gardener and that of course invited more conversation. I had a lot of people asking me if I would take their picture with their camera and I am always happy to oblige. Does this happen to anyone else? I must have used 5 different cameras, including a couple of, gulp, gasp, ……. Canons (just kidding). I usually try and set the people up with the best chance of getting a nice shot for their memories. One person said “This is going to be the best picture of us ever” and that just cracked me up laughing. I just shot the picture on ‘auto’ and moved on chuckling to myself.



Back to the coal mine today. It is going to be a hot week after a few very cool nights (I think last night was a record).

Bodnant Viburnum (Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn')

Bodnant Viburnum
Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'
(vy-BUR-num) (bod-nan-TEN-see)
Caprifoliaceae

I was reading over at Kim’s Garden Blog about the Mouse and Trowel awards for Garden blogs.


If you click here or on the banner (maybe) you can nominate blogs now and after April 15th you can vote for your favorites. I hope there is a good response and I will probably see a few new sites that I haven’t visited. If you like to read garden blogs and have never been over to Garden Voices you are missing a valuable resource. It feels great to be included with some great bloggers there. They have a lot of them and I can always find a couple of blogs that interest me very quickly. I don’t have too much time to read blogs but I make sure I get to the ones that I like and try a few new ones each week.

Today’s picture is of another very early flowering shrub. I have seen it bloom in February if the conditions are right. I planted these in kind of an off area and the surrounding plants have kind of covered them up. I almost forgot about them but caught a glimpse of pink and found it in full bloom. One of the best parts about photographing this flower is the strong fragrance. It really smells nice. Viburnums in general are an easy, showy group of plants to grow. My only rap is they get a little too big sometimes and should be sited accordingly.

This picture was taken with the Sigma 17-70mm lens. It sure gets some weird Bokeh . That link says this isn’t that good, as it has sharp edges. In general I am happy with this lens, especially considering the price. It is quite different from the Nikon 60mm lens. I don’t foresee buying any more equipment this year so I am going to have to make do with what I have, which isn’t too bad. That weird thing in the right background is a Bald Cypress Tree (Taxodium distichum). It does kind of look like that this time of year.

The description of the Arrow-wood or Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum) had the term corymbs. As in “Flowers in corymbs, sometimes with sterile or showy ray flowers, or in umbels”

corymbs:
“A usually flat-topped flower cluster in which the individual flower stalks grow upward from various points of the main stem to approximately the same height.”

And seen I wasn’t sure what umbels meant:
“A flat-topped or rounded flower cluster in which the individual flower stalks arise from about the same point, as in the geranium, milkweed, onion, and chive.”

Royal Park Bridge at Night

Royal Park Bridge at Night
Palm Beach, Florida

I am back in dreary, dull, desolate, dismal, drab, disconsolate Connecticut ;-) Just kidding, I am happy to be home but I guess in some ways it is true. We drove from Florence, South Carolina to Connecticut yesterday. It was quite a ride as I finally stopped at South of the Border and managed to transverse Washington, DC and Baltimore at the height of the Friday rush hour.

I did some night shooting the last night I was in Florida. I wished I had gone out earlier in the trip as Palm Beach was stunningly lit up at night. I wanted to check out the new lens and it did pretty well. Night photography is always a little frustrating for me because I usually forget to set up one aspect of the camera or another. I keep trying and hope to get a little better at it. This time I took my dog and she was much more interested in all the smells than the beautiful view of the Intercoastal Waterway or setting up the tripod. I think the Sigma 17-70mm did pretty well considering it was with windy conditions. This is the Royal Park Bridge, which connects Palm Beach with Mainland Florida. It has an interesting history that I found here. The area around the bridge’s eastern side has a nice park and marina. S.R. 709 turns into Royal Palm Way on the Palm Beach side. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that. It didn’t look safe to do it at night but the trees were beautiful.

I have a lot of flower photos to process and will posting them over the next couple of days. The night photos were the first ones I have downloaded. So in between unloading the car, writing a long letter to an old friend and getting back into the swing of things here I hope to update this site tomorrow. I would like to write more about my impressions of Palm Beach including the 40-carat diamond I saw.

Flamingo Gardens

Flamingo Gardens
Davie, Florida

I visited Flamingo Gardens in Davie yesterday. I have been there several times over the last twenty years and they have been doing a lot of work. There are several reasons why I love this garden. Overall, the tropical feeling is wonderful and there is a bit of Citrus Grove feeling on the back trail. The plant collection is top-notch, with several state champions included in the large trees. The Tropical Tree collection is the most impressive to me. It has been a little roughed up by the hurricanes but it is still a place to see some very large specimens. They also have some nice shrubs and a succulent collection. There are quite a few birds and other animals to see, including a Gator, of course.. The Flamingoes were eating right out of my hand. Karen let me use her D80 and it is a nice camera. I can’t believe how responsive it is. I will be posting some results of the 40 pictures I took with it. I used the D70s on the Flamingoes with the new Sigma 17-70mm. My only little knocks against the garden is that at $17 it is a little expensive. Try to find coupons or use AAA for discounts. The other was the plant collection could use a little better signage. Those are very small complaints and I think the staff does a wonderful job keeping up the place.

I am going to cut this short as I am forgot to bring my extra keyboard for my laptop. I hate trying to type with the onboard keyboard. This laptop (it is a G4 Titanium) needs to be replaced, as soon as I upgraded to Photoshop CS2 that really became apparent. The weather is cold and rainy but it looks like the sun is trying to peek out. It is supposed to get real windy.



Not really sure what flower this is. I just liked the lighting.

Florida Bound

I have left all my packing to the last minute. Tomorrow is the big day as we leave for Florida. I hope I can update this space while we are gone. I am soooooo looking forward to seeing some flowers. It hasn't gotten above freezing all this week and I need a little warmth. The dogs are going with us which is always fun. The Husky has been to Florida three or four times before and this will be the rookie’s second trip. I guess I can't call her a rookie she is now 3 years old. A Border Collie is fun to travel with as their quirks provide for some good laughs. She is also good on the security front as she takes her job of protecting us very seriously. I am sure they can’t wait to start chasing the little lizards. They probably wouldn’t know what to do if they caught one, as the lizards are much too fast for the dogs. Having a Siberian Husky and a Border Collie is quite a combination. You never know what is going to happen.

Since Karen broke the kit lens that I lent her for her new D80 I went to Manhattan and got a couple of new lenses. Now it is not the time of year for me to be investing a lot in glass but I needed a wide angle for D70s. After much research I got the Sigma 17-70mm macro. It is a little faster than the Nikon lens it is replacing (2.8 compared to 3.5 for the Nikon). It seemed to provide the most bang for the buck. For Karen I got the Nikon 18-135mm. It is one of the kit lens for her camera and it also wasn’t to expensive. I went to 17th Street Photo in the Chelsea district. It was on the third floor and it looks more like an internet/mail order type of place. They were real friendly and although the salesman was real busy he answered all of my questions. Gave me a good deal on an SD card and a 72mm Circular Polarizer. On street parking was easy (imagine that) and it didn’t take too long to get out of there. I hope to post some results from the new lenses. I am going to take a couple of pictures with the D80 in Florida as I really haven’t had time to set up the menus and put it through some paces.