Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Photo Contest

I entered 6 photos in the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center photo contest!  The message I received after I uploaded said that it could take up to 3 days before the pictures are posted.  Here is the link where you will be able to find them - eventually!  http://www.wildflower.org/photocontest/

Here are the pictures I entered
     in BOTANICAL catagory:

white prickly poppy, near Marble Falls, TX

Lupine - not BLUE, Johnson City, TX

Stiff Stem Flax, near Belton, TX

Thistle, near Temple TX

Prickly Pear Cactus, Georgetown, TX

In LANDSCAPE catagory:

Bluebonnets & Indian paintbrush near Stillhouse Hollow Dam in Bell Co

There are some very nice photos in the contest.  Voting lasts through June 30.  If you like my work, please vote for one or more of my pictures!  I do not expect to win - I just love to share my work.  Many of these same pictures are in my book/class "The Colors of WILD" on May 19. 

A Sweet Surprise

We had a very sweet surprise on our walk by the lake yesterday ... I'd seen blackberries bloom, but never saw fruit.  It was usually eaten by birds or deer.  But for some reason, this year is different ... I plan to go back tomorrow to check on progress, and maybe pick a few!

I did have a taste test yesterday ... and they were good!

Our photo shoot on Thursday ...

was an absolute bust!  I got what I thought was a good tip about flowers in a park, went there - NO FLOWERS!  After dinner, we checked on another spot which will be the Friday flower shoot!  We're going to try to catch the FIREWORKS at the air show at Temple airport tonight too!

The Colors of WILD!

I created these layouts as background paper for my book "The colors of WILD!"  Each left hand page will have a stamped and hand colored image of the wildflower.  (bluebonnet, Indian Paintbrush, spiderwort, prickly poppy, and Indian blanket).  Right hand pages will have the same background photo without the text, and a mat for your personal photos of the specimen plants!  I hope to get the book completed by early next week.  When it is complete, I

will post the pages on my paper crafting blog

http://pokisprojects.blogspot.com

After I printed the pictures, I decided that the picture I had chosen for the title page printed WAY TOO DARK!  I lightened it, and printed again on both the matte photo paper I'm using in the book, and some glossy paper too, and decided it was still too dark, so I changed the photo!  I think this new one will make a much more dramatic cover page anyway!

I like this picture just as well, and since it was taken in FULL SUN, it prints much brighter in the book! 

I removed my original YELLOW page - I decided that I just had to call it RED instead since my favorite wildflower book classifies the Indian Blanket as a RED flower!!!!  So I had to re-create a YELLOW page too!

I changed the YELLOW PICTURE TOO!  This is my second YELLOW page!  It prints better!

One more bluebonnet pix - for now! 4/12/2010 in Temple

Here is one more bluebonnet pix that I really like.  I edited it last weekend in "greenie" to use in my wildflower 2010 book, but wasn't able to load anything to Facebook, or my Blog from the Rockin' R.  The satellite wifi is always tempermental when it rains, which it did most of the weekend.

This picture was taken in an open field set back from FM 2305 which is West Adams in Temple, heading out toward the lake.  We drove past this field tonight on the way to dinner to see if it had escaped the dreaded LAWN MOWERS. and surprisingly the flowers were still there!  Taller and thicker I believe than they were last week when we were there for photos!

Flower Safari - 4/20/2010

On Tuesday, April 20, we did photos in two places - at the Corps office by Belton Dam (and the park behind it) and also on FM 439 heading toward Killeen

Black-foot daisies - this is their first week to bloom - I was watching for them.  The cluster grows off one main stem!  They love to be in rocky soil, which makes this stretch of FM 439  perfect for them!

These Indian paintbrushes were extremely vibrant, living in FULL SUN with no chance of shade ever!  The sun isn't so good for the bluebonnets though, they were a little faded looking in this spot!

These Indian paintbrushes were in an area with primarily paintbrushes only - on a few bluebonnets mixed in at the Park by Belton Dam!

These Indian paintbrushes were a rosy PINK instead of ORANGE, living right in the middle of a patch of orange ones!

The pink ones are right in the center of this photo! 

A nice patch of bluebonnets beside FM 439 - I pass by them almost everyday going to Killeen and back!

This plant is called Foxglove, and is the natural source for the medicine Digitalis!  I find they are much prettier inside the cup than outside!

A lovely cluster of Foxglove at the base of a Live Oak Tree.

This Foxglove was a more vibrant purple than the others, although they were all growing in the same cluster!

Here are those gold flowers again - fully open this time! - and I still don't know what they are!  NOTE:  I borrowed my neighbor's wildflower book (like mine that is MIA) and discovered that this flower is STIFF-STEM FLAX! (The same type of plant from which linen fabric is manufactured!)

More pictures from Stillhouse Hollow Dam road - 4/19/2010

Here are a few more pictures that I have edited from our photo safari to Stillhouse Hollow Dam road on Monday, April 19, 2010

This one was LAVENDER, not blue - I had never seen one quite this color before.

A couple of PINKS slipped into this group!  Beautiful!

There are lots of yellow "daisy like" flower mixed in at this time of year!

I'm not sure what these gold flower are, but I'll find out as soon as I find my wildflower reference book - it's MIA.  I would know exactly where it is if I had just left it in the car, which is where it belongs!