Hello, dears!
I hear tell it’s getting CLOSE TO CHRISTMAS. Do you think the rumors are true? XD Since it is still November, I thought I’d show you guys some last fall photos I haven’t posted yet before the advent countdown officially begins. I absolutely LOVE how some of these turned out, and I hope you will too!
Hello, dears!
I hope you had a great Easter! I sure did. 🙂 We had a great time going to our old church again and seeing friends, as well as having family celebrations.
Once Easter is past, it seems like it really ought to be spring, heh heh. So today I’ve compiled some recent farm photography from various rambles – mostly springy ones, but a few from the last bits of winter too. I hope you enjoy “walking” around the farm with me!
I love how the soft light polishes the smooth gnarls of this twisted tree.❤
If you peer into the woods here, you’re bound to see drifts of pale leaves on small trees all over the place. We didn’t have beeches at home, so it’s fun to see leaves here even in winter!
There’s a little island of trees in the pasture behind the Cedar House, some of which are pines laden with cones. I think pine cones are just so satisfying and pretty to take pictures of and hold. 😛
I love finding bright spots of color among the gray!
Another common tree here that isn’t common at home is the sweet gum tree. The seed pods always have bad hair days, heh heh. XD
Plush cushions of velvety green moss make me happy. 🙂
Now we get to the wintry part, but it’s just a few pictures. 😉 Quite a while ago, the smaller pond was frozen enough to walk on, so of course we did so, hee hee. Don’t you love finding things frozen into the ice, like this oak leaf? Such a cold bed for the bright little thing to be sleeping in.
The ice crystals were GORGEOUS. I love the delicate, fleeting strength of ice.
Jellyfish bubbles floating, frozen…
Isn’t the crystallized texture so fine and pretty? At the bottom left I think it looks like an ice feather.
The very top of the ice melted, but it was still solid underneath, don’t worry. 😉 The reflections… ❤
Alright, enough of the cold. How’s this for a warmer picture? That little ridge is a cow path. It always amazes me how straight and narrow the paths are, especially for such big, clumsy animals. XD
AHHH THE LIGHT. How could anyone not love golden hour? Hmm… maybe everyone does.
It looks like the foxtail head is floating. 😛
Okay, we’re switching topics again. XD Now we’re walking down to the big pond, which is NOT frozen, as you may notice.
The deep sapphire blue water contrasts so nicely with the pale cattails, don’t you think?
Here’s a different kind of blue. For some reason there are SO many vultures floating around, and even though I don’t particularly like the birds themselves, I like to watch them glide (or wobble, on windy days XD).
The fields are neon green on sunny days and it looks like SPRING, YAY. Except there are still no leaves on the trees…
This really reminds me of the default header on… the Hemingway theme, is it?
SO. PRETTY.
And here’s the big house… which is still being worked on. *sigh* The moving date is getting pushed further and further away, and right now it would be great if we could even move in before my birthday in the beginning of May.
Goodness, this post is all over the place… here’s a random photo of those strange cedar apples again! O.o
Next I have a few pictures of our smaller creek, which we have nicknamed “Little Runny.” 😛 I absolutely love it! The twisted roots of overhanging trees, tiny sandbar beaches, mossy stones, and clear bubbling rivulets weave together an enchanted atmosphere. ❤
I really want to make this into a fairy house. Isn’t it perfect?
Look, it’s a little rainbow lens flare!
Water fascinates me. Always moving, always changing, always twisting and rippling under the light. I think water and light together are especially beautiful and interesting to watch.
We found several pools along the creek that are pretty heavily populated with minnows and crayfish. (What do YOU call them? Crayfish? Crawfish? Crawdads?) We didn’t have a net, so we made do with a colander and metal strainer bought from Dollar General. XD
HA HA, it looks like he’s raising his claws in surrender. XD
My cousin kindly allowed me to take a picture of her, splendidly modelling the colander as a hat. 😛
And last but not least I have a handful of black and white edits that I quite like for different. 🙂 This one is pond ripples, but I think they look like tiny sand dunes too.
❤
I really like this one too! I always find pictures of hands, by themselves or holding something, appealing; I don’t quite know why.
I love how the round clusters of sycamore seeds hang from the branches like ornaments.
Apparently I think trees look really good in black and white. 🙂
And I saved one of my favorites for last. ❤ The vultures and cows together look so rural and free.
I hope you enjoyed this longish, scattered post, dears! Which picture was your favorite? Which was your LEAST favorite? Are you ready for spring?
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful warm day!
***Allison***
This Labor Day we did something a different than an ordinary picnic or cook-out. Since Dad and the boys were out harvesting corn, Mom suggested that we girls pack a lunch and just go out and walk around the farm. So we did! It was quite fun.
We packed some sandwiches, mint tea, chips, and a couple other things which I can’t remember (XD), and took along backpacks filled with books and cameras.
This is my cucumber sandwich. Say hello. I didn’t want to waste the bread crusts after I cut out the sandwich, so I flattened them with a rolling pin, spread some cream cheese on, and rolled them up into roses. 😛
First we headed past a place we call “The Sycamores” because… there are a lot of huge sycamore trees by the creek. 
I found some lovely periwinkle morning glories along the path. Aren’t they charming?
We finally settled on a pretty, peaceful corner of the pasture filled with smartweed – a dainty little pink flower. We spread out a blanket, hung the hammock, and relaxed.
I did a really fun, cute photoshoot with my little sister here, but this post would be insanely long if I included all those photos oh wait it already is, so I’ll save it for later. Anyway, this was a great spot for taking pictures of little things. My favorite! 😀
The scenery was more scrubby here than the rest of our farm, but still pretty.
Trees are nice.
After we ate lunch and read for a while, we decided to move to a different spot. We crossed the barbwire fence (no easy feat in this pasture), walked over the field, up the hill, down a lane, and up another hill to a beautiful hidden spot behind a pasture. We’d never been there before, which is something rare since we’ve walked pretty much everywhere on our farm, and it was delightful to explore it.
Unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures with my camera because it ran out of battery, but Megan lent me hers.
HA HA cows are such funny creatures. XD
I had the idea to play mancala while we were there. (Have you ever played that? It’s really fun!) I dug out some holes in the dirt with a stick and used corn kernels for the marbles. It actually worked!
It’s really hard to see on camera, but Carmen and I built a great fort around this perfect square of trees. There were huge logs scattered everywhere (one pile was in a huge sinkhole O.o ). They made great walls but were exhausting to carry. We didn’t finish the fort, but we did make a good start.
Mom and Carmen and I also built this little campfire area in a pretty shaded nook. We stacked stones for a firepit, hauled in some rocks and stumps for chairs, and made benches from logs and rocks. 🙂 It was fun.
Mom also found this really odd-looking spider. O.o (She’s for you, Clara. 😉 )
In the evening our whole family came up and had a picnic with us, and a bonfire too.
So that’s what we did for Labor Day! It was great fun, even though the mosquitoes practically devoured me. I got over 40 mosquito bites (yes, I counted XD). O.o Anyway, the memories will last for much longer than the bites will, so it’s all good.
I hope you enjoyed this loooong post, my dears! Which was your favorite picture? Which was your least favorite? What did you do for Labor Day?
***Allison***
Yesterday we went on a beautiful hike in the mountains with our friends. It was tiring, but so fun! Plus there was a stream and a waterfall, so that automatically makes it a good trail. 🙂 I took quite a few absolutely TONS of pictures, so do some finger exercises, get comfortable, and start scrolling. 😛
Such a beautiful view, don’t you agree?
Ahh, so sunny. ♥
Beautiful ferns…
We’ve seen these weird corncob-like fungi before, but I don’t know what they’re called. We probably looked it up but then I forgot. XD
There were a bunch of mini cascades and waterfalls like this before we got to the big one.
A few people pictures: 😀
The kids were splashing rocks into a little pool and I got some really neat pictures with fast shutter speed. 🙂
I love how clear the water was!
Ahhh isn’t this waterfall GORGEOUS?!
I love the next picture, even though it sort of looks like Megan’s holding up the fallen log with her head. XD
Ha ha, my brother Jeff was climbing all over the place.
The fallen log kind of got in the way of the pictures, although it looked neat, too.
If you wade to the other end of the waterfall you find another, much steeper and narrower one. It’s basically just a shoot of white water.
BOKEH!
Aww, look at the cute little millipede. XD
Trying out my new lens on some flowers here…
Ohhh it was a gorgeous day, and the sun shining through the new leaves was just too pretty!
My little sister and her friend are so cute together. ♥
As we were driving back, I got a few good shots out the window. (Surprisingly, it worked a lot better when I rolled the window down. 😛 XD )
AHHH I absolutely LOVE this next photo! I love all the layers and shades. ♥
*Gasp* Okay Allison, maybe you went a bit too far this time. O.o I applaud you if you persevered to the end and actually looked at most of the pictures. XD I hope it wasn’t too strenuous of a journey. But wasn’t the waterfall gorgeous? And the mountains? Ahhh, it makes my heart happy. ♥
Have a lovely day, lovely people!
***Allison***
The title sounds rather strange, but don’t worry: the hike wasn’t actually littered with lady’s shoes, it just had some lady’s slippers flowers along it. Okay good, we got that cleared up. 🙂
Of course I took many pictures when we went on the aforementioned trail with my aunt, who kindly offered to show us the lady slippers.
When we first got to the path, there were about twenty butterflies – mostly tiger swallowtails – sitting all in a clump, maybe eating or drinking something. We didn’t even notice them until we walked right up to them and they exploded and flew away. It was AMAZING to see! Since I didn’t know they were there the first time, I didn’t get pictures then, but later we waited for the butterflies to come back and a few did. But only a few – not nearly as many as we had scared off before. Oh well, at least I got pictures of those few!
This is a bee on a lupine flower. In the second picture you can sort of see the bee’s proboscis… I think.
Pretty lupine leaf…
And the stars of the hike – I present the lovely ladies’ slippers. 🙂 (Click on any picture in the collage to enlarge it.)
Spring + Hike + Camera = Flower Pictures
I like the shape of these leaves.
I edited this picture to make it look more like a fairy hotel. Isn’t it magical-ish? XD
We found this weird but pretty metallic green beetle.
And last, a simple picture of forest floor.
I hope you enjoyed the virtual walk! It was quite fun, and it was easy hiking compared to the trails I went on for my birthday, but… that’s a post for another day. 😀 Which was your favorite picture?
***Allison***
P. S. You know that riddle that I asked you a long time ago about what word has all five vowels in it? Lots of you actually came up with answers that fit the riddle, but none of you thought of the word I was thinking of! (I guess it wasn’t a very good riddle if it had so many answers. 
Oh well, it was fun!) The word I was thinking of was… sequoia! In case you don’t know, a sequoia is a type of tree that grows to be ginormously tall – kind of like a redwood. And with that, I leave you. 🙂
Yep, we went on a walk around our farm the other day with our friends, and sadly enough, there was no snow. 😦 The last couple of years we’ve had really early snow (at least for us), like in October and November, but this winter there has been nothing but a puny little flurry. 😦 Anyway, I still got some pretty pictures, whether there was snow or not, so here goes!
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Some of the trees on our farm have huge bracket fungi on them.
These are dried Jimson-weed pods. They have quite the thorny complexion, don’t they? In summer, Jimson-weed has a sort of morning glory like flower. A note here: Jimson weed is actually poisonous, so don’t go around stuffing it into your mouths – not that anyone would want to. XD
A simple twig looks pretty up close.
This is a very tiny, shriveled persimmon. We have a little persimmon tree on our farm that annually gives about four dried up fruits which are almost always to high to reach. Once we actually got to taste one, and it must not have been ripe because, boy was that bitter! It made your mouth dry up like a cotton ball. Blech! But then for Christmas Eve supper we found two “real” persimmons at the grocery store, and those were actually pretty good! They tasted kind of like a mild, sweet melon or something. Plus they were about ten times bigger and plumper than any of our persimmons. XD Have you ever had a persimmon?
One of our friends. 🙂
Group picture!
I took a picture of Maggie running and it turned out really funny!
We walked up a wet gravel road, and Maggie left cute pawprints behind her. I edited this picture on my camera so you can see them better.
We went into a woods, and Maggie must have sniffed out some creature or other, because she started furiously digging under a rotting stump. She dug a hole so big that her whole head went practically underground! It was really funny, and we stayed there watching her for a long time. But she never caught anything. XP
And last but not least, we took this walk when my sister Megan (center)first got her new camera, and my little sister (left) and my friend (right)were watching her work it. I edited this picture (as you can see!) on my camera with the “Painting” setting. Doesn’t it look neat?
I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and picture from a winter walk! Which picture was your favorite?
***Allison***
P. S. Don’t worry, I will do more Photos from of Old posts, but I’m saving them for a little later because the next ones are from springtime.
P. P. S. Wow! I seem to be doing a lot of P. S.’s on my posts lately, don’t I? 😀
These are some pictures from a May walk my family and I took on our farm. It was a beautiful evening for walking!
I love May!
***Allison***
Allison Marie 