Day & Night Flower Series

I shot a lot of photos in the greenhouse before everything was torn out last week. These are some of my favorite black & whites. Anyone that knows me well knows how fascinated I am by flowers and plants in general. I love seeing them in black & white because it's always the small, perfectly formed bits that intrigue me, not the colors, and shooting them in black & white makes me pay more attention to the details.

The Sad End

It's nearly time to pull everything from the greenhouse and I couldn't resist trying one more time to capture the delightful colors, shapes & smells that are still to be found there...

 

South Pole Greenhouse- Part Deux

We're getting ready to tear everything out of the greenhouse soon so that all the trays can be cleaned and maintenance performed on the system. I'm not terribly happy about this because it's my favorite place on station and it's nice to have a mini wonderland of greenery to step into at the end of the day but it seems necessary. 

Until then, I'm trying to capture the heart of it with my camera as it will be many weeks before it will regain its lushness.

South Pole Greenhouse

The one thing I really miss at South Pole are plants. For the most part, this somewhat desolate place is flat, white and without color. Many days there is not even a horizon on which to settle your eyes, for the gray sky simply blends into snow. 

But thankfully we have a small hydroponic greenhouse. A heavenly little place to poke around. The greenhouse supplies the station with a few freshies, mostly in the form of salad ingredients but a few flowers are grown there too... It's my favorite place on station.

52 Saturdays 2011- Casa Verde Community Garden

The first thing I generally see on Saturdays is my community garden.  A colorful, quirky little corner of the city that's a block away from our row house.  It's finally starting to fill in with greenery and we finally have a tomato turning orange.  Perhaps the best part of the garden, besides my plants, is the fun mural on the back wall and faux graffiti painted benches.  Next door is  a tiny little 'Tiendita' that has continual traffic and numerous pay phone users that stand next to the garden giving away their life story at top volume while we water & weed.  

The garden tends to collect a lot of trash- thrown in & blown in.  Today my plot had a bunch of cigarette butts in it.  It's annoying & really frustrating, but I like that I have a very small corner of the world where I can grown things in the ground and there is a working hose for watering.  The one in our micro-mini backyard has never worked and it's all patio- no dirt.  The community garden is a small luxury in my life.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Andrea

Casa Verde Garden, Baker Neighborhood, Denver

Home

Home from Spain and already reliving our many days filled with wandering the cobblestone streets of old towns with positively ancient structures and history, imbibing in good coffee, wine and tapas at every turn.

It was a great trip and I'm still quite jet-lagged as well as dealing with the minor medical issue that sent me home earlier than I had planned but I thought I would post a quick update.

Spain was everything I thought it might be and so much more!  These are some photos from one of my favorite buildings that we came across in the Moorish quarter of Granada last week.  With its picturesque white-washed brick walls and red-tiled roof it embodies what I thought all the buildings would look like prior to going to Spain.  As a bonus, it had a huge variety of plants growing on it.  There are few places I like to see plants making a little life for themselves more than on the tops of buildings.  This particular building was sprouting an enormous amount of vegetation and I wish I could have taken a stroll across the rooftop to get a closer look.

More photos to come later...

Cheers,
Andrea

Gardening Chemistry

I've been working on a Physics & Flowers series and it occurred to me the other day that I should add some chemistry and plants to the mix. This is just a test sketch for a mixed media canvas design that I'm working out in my head.