iris – The Amazing Bird Collection

I reminisced over the year when a friend challenged me to post a nature photograph each day for a week on Facebook.

Oasis: We visited Israel during early March, at a time when they had had an unusual amount of precipitation. En Gedi provided spectacular scenes like this double waterfall.

Desert: This rock formation was fascinating.

Buffy: How do you hide a buffalo? In the bluestem grass of North Dakota, during his breakfast.

Drops: Sometimes the best photo ops are as far as your front yard. I took closeups in the morning rain when the peonies started to bloom in May.

Snow on the trees: In November, a sudden snowfall beautified the trees in the back of our house for a few days. I stepped on the deck and shot up, giving the picture a wide angle look.

Iris: My mother and her sisters always called these flowers “flags.” Their translucent petals shone in the sun on our backyard hill last spring.

Dinner: The seventh photo I chose is the one at the top of this blog. In January I tried making suet cakes and then, as it snowed, watched our neighborhood birds visit the feeder.

In 2016 may we have just as many opportunities to see and photograph nature, and take a part in preserving it for “our children, and our children’s children.”

If birds call to us, flowers certainly talk. The language of flowers has always fascinated me. In days gone by, people would send messages without writing a word, by bouquet: the flowers themselves did the talking. I used http://www.languageofflowers.com to translate some of the blooms in our garden (photos from the last two summers). I don’t guess I’ll be giving anybody hydrangeas, though. A big thanks to my husband for cultivating our beautiful flower garden!