New England's Narrow Road

Inspired by a Flower

I did a lot of gardening when I lived in Florida. It really wasn’t much fun in summer – and that is when the weeds would grow like mad of course – and I had just about every kind of southern flower and plant in my large yard. My favorites were the Camellias and Crepe Myrtle, but I also had lots of azaleas under the Oaks and yellow and white Jasmine covering the fence. I lived in that house for 12 years and added more to the yard each year.

The north has it’s own collection of gorgeous flowers that are not seen in the south. Hydrangeas are one such plant. It’s just too hot for many plants to survive that heat and the perennials need a dormant time (in winter) that the southern plants don’t get. At least not to the extent that the northern ones do.

I’ve been trying my hand at drying the blue hydrangeas that grow in the front yard of my rental house. I wrote a page about Hydrangeas and how to dry them, with lots of links, at my Squidoo site – if you are interested. I had one large blossom dry up nicely (in the picture to the right) and just added a few more smaller and darker blue ones to the vase, but my favorite thing to do is photograph them.

I think my pictures turned out better than my attempt at drying. I’ve used them to start a new store (#6) at Zazzle. I’ve sold many blue hydrangea cards and stamps from my main store- Narrow Road Designs, so this is an off shoot of that.

Click here to start your own Squidoo lens or to visit Blue Hydrangeas

Just When You Get Depressed

You check on your blog and some lovely person – a stranger- has left a bunch of wonderful comments. This is how God throws little blessings our way.

Today I have been trying to work on a new store I decided to open at Zazzle. It will be my 6th store there and I’ve only just lately been able to wrap my mind around some new fangled ways of creating items (everyone else has known these ‘secrets’ forever it seems) so I wanted to make Blue Hydrangea cards and stamps and hopefully have some additional income from it – eventually.

I worked yesterday on the uploads and started uploading the photos and graphics to the zazzle store and then…..No more zazzle! They went off line. Bummer.

So I checked my mail and found a message sent out from my old (old as in old friend! ha) Pastor in Florida about the upcoming message for Sunday. And I got sad thinking that I would miss it. I pictured all my friends sitting in church listening to a wonderful message and singing those songs I haven’t heard in almost 5 years. I saw that there would be a potluck dinner and an outreach to the homeless and I wanted to call and say I’d be there to help. But I am 1,500 miles away – or something like that.

I moved on in my e-mail and saw that a new person was following me on Twitter and this time it wasn’t some naked sleezy woman! (Don’t you hate those follows?) It was a person who’s blog I had seen a while back. I remembered the name – Red Pine Mountain – so pretty. She has great photos and stories too, but the nicest thing was that she left me a bunch of nice messages about my photos and blog here.

I don’t read too many blogs and I have to skip the “happy home and family” “wonderful life” ones for reasons I won’t bore you with, but I love photos and sometimes I just look at them…and dream. I think that Red Pine Mountain will give me some good dreams and I am grateful for her visit.

Fall Colors at The Girl Scout Camp

Our little town has a Girl Scout Camp that runs along one side of the lake. It’s a beautiful area and those Girl Scouts are lucky!

All summer the Camp is off limits to any of us “non-girl scouts”, but now that the girls are gone, we locals can walk our dogs or hike on the property.

There is a beautiful beach area and I noticed that some new benches have been added.

This area of the camp seems to be where they all gather for something. Of course I have no idea what, but it looks like they have a fire and sit on these “seats”. Maybe they sing songs and sacrifice old counselors.

Even though we have had a lot of wind and rain lately the color seems to be hanging on. The Camp caretakers will plow the road when snow falls so we can continue to enjoy our walks.
The camp is beautiful at all times of the year.

Read more about ♦ The Girl Scout Camp and see photos of foliage season around the camp.

Foliage Update From New Hampshire

I was just updating my Squidoo lens on New England Foliage and realized that the season is almost over…Already! Wow, it seemed to fly by this year.

For 2 years now we have had gorgeous color and if not for the horrific ice storm that hit us last December, I bet the color would have been even better. Many of the trees have been broken or uprooted and my photos were taken of different views this year.

I took the dog up the road for a walk two nights ago and the sun was just going down over the hill. It was hitting the yellow leaves just right and looked like a spotlight – of course I didn’t have my camera!! And I knew it wouldn’t last long enough for me to run (I don’t run fast) home and grab it…so I just stood and enjoyed it.

My plan was to go back up the next night and capture a replay of that moment, but it rained and the wind blew…and today when I walked up the hill I realized that I wouldn’t get that moment back. Almost all the yellow leaves have been blown away. My next chance for that photo won’t be for another year.

Time passes quickly – and in my opinion, never so quickly as in the Fall.

I got my photos. Maybe not as many as I would have liked, and I may still get some good ones, but in my area the leaves are fading away by mid-month usually and today is the 9th.

If you are planning to visit the northeast to see the color, you’d better hurry.

*Check the link on my site which has an interactive foliage map which is updated by folks who live in the New England states.