Category Archives: photography

Jun17

NJ day two

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I should add that for dinner the first night we were in Atlantic City we went to a restaurant that has been in business since 1912! I was picturing ladies in their bustled skirts and big hats coming to the ‘Fork and Knife Inn’ for dinner.

I had a lobster egg roll before dinner. If I had known I was going to have enough dinner for three people, I would have ordered a few appetizers! I had braised boneless ribs and Yukon potatoes. I brought what I couldn’t eat back to the room as we had a frig. I stored it on ice, but it was just a bit cool to touch after 7 hours in the car (and not in a cooler), so I tossed it. Brian had a nicely presented flounder dish.

We walked up and down that the boardwalk, but it was so windy, we headed back to the room. We did see some famous celebrities hand prints in cement-Cher, Joan Rivers, Frank Sinatra, Dom Deluise, to name a few.

The next day we got a light breakfast and walked along the beach for about 15 minutes. The sand was blowing sideways. They are finishing up a new hotel/casino called Revel-wow it’s spectacular!

Not sure how many stories it is. That’s a golf ball in the daytime and a globe at night on the top . You go up these long escalators to the different floors. At 10 in the morning , there weren’t that many people playing the slots. I have a $5 rule, if I put in $20 and lose $5,  I cash out. I sat down at a few penny slots and used a few dollars. I had a $20 left and we started winning and got up to $54! I cashed out. I used the money for a few souvenirs for Sean.

We decided to drive down to Margate, a lovely town with immaculate homes. You can’t believe you are a few miles away from Atlantic City as the main drag there is very seedy. I wanted to do a virtual cache at ‘Lucy the Elephant’ landmark. We decided to take the tour of the inside of Lucy and climbed up narrow, winding wood stairs.

Lucy looks like this on the outside

And like this on the inside:

 One of Lucy’s eyes shows a view of the ocean

The tour guide took our photo in the howda

Crazy windy and hair!

A view of Margate

See Lucy on the water tower? The original Lucy was from 1881 and fixed up both in 1970 after she was moved a few block and in the 2000s

We then headed 40 more miles south to one of my favorite places around Cape May, NJ. Brian says I should have a place there. : )  Not a ton of people because of the wind.

I’ll have to take a horse and carriage ride next time!

The Virginia where my grandparents honeymooned back in 1921.

This is so sweet.

I thought this was cool of my reflection-

From the hotel-not bad at all 35 floors up.

Better hit the hay, we are getting up really early tomorrow-250 miles!! That’s the longest drive we’ve done in a while (at least Brian and me).

Jun16

Five little Nuthatches

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Five little Nuthatches are living in a gourd in our evergreen tree out front. There were two gourds and one fell down, so I was thankful it wasn’t this nest before they arrived. They must have been born during the short time we were away. And wow are they noisy. The mama and dad are only about 4 inches long and the call is wickedly loud.

I had Cosmo out for a walk on his harness and hooked him up to a trellis on one side of the tree while I ran in to get the zoom. I had a little time focusing on the gourd, but I then stood inside the branches of a nearby Dogwood and waited a few minutes. It didn’t take long for Mama to come back, though she hopped around the branches watching Cosmo and then she hopped around me with this nasty grub or caterpillar in her mouth. 

I was very happy with these shots! If you’d like to use them, let me know first. Thanks.

I have more to tell you about our little trip tomorrow.

Jun8

Photo Hunt-Clean

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Cos cleaning, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I don’t have many photos associated with ‘clean’, though all my photos are ‘clean’. : )
I love Cosmo’s little tongue showing here. I may tack on cleaned up gardens if I run across any photos.

Brian and I were out in the yard all afternoon today. He was trimming the forsythia along the road and hedges along the house-this took 3 hours. I was planting more seeds and a few polka dot plants I had gotten. There is a pretty shade of pink in that plant this year. I needed to fill in bare spots. I also stuck more nasturtiums around different gardens. We are enjoying low humidity all week, so not many posts as I want to be outside.
My brother had tickets to a Phillies baseball game for yesterday at 1:00. The guys decided to go at the last minute and by a small miracle got there around 2:45 after having to go to my mom’s to get the tickets. The Phillies didn’t play well at all and got swept at home by the Dodgers. That hadn’t happened since the 1940s! The guys enjoyed being in the stadium and that gave them their baseball fix for the year. Tonight the team is playing awesome in Baltimore and so far are winning. Crossing fingers (they won).

Here’s Sean at Citizen’s Bank Park with the statue commemorating Phillies announcer Harry Kalas who passed away suddenly a few years ago. Coincidentally, a pal of Sean’s dated Harry’s son for a few years.

While the guys were gone, I cleaned out a yucca and Red Hot Poker garden near the road and planted yellow Lantana, yellow Marigolds and different colors of Celosia there. I also added nasturtiums and a few moonflower seeds there too.

Jun2

Photo Hunt-Taste

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Mom-mom’s chili con carne, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Nothing tastes as good as my Grandmom Ruth’s recipe for chili con carne. I use celery and ground turkey with a sprinkling of cinnamon and lots of chili powder (love).

Bathroom update…I did a really stupid thing and could have saved myself a ton of time. The glass mosaic tiles came yesterday and I decided to put them up. I by mistake ordered a multi-color sample and that was glued securely on cardboard. The other two colors were on brown paper. All I really had to do was put the adhesive on in the space, cut the squares, ‘while still on the brown paper’ and push them into the space. I knew the 3/4″ squares wouldn’t need to be cut at all. So why I took them off the paper is beyond me! It meant I had to stick 100 squares on ‘individually’. So that being said, it was messy and I had a lot of cleaning and scraping today. I need to grout it now. Brian bought me the adhesive and we were in Lowe’s today to get grout and lo and behold, they sell adhesive and grout! Why he didn’t get that a few days ago.

Here is what it looks like without the grout. And guess what? Bri is hooking up the sink and it’s going to be even harder for me to grout this! I can’t get to the bottom row at all now unless he unhooks the pipes for an hour.

I got the shower curtain up and the hooks were a little tricky. I noticed Sean knocked two off the pole after showering last night. I hope they work okay.

Update-the sink is installed! Can’t wait to put the white grout in those mosaics!

It sure is more modern! Not sure if we can get rid of the soap and toothbrush holders without hurting the tiles.

I did get to work in the pond garden and got some pretty filler plants like Ornamental Pepper, a pretty raspberry color Salvia, bright yellow Lantana and a few other plants.  They should all fill in nicely around the pond. I noticed if I stand where the gazing ball is, the shape is almost heart shaped!

A few of my gardens are disappointing so far-the Sweet William/Asian garden. It’s not a good year for them.  My woodland garden was pretty when the Bleeding Hearts were blooming (and they bloomed a month or so!) My Nicotiana looked nice, but the Salvias never took off and are getting nibbled even though I used insectide soap on the constantly. I will probably pop a few marigolds in there.

Last but not least, I couldn’t resist to pick a yellow rose to enjoy. It smells wonderful!

May26

Photo Hunt-Creative

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Close-up of wavy videos, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I think what I love almost as much as seeing the flowers and plants in early March at the Philadelphia Flower Show (especially if it’s been a cold winter) is the ‘creative’ aspect of the show. You’ve got to make me go ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ when I see it to be spectacular. The theme of the show this year was Hawaii (and I was thrilled my brother invited my son and I to go, but alas we aren’t speaking again…). This was an exhibit near the entrance called ‘The Orchid Wave’. There were flowers of course, but the blue part was a video of sea turtles and fish swimming over your head. I will see if someone made a video of this.

Pretty darn spectacular to me.

May18

Photo Hunt-Magical

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Long shot of rose garden, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Brian, Sean and me took my mom back to the Scott Arboretum on the campus of Swarthmore College (Penna). to see their spectacular and magical Bond rose garden.
From a website-
Yet by far the crowning jewel in this already impressive collection is the shockingly gorgeous Dean Bond Rose Garden. Housing 650 roses of more than 200 types, it was established in memorial of Elizabeth Powell Bond, the Dean of Women at Swarthmore. It’s now tradition for graduating seniors of the college to pin a rose on their gown for commencement.
We’re going back in a few weeks to see them in further bloom!

Here’s an Artist Trading card I made and had to keep, but I did make a similar one to send my swap partner. My Grandmom Ruth use to call babies ‘baby birds’ so this reminds me of her.

The one I sent my partner:

May17

Mom and Me at the arboretum

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Mom and Me at the arboretum, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

The fellas and I took my mom back to the Scott Arboretum on the beautiful campus of Swarthmore College. It was really a sight to seen as it was breathtakingly beautiful. The roses smelled delightful too. I have some of my own roses, but I find them difficult to take care of and grow. I tend not to trim them at the right time. Then they get black spot, etc.
As you can see it was a sunny day in the middle 70s, though not humid at all. I will add more photos soon.
The students all get a rose pinned to them when they graduate.

~By the way, I had a sore elbow, so I had a band on it and forgot to take it off at the arboretum.

May5

Photo Hunt-Zap

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Almost two years ago, the three of us went to a Phillies game. It was about 92 degrees and we had to sit in the sun. Not a pleasant experience, but I had water and also my mist fan. So about an hour or so into the game, it started to get breezy and then the sky got dark. There was lightning and we are glad we didn’t get ‘ZAP’ped. It started to pour and we got drenched and had to run to the car and drive home that way. We came home to find water pouring in where the pump is-never happened before. We had to scramble to get rid of it and clogged up the sink in the bathroom down there-still that way.
Anyway…thought you’d like to see the video board at Citizen’s Bank Park.

Apr24

May flowers in April

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Early, so early! Now it’s chilly again. I haven’t gone out to look at the following flowers as we finally got rain off and now since Saturday night.

Lovely white irises

Lily of the Valley

I am doing several challenges on Swap-bot.com.

This was my choice of design and it’s called ‘Spring Chicken’. I got a package of really cute chicks and bunnies and the lady in New Zealand likes these sort of ‘die-cuts’, so I thought of that when I was making this.

A decorated envelope for ‘May Day’ is going to Oregon.

Monday, my entourage and me went to my hometown. I was getting my hair done and then we went to the tail end of a book sale and out to PF Chang as we had a $15 off gift card. I grabbed a few books like a Metropolitan Museum of Art  book on Van Gogh. This was nice as we had just seen his show in Philly. I got a few novels-Twilight for one as I’ve never read it. I have seen the movie, but I’m sure the book is better. I have enough books for many years of reading! : )