What a glorious day! Even though it started with an MRI, we ended with a great walk through Agua Caliente Park, a series of small ponds and a wonderfully restored 50’s ranch house. There also is a wonderful little gallery there, and we try to check each month to see the new artist. We are scheduled as the artists in 4 years – never too soon to start planning! The weather also was amazing today – why we come to Tucson for the 70’s and gorgeous blue skies! We also looked at an exhibit of Mata Ortiz pottery at the Tohono Chul park – rapidly becoming another favorite haunt, but we keep forgetting our camera each time we come!

I spent last night going through iPhoto at the shots Dean has taken at the Botanical Gardens. There are some pretty great ones, so I pulled those up and started doing cropping – in most cases I think the cropping made for a more interesting picture. Now I will slowly play around with Photoshop to see what I can create for my Garden of Fantasy, one of the shows I would like to see get curated.

So here are some of the ones I have chosen, along with some comments about some of them. I haven’t really decided what to do – this right now is a lesson in working with Photoshop and learning more – and hoping for a few “a-ha’s” along the way.

I’m quite partial to these daisies, especially with the lines of shadows running diagonally through the picture. There’s straight, round, diagonal – a nice mix of shapes. And the close-up of the flower centers has gorgeous details.

I love cyclamen, but I can’t grow it! This is (I think) spectacular for the water drops – taken by me on an early morning at the Gardens after a rainy night. You don’t find dew often here in the desert!

With my new backyard, I plan to have lots of agaves and aloes. This one is huge, so I am aiming for the smaller type, but I love the blossoms.

Butterfly Magic at the Gardens – the orange amid all that green is beautiful.

This is a really intriguing plant – it’s as tall as a tree, with a trunk like a tree, but with succulent leaves. I cropped out a lot of the background to get a better focus.

This color is spectacular. I’m curious if I can improve on it….

To see this in person just takes your breath away. I’ve started “roughing up” the background to accent these petals even more.

I absolutely love the mix of colors in this – these are pitcher plants – carnivorous plants that eat bugs. They are intriguing-looking plants.

This photo doesn’t begin to do justice to the red of these leaves. That will be my challenge.

I love this one – nice mix of colors.