April Love 2022

Like every year, I participated in Susannah Conway's April Love on Instagram again. I didn't post every day, but only on those days the prompts spoke to me. Let me show you some of them.

The first prompt was "blue" - perfect for our Pacific Hound's Tongue (Adelinia grande), followed by "yellow" - a dahlia.

Day 3 kept with the "flowers" theme. I always love fresh flowers on our dining table, and tulips combined with baby's breath is a favorite.

"My smile" (day 4) was a bit of a challenge since there aren't that many photos of myself. I usually don't take many selfies - but thankfully my husband has the long arm and can take those kinds of photos easily. This was taken on the balcony of our little hotel appartment up in Bandon, OR, where we spent a few days last summer. I love this place right on the endless sandy beach so much and remember fondly those long long walks along the ocean in windy, cool weather.

My "morning ritual" (day 6) is to meditate which I unfortunately still don't do every day. I started a meditation practice during the pandemic, but boy! it's not easy. Creating an art journal spread was a lot of fun, though!

Day 12 asked what "brings me joy" and of course, it's this little guy and his orange-white companion. He's sitting in my garden which is another very important source of joy for me.

 My "hobby" (day 15)? A look through the window into my 'studio' says it all.

When the Geek and I were walking around the lake one day and took a short break sitting on a bench I noticed the reflection in his cool sunglasses - perfect for day 18, "reflection".

I was "currently reading" (day 19) Matt Gaw's "Under the Stars", a beautiful love letter to the night sky and designated dark sky areas. It often reminded me of the incredible starry sky over the desert where no artificial light pollutes the night. Since then I have learned that there is a designated dark sky area near where I live and I know that I need to go there in a clear night (which might be a challenge since we so often have the coastal fog rolling in later in the day). While reading I'm having a cup of coffee ("drink", day 22) which is also my ticket to Elizabeth's T Tuesday when we show a drink that we enjoy.

"Softly" was the prompt for day 23, followed by "holding hands". Both pictures are old - the first photo shows my dad holding my newborn daughter. This is one of my favorite pictures of my dad. The second photo is of my brother and myself. He was holding my hand in order to put some seeds into my palm that we wanted to plant in this piece of dirt (it really only was dirt and not soil). While those seeds didn't take (no surprise), the seed of gardening was firmly planted within me. Please note that both my brother and I are wearing Lederhosen - simply the best for kids with wild souls who love to be and play outdoors.

When I read "horizon" (day 25) I immediately thought of the wide open skies in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the Northeast of Germany. I only had to decide whether I wanted to choose a photo of the endless poppy fields or a field with haystacks.

Day 28's prompt was "love" - always these two, forever.

Leaves and Branches

 

This is the first time that I'm joining Rain's Thursday Art Date because the prompt - leaves and branches - spoke to me. Any kind of  creativity is welcome on Rain's blog, and mine, of course, is photography (and you don't have to follow the prompt if you don't want to).

Let's start with branches. Those of you who have read my blog for some time know that I love crooked trees, and they of course have - crooked branches.

Most of these branches pictures were taken over the years in Yosemite National Park, some still on film. We call Yosemite the national park in our backyard and it certainly is the park that we have visited the most often.

During our first or second visit 20 years ago we climbed Sentinel Dome, a ganite dome on the south wall of Yosemite Valley. From the top you have a gorgeous view over the valley, but it is not half as crowded as Glacier Point. There used to be a lone Jeffrey Pine that became iconic through the photograph by Ansel Adams (among others). It died during the drought of 1976, but remained standing until August 2003 when it finally collapsed. This photo just shows one branch of it; I was drawn to it because it framed famous Half Dome - can you see it?

I also love dead branches on the ground that still offer "housing" to all kinds of insects and tiny critters.

I hope you don't think I only like dead or crooked branches - no, I also love them when they're full of life, like this California Buckeye (but then the buckeye can be a rather crooked tree as well...).

Low hanging branches with leaves on them like this gingko last fall - and that brings us to leaves.

I will concentrate here on leaves in regards to wildlife - what would a caterpillar do without leaves?

The grasshopper is soaking up the sun on the sedum "Autumn Joy".

A snail is taking a liking to the leaves of Salvia nemorosa.

The ladybugs love to hide in and crawl along the delicate leaves of yarrow.

And look here - a cicada sitting on a peony leaf.

Exploring the Possibilities

 

Usually I don't choose a word of the year. I used to do it a few years back, but I eventually found that I could never find a word that would guide me through the year. After a couple months it disappeared into the background never to turn up again. I then decided that a word of the year is not for me and just because everyone else is having one doesn't necessarily mean that I need to have one as well.

This year though was different. The word found me.

Just like in the past years I didn't think of a word. The thought didn't even pass my mind. But suddenly, out of nowhere, it was there - "explore". And I thought "how fitting for this new chapter in my life", the life after work at the high school. Since I had left my job last summer my days were full with my other job (teaching German) and my Etsy shop that became very busy as soon as September rolled around, but has slowed down a bit now that Christmas is over. Now I can explore.

No, I won't fly solo around the world - I'm not Amelia.

I sat down with my art journal and explored "explore". Beneath all these layers of paint and papers is my writing, my thoughts and hope for my version of explore. I want to spend more time in nature again, maybe even try some nature journaling. I want to learn bird identification by their sounds. I want to write more and read more non-fiction. My garden calls to me every day and I plan to transfer it even more to a low water garden, using less and less water on drought tolerant plants. I still need to learn - explore - a lot in this regard. There is also art journaling that I would like to explore more deeply - and for that reason I enrolled in Laly Mille's art journal class. 

But most of all I want to go back to photography and explore it more. I have missed "serious" photography these past two years a lot. Yes, I took tons of photos with my phone, but I actually want to get my dSLR out again and play around with my camera, be creative with different settings and depth of field. I know how much this makes my heart sing and how I view the world from different perspectives. It makes me more observant. I'm dreaming of trying new things, maybe even black and white photography. I want to use my skills because I know that photography is the art form I can do best and I enjoy the most.

I will still use my phone since I am not always able to carry my big camera everywhere. The phone is definitely much handier (is that why it's called "handy" in German?). But I have found a backpack that has a front compartment that is designed for "real" cameras and has a quick access door on the side so it's easy to retrieve the camera from the backpack without taking off the whole backpack when I want to take a photo. I'm still thinking about it because it's quite pricey, but I'm very tempted.

I loved to create this art journal spread! While doing it I enjoyed my coffee with lots of milk and every now and then some sweet cream (thank you Trader Joe's for carrying it). Here you can see one of my favorite mugs bought in my favorite national park. This is my drink for today's T Tuesday post - thank you, Elizabeth, for giving us this opportunity.

August Break

 

During the month of August I participated in Susannah Conway's August Break on Instagram. She gave us prompts for each day to show our photography. I played most days and I want to show you a few of the photos I posted.

The "challenge" started with the prompt "window". I took the photo above in Germany when I was still using film. The image didn't turn out completely sharp, so I processed it in Photoshop and gave it a "painterly" effect. I quite like it this way.

The prompy for day 7 was "glass". I love the stunning art of Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot, especially their "Red Lantern" that I saw several years ago at Cornerstone Gardens. I wrote about it in 2014 here and perhaps some of you remember the White Cloud, by the same artists. 

"Lavender" was for day 10 - I have so many photos of lavender that I could hardly decide which one, but finally I chose the lavender and olive trees at Matanzas Creek Winery. This is still my favorite "corner" in the lavender garden.

What to show for "wooden" (day 19)? What about some old driftwood that my friend Jo gave me before she moved to Portland? It used to be in her garden, now it is in mine. Just recently I moved it in front of the birdbath when I started to work on my current big garden project.

Day 21, "monochrome". That's not always easy because I don't really take many monochrome pictures. Of course I could post-process them and give them a monochrome colorway, but I wasn't happy with that. Then I remembered the pottery in Egypt. These pots were piled on a street corner in Luxor, and while they're not exactly monochrome, they aren't "multichrome" either.

Of course it had to be a cairn for "stone" (day 27) - you know how much I love them. This one is still my favorite of all the cairns I ever photographed, found on a very foggy morning on Ruby Beach in Washington State.

"Adventure" was the prompt for day 28. I see all our trips and travels as adventure. Especially hiking in rough terrain is something I truly like, even though it sometimes brings me to my limits. The award is always priceless and so worth it. Here you can see my booted feet above the Fire Wave in Nevada's Valley of Fire.

The prompt for day 20 was my favorite one - "I love". No explanation needed.

April Love

 

#8: My superpower

Hard to believe that it is already the middle of May! I shouldn't be surprised, though - every year towards the end of the school year things tend to get crazy when April rolls around. Everybody seems to be in some kind of overdrive during those last two months. This year of course things got extra crazy with the return of our students to the campus in April. It required a lot of preparation, training for staff, new safety protocols and, of course, daily screenings. But it is so worth it - since the students have returned to campus (about half of them opted to come back for the remaining two months while the other half preferred to stay in distance learning) there is so much energy that you can feel at every corner of the school. I hadn't realized how much I had missed the friendly teasing and joking of these young people.

The German School also was super busy since we're already planning the next school year. I'm not only a teacher there but also serve on the board where we do most of the planning. This spring I had offered a couple of extra classes that kept me busy. Even though the school year came to a close today, I am still teaching a summer class that will begin on Wednesday, but this one will only last four weeks. I do need a break after this very crazy year.

With all this school stuff going on I didn't have much time for anything else (except knitting and pottering around the garden), but at least I was able to participate in Susannah Conway's "April Love 2021" challenge on Instagram. While I didn't do it every day, I chose the prompts that spoke to me. For most of them I did not go out to take photos, but looked through my pictures. No worries, I'm not showing you all of them!

#7: Growing

On one of our fence posts we discovered this cicada that had just emerged from its shell and was growing into its final perfect self. I didn't even know that we have cicadas (only crickets), but when I did a research I found out to my surprise that there are 65 species of cicadas in Northern California. Aren't the wings just amazing?

#27: Stairs

Since I love to take photos of stairs, this prompt was an easy one. I chose the ancient worn out steps leading up to the chapter house in Wells Cathedral. These stairs have fascinated me since I saw them for the very first time back in the 80s. They are several centuries old and hundreds of feet have walked, skipped and jumped along them. I wish I knew some of the stories of the people who used to walk here.

#15: When I was small

Can you see that I am wearing Lederhosen? Both my brother and I wore them when we were small. They are simply indestrcutible and made my mother's life probably a little bit easier. My brother still wore Lederhosen when he was older while I started wearing dirndls even though we weren't living in a typical "dirndl area" (that is Bavaria). As a small child I was fearless and happy. I stayed like this during the elementary school years (grades 1-4), but it all changed when I started 5th grade.

#6: Life-changing book

This was not an easy prompt. However, after I had given it some consideration I have to say that this book definitely was a life changer for me. It inspired me to follow that "whisper" in my heart and to get away from the "no I can't" to "yes, I try". Without this book I would not have started blogging, which led me to write for Vision and Verb for five years together with women from Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Tanzania, Spain, Italy, Canada, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and the US; with most of them I'm still keeping in touch and some of them I met in person. I would not have opened my Etsy store (my first few customers were readers of my blog) and I certainly would not have taken a brush in my hand and started painting.

#25: Bear

Of course I was first thinking of a real bear or a teddy bear. But this bear - Lumibär - is like a member of our family. I bought him when the Geek and I were still dating (so it's older than our daughter). We were on the way to our favorite café in Tübingen to have breakfast when I discovered the bears in the window of a shop - not just one, but several and each in a different color. They do look like giant gummy bears. There was no price visible on any of them, so the Geek went inside to ask for it. After he told me I decided that we should first have breakfast and I could think about it. Over coffee and Müsli I came to the conclusion that I cannot live without a Lumibär. When we entered the shop the sales lady inside only asked "which one shall it be?". Of course it had to be the orange one. Lumibär moved to California with us and he is one of the things we pack when we prepare to evacuate (which has happened almost every year since 2017). He stands right at our front door and the kids in the neighborhood love him.

#26: I live here

Northern California has been my home for 20 years. I live in Sonoma County which to me is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It has mountains, vineyards, a big city close by (San Francisco), but its best feature is the coast. Here the Pacific Ocean does not have beaches with smooth white sand - our sand is gray and coarse, the water is freezing and way to dangerous to even think of swimming. There are steep cliffs and winding narrow roads. Many beaches are rocky and littered with driftwood and empty abalone shells. Often the coast is shrouded in more or less dense fog, that sometimes burns off by noon, sometimes not. The coast is windy and at least 20 degrees cooler than inland. It is a force of nature and simply fantastic.

One of the last prompts was "favorite person" - of course there wasn't only one for me. It has to be these two (this photo was taken in a pub in Kenmare, Ireland):

Who Is the Winner?

 

Thank you to everybody who participated in my giveaway.

Third place in the 2020 photos goes to "Through the Lens".

The beautiful "California Poppies" took second place.

And first place goes to "Autumn Glory"!!!

Now of course you probably can't wait to know who is the lucky person to receive three photo cards with these images. It is

Jeanie of the Marmelade Gypsy!

Congratulations Jeanie! Please let me know your address and the photo cards will be sent your way.