On the road

One of Jon's hopes for our early-in-the-year Florida trip was to see a Roseate Spoonbill. We saw a few, far in the distance, in the Everglades, but none near enough to photograph. On the drive across Alligator Alley (Highway 41) to Naples, we saw a pink blur fly along the canal the road follows. Jon pulled the car over and sure enough, it was a Spoonbill, pausing to rest in a tree. We had to climb up on the bumper of the car to get a good look. Funny what you see on the road!

Barren

Barren trees frame a leaf-strewn frozen creek in Starved Rock State Park.

Shadows

I love to photograph shadows, and a late afternoon hike up Camelback Mountain in early January gave plenty of opportunities to for interesting shots.

Here's something odd - I set the width of the top photo to 750 px (it autofit to 500 px high) and the width of the lower photo to 750 px (it autofit to 1125 px high) but they are not the same width here. Hmmm.....

Autumn

Here's the last in the "seasons" series...Autumn.

These statues were not made from real food, and they were quite tall. In the second photo, my pop is clowning around and helps to show the scale.

Summer

What follows spring? Summer, of course. If it can't actually be summer here in northern Illinois, I can at least dream of summer and all the wonderful produce it brings. Here is the third in the series of four "seasons" statues installed at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, AZ.

Spring

As you may have read in last week's post, I was fortunate enough to visit the Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens when an art installation was on display that depicted each of the four seasons. Below is a photograph of Spring. This one reminded me of a float in the rose parade, because it is mostly made up to represent flowers.

Winter

Happy New Blogging year, everyone! I hope to meet some new blogging friends and have new visitors to my blog.

Though I live in northern Illinois, I am currently in Arizona for the holidays. A favorite place to visit in the Phoenix area is the Desert Botanical Gardens. On display right now is some amazing artwork by the artist, Philip Haas. Installed at the Gardens are four sculptures, each of which depict produce and flowers that are ready for picking during each of the four seasons. Lucky me! I can start my 2013 blogging efforts with a photograph of "Winter".

You can read more about these fabulous sculptures here.