When I left the hotel for Amma’s program on Thursday night, I discovered it had just poured. I stood in the parking lot and turned around. As I turned I saw so many different views of the same storm. All were beautiful in their own way.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Details

While the detail of a flower in full bloom is beautiful:

I find it interesting to watch the development of the flower. In this post I will show the various stages I have seen, for the most part going backwards:

And long before it had any blooms if you look carefully you can see it in the center of the spiral circle:

Weekly Photo Challenge: Details

Wordless Wednesday

More From My June Garden

So much is growing, blooming, multiplying and thriving. (After the photos there is a video.)

And very dear to my heart:

The Dahlias are Blooming

Another garden event I eagerly await each year is:

Even the biggest of these flowers is still opening. There will be more photos to come!

Will They Come? – The Answer is “Yes.”

I grew bee balm for the first time two years ago. That year there were almost no bees in my garden and I never saw any in the bee balm. Last year, I accidentally planted something where the bee balm would come up, so it never had a chance to grow. This year I took care to see that the plant had plenty of space.

Before long, there were more blooms than there have ever been. But where were the bees? There were lots of bumblebees in the garden and some honey bees but none of them came near the bee balm.

Then one day, I saw a single honey bee collecting nectar.

That bee stayed there for quite a while. I have never seen another one.

Earlier this week, I saw glimpses of a hummingbird’s wings, on the far side of the bee balm, three different times. Yesterday was the first time this year that I was able to see one of the birds fully.

In the evening, I discovered if I looked out the front window of my living room, I could view the plant from above.

Today, I looked out the window frequently to see if I would spot a hummingbird. And I did! It visited several different times and I was able to take pictures of it. (In the following photos, the hummingbird is near the center of the picture.)

I hope more bees and hummingbirds will visit the bee balm, but even if they don’t, I believe I will continue to feel as happy and satisfied as I do now.

Surprising Discoveries

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This past Father’s Day, I received an email from my brother saying that he thought I might be interested in reading a post his son had written about our father. http://carolineevan.com/grandpa-smith-the-photographer-a-fathers-day-post

I left home when I was 17 years old, and had very little contact with my family afterwards. So even before I opened the link, I was surprised to see my father described as a photographer. When I clicked on it, I was further surprised to find out that my nephew, Evan, and his wife, Caroline, are professional photographers.

I took some photographs during my high school and college years, and some when my children were young, but it was definitely not a major focus in my life. In fact, I have spent most of my adult life believing that taking and looking at photographs kept people from being in the present.

When I started this blog, I used no photographs other than an occasional one I found on Wikimedia. But soon a new world opened up to me. Now, photographs I have taken are a major part of the posts I write. So to find out my nephew is a photographer and that he considered my father to be one as well was indeed a surprising discovery.

I have no memory of my father using a camera, but one or two years ago my brother converted a lot of family photos to digital ones. He mentioned my father’s interest in photography at that time and sent me some of the photographs.

It was fascinating to read about my father from Evan’s perspective. I was also interested in seeing photographs of my father that someone else had taken during the Korean War. I had never seen any of these before.