July 9th, 2020
It was a rather pleasant day today. We took a drive, clouds thick and heavy to the east and south, and pretty much clear skies to the west and north. On the drive the road was the divide, one side cloudy, the other side clear.
Afternoon drives are pretty nice in the summer, the sun is over head, highnoon spot for several hours in Alaska, so you don't get the sun in your eyes when driving, but man the glare from some car windows was really blinding at times.
We stopped at one pullout got a few pictures, but with it the lighting it was just a flat light, everything seemed washed out, so it was mostly a pleasure drive. When we got back home there was, and as I write this still is a lot of light outside. Since we had a bit more of an angle from the sun the light situation was improving so I did a driveway photo stroll instead of going back indoors right away.
I think the first photo will be of my driveway from the view coming in. many of you that follow me have no doubt seen a lot of shots of my driveway in the winter via my Driveway Saga post season's 1 and 2. Here is what it looks like in the summer during the green season:
All the other images are in landscape form not portrait. I am continuing with my png image experiment. All the images are 1500X1000 or very close to that and file size is below 1 MB on all of them. I did not really notice any significant loss of image quality on my little feathered friends post.
So all of these images below were taken along my drive way or driveway entrance with the exception of the Shasta Daisy and that was taken directly across the street from my driveway.
So lets start with the outlier, the Shasta Daisy:
They are beautiful little flowers, we have tons of them along the road ways and in fields and they are pleasant thing to see while driving. last year we had more daisies than this year across front the driveway, i think a few of the new neighbors dug some up for their gardens.
We have a good amount of the native Alaskan wild geraniums. These come in many shades of blue from very light pale blue/violet to a nice dark blue.
There are a lot of yellow wild flowers in Alaska, one of them is the Goldenrod. The big giant bumble bees love these flowers toward the end of summer.
Summer has barely begun, and already there are signs of the approaching Fall. I was of two minds when deciding whether to post this image or not. Looking at it kind of gives me a headache. Not because of the approaching Fall thought, just the image in general. The main subject is not in perfect clarity, and the background of it is not de-focused enough. It is just one of those strange images, so don't stare at it to long.
It was a little bit breezy when I was taking the photos.
We have a lot of spruce trees on our property. Right now it is pine cone growing season. I am not sure if I have ever noticed the birth of pine cones before. It is just something I never really looked at or thought about. But last week I noticed one of our trees was really top heavy with pine cones, and then on my drive way walk I saw the beginning of a lot of new pine cones.
Ah and here is Stumpy. We have a lot of stumps on the property, one close to the house with a giant attached and growing mushroom or fungi on it. This guy has his own complete little garden on top.
Last up and end of the walk back is the Iris:
These grow pretty well in Alaska they are all over the place both wild and store bought ones. People dig up a few of the wild ones and plop them in the dirt at their homes. Completely maintenance free, dig a hole drop the bulb in about a four inch deep, cover with dirt, and let mother nature do the rest.
Well that pretty much cover the post for today. I hope to gather a few more photos of Alaskan wild and cultivated flowers for another post on another day, till then have a good weekend in the yard or where ever.
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