Modest flower photos from my garden. Some of them taken in the morning, the last in the evening before the sun finally set. The common thread to all is the way the light plays on them, or through them. Jewel-like colors everywhere these days.

My garden is now another pleasure of retirement. Since I can’t go visit public gardens such as Orlando’s Leu Gardens ( https://www.leugardens.org ) I’ve been trying to create a little of the magic in my backyard. My wife and I go and purchase flowers that we then try to plant in our back yard. Most of the time they make it, but sometimes they manage to die on me. The primary goal is to plant as many butterfly and hummingbird attracting flowers as possible, and then nurture them along to keep them as healthy as possible.

I’ve also started to put bird feeders up around the garden. I have a large one that I can’t seem to keep the squirrels off of, and I keep threatening to bring it back in the garage to get rid of the squirrels. The two smaller ones seem to be squirrel proof, and the birds are always flying in to feed. We have at least two cardinal pairs in our yard now, and I see other smaller birds eating in them as well. The larger feeder is staying for the time being, as the squirrels will fall off eventually and then the smaller birds swoop in for a bite.

Another common thread is these are all out of camera JPEGs. To quote Marc Beebe, RAW files “are for people who have way too much time on their hands. A camera should be able to produce an acceptable image without any processing.” ( https://marcbeebe.wordpress.com/2020/05/06/the-x10-factor/ ) I agree. I don’t have time to screw with tweaking RAW files from any camera any more. Take a little extra time and get it correct in the camera.