Local Flora, Part II: QUIZ

Yay! I hope you enjoyed the flower-fest of mobile uploads in the previous post.

For this second piece of the 2-part series, I thought I'd try to provoke some interactive response.

Since I don't carry an Eastern US Flower Book with me at all times, when I catch these appealing flower cameos, I often don't know what I am taking a picture of. Since today is Mother's Day, I will dedicate this post to my Mom- the original flower picture-taker- and probably the one who will come up with the most answers to the Quiz! ;-)

Please leave comments with answers for the numbers you know. Let's see how many I can get labeled and posted to the wall with a stick-pin.

1

2

These things are so cool and alien-looking!

3

These ones I actually know, from asking the house-owner on my block.

4

This one I think I know, but always thought they were something else... haven't tried the wikipedia approach to fact-checking yet on this one...

5

6

Pretty detailing on this one...

7

This red bloom looked like it cute have been stuck on a headband or hair clip, it was that prettily blousy.

8

This isn't a trick- it's the tree! Smells so wonderful! (that's a hint)

9

Now this one is all over, and hard to get a good picture of. It comes in white, pinks, corals, and blooms at the same time as cherry blossoms, but I haven't gotten a name... obviously not a fruit tree with that slender base...

10

Another alien species one, but beautiful butterfly-like coloring.

11

12

Well that's all I have for now, so may the competitive school spirit set your inquisitive hearts afire with curiosity! :-)

Local Flora In Season, Part I

I was doing pretty well monitoring blog post frequency on here this week. Getting into a rhythm of downloading photos one morning, writing some text the next, and publishing at work (shhh!). But yesterday I plugged my camera in to download and it only had 3 measly pictures! Weird... So then I remembered I had the camera phone to worry about. One hundred and eleven (or eleventy-one) pictures.

Many of them are the shots of flora and fauna and sky that I capture in a moment of being present to the world I'm walking through. Aren't camera phones great? If you use them this way, I certainly think so. The photo above isn't the greatest light-wise, but I was trying to capture the moment when the fuzzy-wuzzy pussywillow-type nub started busting out into bright yellow spore-like bristles. Amazing how Nature works.

 Daniel Webster at Thomas Circle looking cool among the cherry (?) blossom trees.

 A better up close shot of the "Poof!" that occurs on these trees, at the end of March it was, this year.

This is the view walking out of my apartment building: now that's what I call "Spring Green!"

These are actually blossoms on a beautiful old crooked tree I walk past, also in Thomas Circle. It is a great one for Fall of the House of Usher type shots during winter because it is in front of several churches, which you can capture in the frame if you tilt up... it may appear later on the blog...

Because these are phone camera pictures, it's basically a walk along M St., my route to work. THis is looking straight up through blossoms; how can you get better than that? And can you see the clear blue sky? Several of the photos were shot in gray, the product of gray rainy spring days (DC has some schizophrenic weather this spring- jeez louise!).

This is the Jefferson Hotel, and it has a beautiful line of small trees- not sure what kind they are except that they blossom along with the cherry trees, so...? Any help, Readers? (There will be a more intensive quiz later.)

I told you there would be another feature of this one! There's that Spring Green again! And I don't know if you can really see, but those are some unique blossoms. Now the tree is all in leaf, much more normal-looking.

Oh wait! It's like time lapse- now we're on to a later stage of the Jefferson trees- the stage where POOF into blooms. This picture was funny because it made it look like a pompom-cheerleader tree

This was going up 15th St. to Whole Foods- what a pink!

This one's near the Convention Center- so amazing, right? This year, I felt like I appreciated every sighting of color popping on the trees. And maybe I did, ya know, because this is a lot of photos...

And here we are, the alternating pink and green of the Baroque period...

 

And one more spectacular rose shot, even though it doesn't fit into the color scheme. This one was the most recent, since I think roses are more summer blooms, and we're just getting around to thinking about summer (thank goodness we've had such a long and schizo spring, I say- who needs summer??)

Only on the East Coast in April

A funny video I thought I'd put up for all you out there who haven't seen hail in decades... it turns out to be one of those things that is really fun to see. When one is safely ensconced inside.

This one occurred on April 4th, and I had to take a video of it, it was so novel! :-D Have you got any wacky weather stories to relate?

The Infamous...

My party, as promised :-)

So. I floated along in a glow-haze for the whole week, but I guess it's time for documentation. Proof that so much fun could, in fact, be had. Well, here it is, folks. My very own pinata party, out on the green.

(This is me being cheeky and pointing out over right field where my homerun would go, hehe.)

Here's Rachel, giving it a go (left). So what else did we do, besides swing away? You're right, it wasn't all violence; we don't roll like that. Since it was actually a dual celebration for my friend April (born 4/19/someyear) and me, we had two mostly-not-overlapping groups of friends, so people got to meet and talk and bascially just loll about in the perfect California-weather day. It was awesome- felt very Chosen People-ish (but more on that below with the bowling).

There was also a fair amount of food. It was hard to stand it, but I managed to sample a few things here and there. I brought Nora's red pepper spread recipe, Molly's Banana Bread, and some cranberry bread with no chocolate, since it was not yet Easter and I knew at least one person would be abstaining from chocolate for Lent (that is one old habit that should die a fabulous death).

And here is April of the 4/19 bday, in a great Action Shot (right)! Her mom was in town too, and so helped with the logistics- I think the older Filipina woman did a great job blending in and having fun with all us young'uns!

But the pinata party wasn't the only event. Nay, there were pre-party rumblings heard as early as Sunday. Rumblings that took the form of... a Korean Triple Play !

Lovely beef and noodle dish at Palace Restaurant

 Me, Nina, Nora at the Lanes

Jess, Nora, Marc focused on the 'pan-chan' (terrible anglicism)

The Korean Triple Play was born of my desire to continue field tripping into adulthood. If we're going to go into Virginia, we might as well make hay, right? Or something like that. So especially for people who couldn't make it to the pinata party, it was a nice outing. Consisting of:

1) 'Palacial' dinner at Palace Restaurant, a Korean BBQ/ Grill place of tasty food and wonderful service

2) Burning off a few of those calories at AMF Annandale Lanes, just down the road

3) Burning off some more (and losing our voices) as we choke through an hour of karaoke at a Korean private-room karaoke lounge

It was a great idea, let me tell you. PLUS, we had a great time bowling- we went Jews v. Gentiles; each team had an N, a J, and an M (isn't that crazy? natural selection or something?), and each team won once. That's all we had strength for!

Ahh, 30. I am embarking on this year with a powerful feeling of self-possession, balance, and drive. TOward what? Well, we'll see. ;-)