Tag: friday foto finder

leaves of three (friday foto finder: leaf)

Here is a photo of a rather pretty native plant that is very common in my heavily wooded neighborhood. These shiny leaves show up late spring, often starting out red, and then developing into a lush bright green.

This plant is entirely evil.

In case you don’t recognize it, it is poison ivy: Leaves of three, let it be.

You know what’s even more evil than these leaves of three? The plant when it has no leaves. The vines stretch out over the ground, climb trees and rocks, and grow into bushes. And in the winter and very early spring, the woody stems and vines look pretty much like all the other leafless stems and vines that grow in the woods. But the leafless vines apparently have plenty of urushiol.

This is a photo I took last May on a walk in my neighborhood. This year, the poison ivy leaves are barely starting to bud. Three weeks ago, there probably weren’t any leaves on the stems that Phoebe must have touched while playing outside. She may well have washed her hands well with soap and water before she touched her face and rubbed her eyes, but urushiol doesn’t come off the skin with just soap and water.¹ Even if you use plenty of soap and scrub really hard. It was almost 3 years ago to the day that I learned this fact the hard way. And I really, really wish that we didn’t have to be reminded of this the hard way at this point in our lives.

This week’s friday foto finder is leaf. In general, I love leaves, and have posted plenty of photos of pretty fall leaves. (After all, I do live in New England.) Perhaps my choice of this less friendly leafy subject is somewhat a reflection of my toxic mood. Let’s face it, this has been a really bad month.² One good thing about the month is that it is almost over. With May coming up, I hope to be able to start fresh and turn over a new leaf.

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¹ You can use products specifically formulated to work on the oils, such as Tecnu, or liquid dish detergent.
² And by “really bad,” I have a large number of expletives in mind. You can fill in your favorites.

3 weathered Beijing doors (friday foto finder: door)

Here are 3 of the many doors that caught my eye while walking around Beijing during my all-too-brief visit there last May. While there were plenty of doors that were freshly painted and well-maintained, I found that the weathered paint of these interested me more.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find a photo of a door. Once again, my biggest challenge was choosing from among my options! To see what other doors have been found this week, please pay a visit to the friday foto finder blog!

Also, if you (like me) find that run-down and weathered things make for interesting photos, please check out my friend Magpie‘s Decay and Desuetude blog.

twisted mystery tree (friday foto finder: tree)

This remarkable tree is in Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco.

I took this photo on a visit there in March of 2009. (The lovely greenness and sunshine are a far cry from the weather we had today here in Massachusetts.)

I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but I love the way it twists around itself.Anyone have an idea of what sort of tree it is?

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “tree,” and I have successfully found a tree photo. On a Friday, even. (Actually, I have oodles of tree photos. It was once again hard to choose. ) To see what other trees have been found, pay a visit to the fff blog.

And since today happens to be International Women’s Day, it seems an appropriate time to share Shaking the Tree by Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour:

There’s nothing to gain when there’s nothing to be lost
There’s nothing to gain if you stay behind and count the cost
Make the decision that you can be who you can be
You can be
Tasting the fruit come to the Liberty Tree
It’s your day – a woman’s day
It’s your day – a woman’s day

Happy International Women’s Day! Go shake some trees.

Note: if you were to shake the trees outside my house right now, you would end up with a lot of snow dumped on your head.

another rain-streaked window (friday foto finder: rain)

This watery photo is one I fished out of my photo archives from October, 2011. I love the splash of color in the background from the fall foliage, and the splash of … splash from the rain.

As you might guess, this photo was taken when I was a passenger in the car.

I have loads of rain-related photos in my photo library, so it was a tough choice what to post for this week’s friday foto finder theme of rain. Of course, I have already posted rain photos many times, such as:

It would seem that I enjoy taking photos of raindrops, at least as much as I enjoy taking photos of snow. What can I say? Rain drops and rivulets offer such intriguing examples of refraction and distorted reflections.

The light from the window gets comfy on the couch. (friday foto finder: window)

A few months back, I caught the light from the window lounging on my in-laws’ couch.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “window.” Funny that I chose a photo without an actual window in it. (Not that I don’t do windows. I have loads of photos of windows and through windows, but this shadow of a window is one that came to mind. Perhaps because today has been a day for lounging on my own couch.) To see what other windows people are doing, peek in through the window at the friday foto finder blog.

joy ride (friday foto finder: horse)

In June, Phoebe got to go on a field trip with her Daisy troop to a horse stable, and the visit included a ride on one of the stable’s horses. Given her current love of all things equine, Phoebe was over the moon.


The horse was very tolerant. (Not shown are the photos of the horse being surrounded by 10 excited 6-year-old girls.)


Phoebe would love to be able to do this more often…


The visit also included a lesson on how to care for horses. Phoebe was enthralled to be brushing a real horse.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “horse¹.” To see what horses others have corralled, check out the friday foto finder blog.

¹ Coincidentally, we watched National Velvet for the first time tonight. It was rather startling to see Angela Lansbury playing the role of a teenager. (She played one of Elizabeth Taylor’s sisters.) I suppose it would have been more startling to see her playing the role of horse. Though come to think of it, she did play the role of a teapot.

pushing buttons (friday foto finder: buttons)

Little kids love to push buttons, and my children are no exceptions.¹ Whenever we ride elevators with the kids, we have to give each one a chance to push the buttons. One will get to push the outside call button, and the other the floor selection. There have been moments of great disappointment when other elevator passengers have helpfully pushed a button for us.

Here is Theo pushing a button at the Boston Museum of Science, which is a great place to take kids who love to press buttons. Not only do they have more than one elevator, but they also have a number of exhibits with interactive displays that involve pushing buttons. This photo was from September, 2011, when Theo was 3 years old.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “button.” Go check out the fff blog to see what other sorts of buttons people have found.

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¹ Remember that time Phoebe called 911 as a toddler? I do. Grammy & Grampa’s phone had a big, pretty red button on it.²
² My kids have also been know to press each other’s buttons, but those moments don’t tend to make the best photo ops…

above the patchwork fields of middle America (friday foto finder: high)

The photos I’m sharing today are of a much loftier sort than the ones I posted on Wednesday. While dumpsters are rather down-to-earth, these photos are taken while looking…down to earth. From a plane.

Much like the abstract compositions that I find in the small details of peeling paint and rust, I love the giant-scale abstract compositions formed by fields, roads, rivers and other features of the landscape when viewed from above.

Many of the fields of the Western and Midwestern United States use a system of irrigation that leads to fields that are circular, or segments of circles, which are then interspersed among more traditional rectangles. These geometric shapes arrange themselves in a surprising array of colors: hues arising from different soils, different crops, different stages of growth, and likely other and sundry factors that are better known to those who farm those fields. Flying in a plane above, if you are lucky enough to have a window seat and the right weather and lighting conditions, not to mention the right flight path, you are presented with an ever-changing gallery of these wonders of shape and color.

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These photos were taken on 3 different trips. The first 6 are from August 2004, taken en route from the East Coast to Colorado (or vice versa), or from some connecting flight in between. The next 3 are from a January 2006 flight from Albuqueque, New Mexico. The last two are from a May 2008 flight to Houston, Texas. I don’t recall my specific itineraries, so I don’t remember where I was in each case. (I mean, other than in a plane. I remember that much.) They were all taken with point-and-shoot cameras.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “high,” another that offered many choices from my photo archives.¹ I’ve mentioned it before, long long ago, but I really love heights. I therefore have many photos from high places: tall buildings, hikes, ferris wheels, and gondola rides. I considered posting something from each of these. However, I figured that seeing as I haven’t had the opportunity for space travel, views from a plane are about as high as I can manage.

I’ve posted a few of my other window-seat pictures before. And I probably will again. And if ever I have the chance to travel into space, I promise to share the pictures.

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¹ This theme also offered much opportunity for playing with words. You were very nearly given a post with the title “getting high in Barcelona.” But I decided not to go there. I mean, I *did* go to Barcelona. And I visited a fairly elevated spot. But I decided not to go that direction with my post…or my title.

ships in Hong Kong Harbour (friday foto finder: ship)

Seriously, I thought I’d manage to get my friday foto finder post up by the end of Friday this time, but clearly that ship has sailed. Here we are on Saturday Sunday Monday¹ once more, and I am finally getting around to posting for the theme of “ship.”

I do welcome the chance to dig through my archives and see what I can find to fit themes chosen by Archie for friday foto finder. A ripe period in my archives to find ships was from my August, 2011 trip to Hong Kong for a conference. That trip was amazing and varied, and I still haven’t yet shared all my stories and photos.² Below are photos of ships in Hong Kong Harbour from 4 different vantage points, and showing quite a variety of types of ship.

First, the view from the plane as I arrived:


Well, you can’t see many details of the ships here, but you can see that there are lots of them. But I just really like this photo. (I posted it before.)

Second, the view from the convention center where the conference I attended was held:


A view of Hong Kong Harbour from the conference center. (This was from day 3 or 4.)


Another view from the convention center.

Third, views of the harbour from Victoria Peak, visited during a rather irritating guided bus tour on my fifth day:


The bright colors of the shipping containers and loading cranes remind me of toys.


Another view of the cargo ships.

Fourth, views from the harbour itself, taken during an evening harbour cruise:


Many large cruise ships can be seen in the harbour.


When the sun goes down, the bright lights of these ships compete with those of the skyline.


Finally, here is one the red-sailed junks that are so iconic of Hong Kong.

¹ Time does get away from me. At this point, I’m racing against Tuesday.
² Well, I’m not likely to share *all* my photos, given that I took many hundreds. But I haven’t yet shared even all the ones I find worth sharing. My last recap post was over a year ago, with the recap of day 5 (part 1), and I have stories from the later part of that day, plus 3 more days before I flew back home to the US. A number of my photos, including some from above are posted on flickr. (Here are the photos from the 5th day of my trip.)