Azaleas in Bloom

I was terribly worried about my azalea bushes after the week of below freezing temperatures we had this winter. I can't tell you how many times I've walked around them the last few weeks looking for signs of life.

I have 23 azalea bushes in my shade gardens. They range from about a foot-and-a-half tall to about ten feet. They have grown and flourished under the shade of oak trees, but as you can see this winter was disastrous to some of them.

I'm not giving up on them quite yet. I will leave them alone and let them recover. Even the one that looks the worst has a little new growth.

Then there was the two nights of near freezing temperatures this week. There's no way I could cover the azaleas; too many and too tall! The morning frost ruined a lot of the smaller flowers.

One of the tallest bushes has only one pink blossom. That one small flower gives me hope that they'll recover.

The rest of the bushes are blooming. Maybe there aren't as many blooms as in years past, but the ones that are there are spectacular!

I am not a gardener! I don't plant flower gardens or vegetable gardens. I took the easy way out and planted several shade gardens with lots of perennials that need little or no care; just water and feed them is about it. I'm pretty fond of Hostas, too. They compliment my azaleas and are pretty all summer long.

Here's a little story and some of you have probably heard it before, but I'll end with it. Garvan Woodland Gardens was my inspiration for planting azaleas. The gardens began when a wonderful lady planted bushes at her future homesite. The house was never built, but the bushes flourished in the woods. When I saw all her azaleas, I decided I wanted to do something similar. I had the perfect garden area, under oak trees which would provide the necessary shade. The first spring they bloomed my dad came walking down our driveway. He looked at all my azaleas and said, "it looks like a cemetery down here." That was not quite what I had in mind! I still laugh about that today!!

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If you have some extra time, I've added 8 more pictures on the 100 Day Project page. Scroll back up to the top and look right under the header. You'll see a tab that will take you to that page. Just a reminder that I started this project on February 1, 2021, so pictures do not reflect current happenings.

100 Day Project

I belong to a Facebook group of photographers. Most of us "met" several years ago taking online classes. When I first took an online photography class I didn't know anyone in the group. One class led to another and I began to be drawn to certain photographers and their photos. That led to an amazingly, wonderful Facebook group where we share our photographs, our ideas, our lives, and so much more. Even though I've never met any of these girls in person, they are some of my closest friends.

We also share activities that we are participating in. So when someone asked "are any of you doing the 100 Day Project" I had to check it out. The 100 Day project originally began as class assignment in 2006 by a Yale graphic design professor, Michael Bierut. Students were to choose a design operation and repeat it every day for 100 days. In 2013 Elle Luna and some of her friends took up the project and wow, did it spread. I just checked #the100dayproject on Instagram and found that there are 1,048,738 posts! Amazing!

It's a simple thing to do: choose a creative project and do it every day for 100 days and share it online. Since I don't do IG, I share my pictures with my FB photography group.

Enough information, let me move on to my project. I've chosen to take a macro/close-up picture for 100 days. Are you surprised it involved photography? Probably not!

When I first began I thought it would be a challenge to do this everyday, but it hasn't been. It has been a pleasure to hold my camera each day, find something to photograph, and then after uploading the picture to my computer seeing the details, colors, and textures of things up close.

I've wanted to write this post for 74 days! That's when I first began my project. Now, I'll be catching up. It may take me a while, since I don't want to flood you with too many pictures. I also created a new page with my project pictures. If you look right below the header, you'll see the words "100 Day Project 2021" Click on that and it will take you to the pictures for this project with a short phrase or description.

I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them.