Janet Brien's photos

This is another flower I photographed at my friend's garden in Ashland a few years ago. The way the petals look, this resembles a cross to me! :)

This lovely little orange flower grabbed my attention with its many-shaded petals. I loved this view because it shows off the details of the sepal edges too, but at some point I'll also post one from in front too. It's beautiful from every angle. :) (Taken at my friend Elaine Sweet​'s garden in 2013:)

There are few things as enjoyable as visiting a friend's lovely garden and spending hours taking pictures. I got to do that a few years ago at my friend Elaine's home in Ashland. This image is interesting to me because it has little in focus but I still think it's nice anyway. Maybe it's the combination of colors and bokeh that appeals to me. The softness is kind of dreamy to me. What do you think? Do you like it or would you have preferred this picture to be more crisp?

Last Fall, Steve and I joined our local photography club for a fall colors outing. We went to nearby Ashland's Lithia Park and had a wonderful time wandering around and taking pictures. I was very surprised when I found what I could only imagine was a budding flower on a tree that looked just like a Madrone to me. However, Madrone's don't have flowers like that, so I am clueless as to what this tree is. To further confuse matters, this picture was taken in October, and that's not normally the time for trees to flower from what I know. The mystery has been solved by one of our resident experts on ipernity, none other than Fizgig! Thank you for the identification and letting me know that this is a SEED POD! It all makes sense as it was developing at the end of the year! A big thanks also to Pam J for doing some research for me! It's so nice to finally know what this interesting this is!! :D

There's a town near us called Shady Cove, and every spring, people flock to a road there affectionately called Daffodil Hill. It's aptly named as this near-mile stretch of hillside is literally covered with daffodils of every type you can imagine! Steve went there a few years ago when I was doing my 365 project, and I spent an hour or so filling my camera card with pictures of these lovely flowers. Unfortunately, I was so worn out after a day of photography (which included hours of driving around for spring flowers) that I have processed only a few pictures from this remarkable spot. I hope to dig around in this folder and pull out some more treasures for all of us to enjoy! For now, here is a glorious golden-cupped daffodil with a sea of bokeh behind! :)

Every February we have a group of cream-colored crocuses that pop up to ring in a new spring. I adore these stunning little blossoms, and they have been featured in more than a dozen of my shared pictures over the years. This is my best close-up of the stamens, aren't they cool?! I think they look like coral. :) (If you would like to see more pictures of these crocuses, click on the link on the note above.)

On a rainy Halloween morning in 2013, I took a stroll through our lower forest and discovered this lovely lass peeking out shyly from under a log. She avoided most of the rain except for the droplet on her stem, now just about to fall! Explored on 9/15/16, highest placement #64.

Back in 2014, I had a raised bed garden and filled it with flower seeds, especially poppies. As spring turned into summer, the incredible explosion of color was indescribably beautiful and took my breath away on a daily basis. I'll never forget the din of bees as I approached. Thousands of honeybees and bumble bees descended on the flowers, and countless other insects too. I would make my way into the fenced-off garden and slowly move around to take pictures and water the plants. The bees couldn't care less about me--they were all totally crazy about the pollen and nectar that was bursting from all of the blossoms. What a sight. Some day I'll have another garden, but for now, I am overjoyed to have pictures like this one, which bring me right back there to the lovely flowers that I got to grow. :)

One day in September of 2012, I found a baby orb weaver spider on my front porch. Over the next year, I watched this baby get her first meal, survive a freezing winter, grow to adulthood, find a mate, make an egg sac, and finally, I saw her crawl slowly away under a bush to die. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this beautiful Cat-Faced Orb-Weaver, and I cried my eyes out when she died. Maybe just a spider to most, she was my little friend, and I missed her terribly in the months that followed. In fact, revisiting her pictures now pulls hard on my heart strings. I feel like I should be embarrassed that I feel sad as I look at all the pictures I took. How can a person become attached to a spider? I did though, and I feel pretty darn lucky that I got to know a spider well enough to cry over its death. This is a picture of Roscoe's children, hatching out of the egg sac she made and protected until she was too weak to do so. Seeing all of these kids brings a tear to my eye. I wished that some of them would have stayed around, but they all left after a few days. What a great experience it was to know my friend Roscoe. :) If you'd like to see Rocoe's story in pictures and tales, please visit her album here My Friend Roscoe

One lovely afternoon a few years ago, Steve and I went on a bike ride and I had my camera with me. At one point we stopped for a break, and I wandered around taking pictures. I found these lovely flowers along the way. Do you know what they are called? I thought they were Camellias but looking at images online, I don't think they are.

If you stare closely at Oak trees and many other types as well, you will find all kinds of lichen and sometimes fungus encrusted on the bark. This tiny plantlife is often so small that it will appear to be different-colored dots, a fuzzy haze, or an odd mold. It's only when you have a macro lens or magnifying glass, that you can see how cool they look! I'm not sure what these species are called, but the lichen (I think that's lichen) looks like tiny red buttons and black currents, so there you go! I have seen the red buttons in black, white, green, yellow, and sometimes a color with white edging. Super cool and such fun to photograph! (Please correct me if the red buttons are a kind of fungus!)

What a wonderful surprise these Hollyhocks were in my garden. They are known to be biennials, which means they usually bloom every other year. But mine bloomed the first year!

Here's a little cutie I found in November of 2013 while mushroom hunting in our lower forest. This fellow looked very bold and brave, standing as tall as he could, and almost seems to say, "HALT! WHO GOES THERE!!" :)

(+2 in notes above) This pretty little flower is an easy-to-grow annual that will reseed itself if the conditions aren't too bad. When I was watering my garden from spring through fall, I'd get new Stock blossoms the next spring without planting them. But if I didn't water my garden at all, I wouldn't see any the next spring. These pretty little blossoms appear in colors ranging from white through a deep magenta and all shades in-between. They are wonderful! :) (roll your mouse over the upper left corner to see two more pictures of Virginia Stock flowers.)

I admit it. I'm a poppy stalker. Once I discovered there was a fun game to play with them, I became a junkie! I'd pop out the house just as the sun was cresting our hill. Out into the garden I would creep and peer at all of the poppies that were opening. The game: see if you can find a poppy that hadn't yet dropped its bud case! This is actually more challenging than you might think. The buds break out of those cases in the matter of moments sometimes and the case splits open and falls to the ground. This is one of the coolest shots I've captured! Within a minute the case fell off, so I really had some lucky timing!! :D Explored on September 6, 2016. Highest placement, #9.

A few years ago, Steve and I were invited to visit a friend's emmense garden which was planted with about a billion daffodils! We spent many happy hours wandering around and taking pictures. Here's a group of lovely blooms with striking red frills!

(+1 in a note above) Wonderful, wonderful Hosta, this gorgeous ornamental plant is grown primarily for its large and beautiful foliage. This type, with green leaves and white edging, is more common, but these plants are found in a number of lovely colors and combinations, including solid green in different shades, yellow, green and yellow, and all shades of green and white or green and cream. I took this picture at my friend Elaine Sweet's garden. I got another image as well, and if you would like to see it, just roll your mouse over the upper left corner of this image.

(+1 in a note) Here is a perfect example of the awesome sauce that is the Black-Eyed Susan in any of its forms. This happens to be the "Green-Eyed" version also known as "Irish Eyes" because the center of these are green, not brown. I captured this dried beauty on a frosty December morning, with all of her glorious details. I mentioned the other day how much I love this flower, and you can see here, that even though it's dead, this flower is still stunning. How wonderful is that?! :)