Ten Little Celebrations - April 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each dayis an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for April 2015.

Countdown to a little vacation - Even though lots of my days feel like ‘vacation’ I have adjusted my definition for vacation to equal ‘away from home’….so I savored the anticipation of the North Caroline road trip in the days prior to leaving.

Otters - There were so many plants and animals I could have celebrated from the North Carolina trip but I am singling out the otters because it was the first time I has seen the animals in the wild.

A barbeque dinner - Sometimes a high calorie splurge is truly worth it. The restaurant advertised ‘Texas Barbeque’ and they delivered.

The Elizabethan Gardens - A lovely place in Manteo, North Carolina. A garden is a great place to celebrate spring.

Maymont - This was a spur of the moment stop in Richmond VA on the way home ---- a gold age mansion and grounds that was donated to the city after the owners died in the 1920s. It is now a park. We were there on a Monday when the mansion and visitor center is closed….but the park is well work the stop. I have post planned for it in a week or so (it’s taking me some time to get all the posts done from the North Carolina trip.

Home Again - I always celebrate coming home after being away….no matter how great the ‘vacation’ was.

Cherry Blossoms - We didn’t get down to Washington DC this year for the cherry blossoms but the tree in our yard had its best year ever….timed perfectly to welcome us home.

Last Master Naturalist Class - I celebrated getting through the 8 class days - not missing a single one! And now I am waiting for my final exam to be graded!

GreenFest - I celebrated finding the native plants I wanted for my yard at the county celebration - along with some additional reusable bags and information on dealing with deer in the neighborhood.

Figuring out a technical problem - I figured out how to use the GPS info from a series of picture to overlay a map. It was easy than I thought it would be….something to celebrate.

Zooming - April 2015

There were so many zoomed images to choose from this month…and it is only the 16th! I couldn’t resist a clip from one of the Zentangles to include with the brilliant spring color of maple flowers (my back yard) and skunk cabbage (Brookside Gardens) early in the month.

Brookside Gardens is full of photography opportunities in April. Some is old growth like evergreen ferns and dried flowers from last summer. Other things are the harbingers of spring - bulbs and witch hazel blooming. There are more birds around too.

The rest of the images are from our loop trip from Maryland down to North Carolina to visit wild life refuges. I’ll be posting more images in the next few weeks. The images below are from the barrier islands - lots of beaches…pines...shore birds…turtles.

And then we crossed the sound to the wetlands. The colorful tile (rightmost clip below) is from the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge visitor’s center. We saw otters, spiders, mushrooms, fiddleheads, maple samaras, vultures (turkey and black), and an alligator! There was a formal gardens too (camellias, daffodils, statuary)!