Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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The Launch

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prettydaylily

Today marks the launch of my new book blog.

(I’m very excited!)

This love of mine for all things reading and books has been a part of this blog for a long time. Because reading is one of my passions, it couldn’t help but leap onto the virtual pages of Mockingbird Hill Cottage. And it will still be a presence here. In fact, I have a book review slated for tomorrow. But since this blog reflects my daily life, it is an eclectic mix of topics and no one topic can predominate.

That’s what got my brain percolating. Why not a blog devoted to the passion that I have had since I first learned to read as a little girl? I guess you can say that, in terms of passions or hobbies or things I love to do, reading has reigned the longest. Reading is the Queen of my life.

So I’ve designed and launched this new blog.

It’s called Just Let Me Finish This Page. (Click on the link.) I chose that title in honor of all the times I was late for dinner or for starting a chore because my head was buried in a book. When Mom called, “Dinner!” I would respond with, “Just let me finish this page!” A few minutes later, she would say it again, “Claudia, I said it’s time for dinner.” “Okay Mom, just let me finish this page…” And on it would go until she put her foot down and I had to put the book aside.

This is for you, Mom. I got my love of reading from you. Thank you. I miss you.

The new blog is just that. New. I haven’t added a navigation menu and won’t until I know more about the direction it will take. But since there’s only one post so far, I don’t think you need to navigate anything!

I’m proud of the look and feel of the blog.

I hope you like it, too. Please stop by and visit. You can subscribe via email. You can add it to your bookmarked sites. There is also a link to Just Let Me Finish This Page on this blog’s sidebar.

Come on over!

Happy Monday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Flowers, Bees & My Recommendation for Photo Editing

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coneflower-beginnings

The coneflower that is about-to-be. It’s there, but the petals haven’t fully grown yet.

I love coneflowers and I have plenty of them in the gardens. They are easy to grow, long lasting and, to me, the quintessential flower for a cottage garden.

And they re-seed. What could be better?

Gosh, the landscape around here is such a lush green. Days and days of rain will do that. So, though the rain was a pain in the tush, the payoff is pretty spectacular.

Lawn mowing yesterday. Lawn mowing today. Weed pulling today. Weed pulling yesterday.

Are you getting a picture of my weekend?

bee in day lily

Such a tiny little bee. I stood there for several minutes, watching him alight on the stamens, then move further inside the lily, then back to the stamens.

Taking photos of flowers and birds and bees and bugs takes patience. I’m not always the most patient person, indeed, at times, I am unbelievably impatient, but I am patient about photos of flora and fauna. If I had started doing all this earlier in life, I could easily imagine myself as a National Geographic-type photographer, setting up my camera and tripod at some location, then waiting and waiting for the perfect shot. I would love that.

By the way, the single best investment I have made, besides my camera, is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – or simply Lightroom. It goes on sale a couple of times a year and I happened to purchase it at one of those times, encouraged by my friend Dawn of Creative Cain Cabin.

Yes, PicMonkey is free but it doesn’t hold a candle to what Lightroom can do. Not even close. Photoshop has a steep learning curve and is more expensive than Lightroom. That learning curve, along with the cost, often puts people off.  But Lightroom is more affordable and, once you figure it out, easy to use. I can see a distinct difference in the pre-Lightroom and post-Lightroom photos on this blog.

Of course, you still have to know your camera and its settings. You have to be willing to take it off Auto and use it on Manual. But all of that comes with practice.

I use PicMonkey for fonts, but that’s about it. I don’t do a lot of fonts on my photos anyway, it’s not my thing. I did, however, create this watermark in Lightroom.

If you have a blog and are serious about your photos, if you don’t have a blog and are serious about your photos, if you don’t want to invest several hundred dollars in Photoshop but you do want something better than the limitations of a free photo editing application, Lightroom is for you.

This might sound like a commercial, but truly, it comes from the heart. I have thanked Dawn again and again for pointing me in the direction of Lightroom. It’s that good.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep an eye out for the next time Lightroom is on sale, so I can tell you about it.

bee in day lily closest

Boy, do I love this shot.

By the way, dear friends, the new book blog will be up and running tomorrow. Well, it’s actually up and running now, but I’m not going to reveal the name until Monday. I’m excited about it. Of course, it will evolve over time, but the basic underpinnings are there. I worked on it yesterday between bouts of mowing.

I do hope you will like it!

Happy Sunday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

Poppy Study

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What can I say?

The Oriental Poppy is blooming.

From this:

oriental poppy bud

To this:

poppy 1

poppy 3

poppy 4

poppy 2

poppy 5

This plant has been in the garden for several years. For the past three years or so, the spring bloom has been spectacular. These flowers are short lived; they emerge in all their exotic beauty, with paper thin petals, and leave within a day or two.

Think you can’t use orange and purple together? Mother Nature begs to differ.

Simply stunning. Made for a painter to immortalize. Or for me to immortalize through the lens of my camera.

I love taking photographs of flowers. This time of year, when every day holds a new discovery, a new bloom? Heaven. I spend hours walking around the gardens, looking through my lens, trying new angles, new views, seeing the world through fresh eyes. This blog, this act of blogging, has opened up a whole new world to me. Yes, I loved taking pictures before I started blogging, but only with a small point-and-shoot. And pre-digital? I had to remember to take the film in to be developed. I wasn’t always successful on that front. Once I started blogging, which is such a visual medium, I started to observe the world around me with renewed and inspired eyes. I got a DSLR, which completely changed everything. Looking through a camera lens expands my horizons in the best possible way.

Speaking of photography, my other blog, which is called Through a Lens Daily, was started by me a few years back. My intention was to capture a single image every day and hone my photography skills and I did just that for a while. But I’ve been hit or miss the last year or so. I’m happy to say I’ve begun posting there again. The link is in my sidebar if you’re interested in stopping by. Just one image (more or less) every day. I also moved my blogroll over to Through a Lens Daily. It used to be in the navigation bar of MHC, but the plugin that I needed to use for that has been acting up. I keep up with other blogs in a variety of ways, one of which is my blogroll. So if you’ve ever used my blogroll to find new blogs, just hop on over to Through a Lens Daily. I do believe that it reflects my eclectic taste in blogs – there’s a lot of variety there.

Speaking of interesting blogs, if you dream of going to Paris as I do, you will love Paris in Four Months. Written by a Swedish photographer who moved to Paris for four months in 2012 and ended up staying, (and who can blame her?) it’s full of gorgeous images of that beautiful city.

I read her posts and I dream of going to Paris. With my husband, of course.

We will. Someday.

Today would have been my parents’ 68th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Dad and Mom.

Happy Sunday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

 

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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