I met Stella Rumple today when I purchased some of her son’s wonderful dahlia’s at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market.

During our transaction, I told her how lovely her display was and she thanked me. She also informed me that the flowers were her sons & that she was merely helping out.

As her husband carefully packaged my dahlia bouquet she pointed out a bouquet of BEAUTIFUL orange & pink dahlias. As I complemented them, she informed me that her son breed them & named them after her; the Stella R Dahlia.

Stella also shared with me that her son Tom Rumple, breeds many varieties of dahlia & participates in several dahlia societies etc.

After hearing that awesome story, I asked if I could take her portrait and without hesitation, she said yes. Before I hit the shutter button, she said wait, I want to take a picture with my dahlia. With the bouquet in hand she gave me a warm smile & the rest is history.

It was really nice talking with Stella & before I left, she invited me to a garden walk at her son’s home & of course I accepted!

When I got to my office, I Googled her son Tom Rumple & found a few great things such as:

• His Stella R dahlia was the dahlia of the year in 2006
• He has been selling his dahlias at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market for 14 years & is known as the Dahlia Man
• We both work for the same university & he has been there for over 21 years
• He is an accredited senior judge in the American Dahlia Society
• At the 2007 Chicago Dahlia Society Show he won 8 first prize ribbons

After my little research, I am super excited about the garden walk & you know my camera will be in hand!

I recently broke down & picked up a copy of Adobe Lightroom 2 (it is all about getting an educational discount). Initially, I was very intimidated by switching to Lightroom because so used to my workflow in Adode Bridge/Camera Raw & Photoshop.

Now after being up & running for a week now with Lightroom, I can say that am so happy that I decided to make the upgrade!

Lightroom 2 is so much more flexible & powerful than Camera Raw in Adobe Bridge & the keywording feature is absolutely bananas & since I am a keyword whore, I am so digging it. And best of all, I have saved at least 3 steps in my image processing & filing process!!!

Now I know what all the buzz was about in the Photoshop User magazine since I attended the Photoshop World Conference earlier this year.

The one & only downside to this upgrade is that I have to go through all of my old images so that I can keyword & catalog them into the new database. Since I have a ton of photos, I am pacing myself by doing 1 to 2 folders per week. If you knew how anal I am with my filing system, you would understand my pain. Nasa could hire me to catalog & they would love me!

By the way, the image above (Titled: Sweetest Tears) is a shot of a rose from my garden. It is one of 3 blooms that I have seen all summer. Those damn Japanese Beetles eat them before that get anywhere near blooming. I am so happy that it rained today because it seems to be the only thing that keeps those fuckers away.

I had a so/so day today filled with many boring low lights but I’m alive so I guess I can’t complain or maybe I can.

When I got home, I did a little weeding & found this little guy hiding underneath another plant.  The sight of the viola made me smile & think that no matter where you look, there has to be something that makes you forget about what pissed you off 5 minutes ago.

I told myself yesterday that I would not post any photos from my garden but I have to sell myself out because things were looking good in the backyard.

So forgive me for my bloom time excitement.

Saturday while out & about, my boo called & said she spotted some pretty Oriental lilies on $5 clearance at Wal-Mart (of all places). She said there were some red & some pink ones but that was all she knew. I said sure get me whatever & that would be cool.

Later, I got home & saw these awesome Dwarf Oriental lilies & I was so geeked.

Today after I got home from a BO campaign mtg, I changed into my garden gear & hit the yard to get busy.

After everything was planted, I thanked my boo again for such great floral picks. And you know I had to pull out the camera………

Chicory is such an easy plant to hate because a) it is considered a weed here b) the body & foliage of the plant is hideous but the wonderful blue bloom that it produces more than makes up for its shortcomings.

Over the past 3 years, when I photographed flowers in my garden, I always took full on shots, to capture the entire bloom & I was happy with that. 

This spring, my mindset on what is beautiful about flowers has changed as my macro photography skill morphed into something that I did not imagine.  My hand has become very steady, I have learned to work with the wind, when conditions are not in my favor & I now use rain to my advantage.

Lately, I have been finding the beauty in what makes flowers beautiful & have been loving my discoveries inside, and around blooms.

I don’t post many floral shots here but I have flooded my Flickr page with them & I have been enjoying the responses to my abstract macro floral shots,

Here are a few from today that I took after I walked my mother through my gardens.  She managed to get me to give her a few things but some thing I just could not part with, such as my “flame” calla lilies.

As of yesterday, I’m ahead of schedule with the completion of my garden clean up & annual planting. When I got off work yesterday, I planted 6 gerbera daisies, 3 torch lilies, 2 hen & chicks, 1 elephant ear, 12 caladium bulbs, put together 3 planter boxes & spread 24 cubic feet of cypress mulch. Basically, I worked like a Hebrew slave for 3 hours.

After 5 evenings of work, I finally finished clearing all of the weeds, grass & dead plants from my 6 gardens!!!

I don’t know how much snow we got today but it was whole hell of a lot! When I finally decided to get off my ass to assess how much I need t shovel, all I could do was shout out SHIT, that is a lot of mutha fuckin’ snow.

So I looked out on my back deck to see how much stacked up there & again, I shouted out SHIT. There had to be at least 2ft out snow there.

Before I mustered up the energy to go outside with the snow blower, my overly nice, Black republican neighbor came over & did my front sidewalk & driveway. I was like cool but I know this will mean that I will need to listen to one of his speeches on how I need to switch political parties etc.

After my surgery earlier this year, he shoveled my snow for me & I was so thankful because I was not able to, as I was on walking restrictions for like 2½ months. I really need to get him a gift of appreciation like soon.

I took this photo on my back deck today. The pot that this plant (Ginger Root Ficus) is in is at least 8 inches tall. I dropped it in the snow froze my ass off until I got the shot that made me smile.