This week in pictures – spectacular spring

It’s been one of those weeks when I look at the pictures from earlier in week and think, “No way, that wasn’t this week. Surely that has to have been longer ago than just a few days!”

It’s been so crazy that I have two full blog posts to write about photographic fun, one about a great porch session with a fun family of five-year-old triplets and one about a fantastic walk I want to tell you about – but I haven’t had a chance to write either one yet. And then there was stuff that I didn’t take any pictures of (gasp, scandalous!), like the fabulous Kym Shumsky’s Les Nôtres vernissage, the stuff we did and I will probably never get around to blogging, like the seasonal opening of Watson’s Mill, and the pictures I can’t show you, like an amazing Grade 4 class trip to the National Gallery, the Ottawa School of Art and Sugar Mountain. Phew, what a week!

Here’s a teaser of the pending blog post about a capital walk that you simply must take. I promise I’ll pony up the details next week. This is, in my humble opinion, the best view of the Parliament Buildings, especially in tulip season. I’m standing on the Quebec side, near the Museum of Civilization.

Okay, here’s another teaser, also from the Quebec side a little further down. (These are both iPhone photos.)

When you’re out enjoying the sunshine on a perfect spring day, you might just run into other families out for a walk on the riverbank as well. I am particularly partial to families of five. 😉

Closer to home, the crab apple tree in our front yard has been putting on a spectacular show of its own this week. For some reason, it did not flower like this last year — maybe it was the rainy, wet spring we had? — but this year it has been insane with blossoms. While I was taking this photo, I could hear a low-level buzz like a beehive. I looked around and realized that it wasn’t a hive, but an entire hive worth of bees buzzing from blossom to blossom; there must have been 50 or even 100 honey bees flitting about the tree. It was really something!

I was playing with the Lensbaby and the blossoms, and stopped to sit on the porch while I checked a few of the shots. And that’s how I ended up with this shot of my feet up on the porch rail with a riot of apple blossoms behind them. Wild, eh?

But then when I added the star aperture to my Lensbaby it made this crazy shot. I’m still not entirely sure I like it, but it is definitely, um, unique. This is all done without digital manipulation; the star aperture on the Lensbaby turns the light and dark area into the star shapes.

Of course, the Lensbaby effects can be more, um, subtle, and less like, ahem, animé foot p0rn. I bought these antique medicine bottles at the Bytown Bottle Collector Club (no really!) annual show and sale a few days ago, and got the vintage crate there as well.

As you might guess, with three boys, a dog and a cat, setting up a still life is not always easy. I called this one, “This is why we can’t have nice still lifes.” (I struggled with the plural on that one. “Still lives” really does change the sense a little too much, doesn’t it?)

I really do have a flower thing going on this week, don’t I? Here’s more – Simon picking a dandelion bouquet for me. And no, that’s not our lawn — but it could be!

I had originally called this last one “naked” and I when I took it I was thinking that it conceptualized the end of things, about expended effort and seeds and renewal. I changed the title to the quote that follows for a couple of reasons. First, it perfectly encapsulates the idea that I was trying to express. Second, I love that it’s from Erma Bombeck, an author who has had a huge inspiration on me as a writer and even as a mother.

Third, it’s so true it ought to be a motto: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.'” ~Erma Bombeck

Amen to that.