Just Odd

I drive myself crazy; not all the time but often.  When packing to come to Adrian, I packed my external drive, the one that contains all my photo archives to be prepared for FSO and other blog entries; hauled the MY Book all the way across the country and LEFT the power supply in Houston.  You all have to be patient, the only photos I have are the ones I took while crossing the country from south to north and photos of Adrian I have been snapping since arriving.  I knew ODD was coming up on the schedule and have been on the lookout for possibilities but where is my hometown exactly, and what I could feature in order to participate have been big questions.   I am in an ODD place.

I spent some time looking through photos from New Orleans, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan – ignoring that none of these places are where I might call my hometown for the Friday Shoot Out and looked for possible odd number subjects that might meet our topic this week:  here are my contributions

Botanical Gardens Birmingham Alabama

I counted the lily pads 10 plus the bud in the lower left corner – 11 – ODD.

One (odd) triple blossom Purple Datura Metel  (you have my word on it)

And finally – Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky – Just ODD

have a great week – Ginger V

FSO – Roads and Pathways

    

 

We have done this topic with slight variations several times.  Makes for a challenge to come up with another angle.  I guess that’s what happens when you are posting your 73 MTFSO.  There may not be any new ways to show my town.  But here I go giving it another chance.

      Below our house in the mountains is a small road that winds its way through the forest.  It is just wide enough for one car -  but if necessary any car that you might meet will pull way to the side or back up until there is a small safer place to pull over.  The road is steep; it is dirt and stone and ruts, graded over a bed of old construction material.  I imagine that it started as a trail through the wood in which the forest people walked to go to church on Sundays and to get their home grown vegetables to market. 

      Now many have small trucks, Fuscas, motorbikes and bicycles, and the path gradually became a road.  Lucky for us if you walk about 2 KM to the other end this small road meets a larger dirt road which is wider and better maintained and most people choose to drive the other direction, leaving the road below our house quiet and undisturbed, making is a great place to walk 30 minutes down the hill and 45 minutes up – more depending on how often you stop for a quick photo.   

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MT FSO - Bokeh

This is one of those topics that we have from time to time that is more about photography than it is about our towns and when we have these special topics I thoroughly enjoy them. I learn new things about taking photos, I feel challenged to try and understand what I am doing with my camera. I still didn't use manual settings but here are a few results from my efforts. All of these photos are of plants from the Houston area and were taken this week.

Home, travel the roads

God Bless America ....

God Bless America, Land that I love.

Stand beside her, and guide her

Thru the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America,

My home sweet home.

 

Words and music by Irving Berlin

© Copyright 1938, 1939 by Irving Berlin

© Copyright Renewed 1965, 1966 by Irving Berlin

© Copyright Assigned to the Trustees of the God Bless America Fund International Copyright Secured.

All Rights Reserved.

 

Marissa and I are now on the last leg of our trip to pick up Mom in Virginia and settle her in our hometown of Adrian Michigan.  On the drive today I was thinking about America - no let me be more specific - The United States of America.  I have traveled a bit, seen Umbria, Italy and Amboise, France, the length of Chile, and many places in between.  I try not to compare Brazil to any of these places and definitely try not to spend all my energy comparing it to the USA,  but it invariably happens despite my best efforts.

It is hard to be at home in Friburgo or in Rio de Janeiro, or at home in Houston, or Arizona and not compare the weather, the city streets, the architecture, The Food and to not find that one place pleases more than the others in one way or the other.

 

 

This past week we have driven through east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, a small corner of West Virginia and Maryland, and today Pennsylvania.   This land is BEAUTIFUL.  There is mile after mile of forests and lakes, marshes and rivers, old and shiny new buildings and bridges, wild flowers and planted gardens, miles of sights that please the eye and the senses.

 

It doesn't matter if you decide to go north then east or further east before tuning north there are alternative routes through a wide variation of environments, all of them easy to access, and easy to anticipate services and quality of the road.

 

 

    

I have not taken many pictures this trip but my eyes and mind have registered the beauty. The area north of Greenville SC, through the east end of Tennessee is softly rolling hills climbing up the blue ridge mountains, filled with deciduous forest that must blaze in the fall, and as a surprise to me - there are miles and miles of well built, well maintained highways with rest stops along the way, picnic tables, clean restrooms, snacks and pleasing aesthetics. 

 

 

 

 

Brazil's federal road system is well non existent. We have driven from the state of Rio de Janeiro to the state of Minas - about a 7 hour drive - equal to driving from Texas to Mississippi - and once out of the city of Rio the road becomes a narrow, sometimes dirt road, stopping and starting as you wind through one small town after another,  there is no federal road in Brazil like the I-10 that stretches from coast to coast in the southern USA allowing for freedom of movement of goods and people from state to state.  I have only a few photos - none of them showing you what I saw, the beauty was there over and over - forming in my mind another new bond with my country - the USA.     super imposed it over Brasil, would the areas of the two countries be about the same? Both government systems are a federal divided into states, but that is were the two stop being similar. There is NO comparison of the roads once outside the main cities of both countries.

 

 

   

 

   

 

The Rose Garden

Yesterday was one of those beautiful days that no matter where we are, or where we live, we glory in it. The temperature in Houston was in the mid 60s, the sky a bright clear blue, the sun bright and warm on the skin.   In celebration I drove into the med center area to visit the Rose Garden. The Rose garden is part of the Museum of Natural Science complex. Most of the year it has a pleasant, peaceful air, yesterday it was especially beautiful. The roses were in full bloom and loving the cool weather. The rose beds were surrounded by beds of marigolds and ferns (I would call them Horsetail ferns but they probably have another name.) No matter - the marigolds were as pleasing in their simplicity as the roses were elegant - an excellent garden combination.  I have heard several times over the years that Houston is not a beautiful city. If compared to the green mountains and the blue ocean separated only by a long stretch of buff colored beaches in Rio, it is not the most visual city, but taken by itself, measured on its own merit, it has moments of real beauty. The neighborhoods, streets lined with old live oaks, their branches meeting in the middle, and in the spring the front yards overgrown with azaleas, street after street of neatly kept homes and boulevards with beds of seasonal flowers, and many small neighborhood parks complete with bronze and marble statues, all these scenes combine to make Houston a city of clean and comforting beauty.

 

           

Colors inside an Ancient City : Civita di Bagnoregio, Tuscany, Italy