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.   

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Shoot-Outs / The Garden - texture and color

This week the ‘My Town’ Friday Shoot out gang celebrates its 52nd week. There is a little debate about which week it actually started but I know for sure this is my 50th FSO post. So we celebrate. For this week’s topic we get to choose our favorite topic from the past year…. I loved textures and circles and gardens and …. With a blog title of ‘Flowers and More’ what choice do I really have? I wanted texture, I wanted color and by showing flowers in my garden I think I got both. All of these photos are from the garden at one time or the other throughout the year. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do the colors in my garden.

Ready for a shock?

In for a shock VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I decided that I would try and re-organize my photos.  I have them all saved on an external hard drive which holds 232 GB and has only 48.7 GB remaining. (of course there are also back up files, this is not just photos)   I have been told about several online storage places but am not able to bring myself to ‘trust’ them.   So I need to either organize and delete, or buy a bigger storage drive.

For the first time ever I looked at my pictures folder’s properties. Are you ready for this? There are over 27 thousand files in the picture folder, a total of 57 GB. The folders are organized by Trips (Spain, France, Italy, Iguacu falls, ETC.) And Family/friends/and other special folders.

One of the folders is ‘Condominium Stucky’ with 4294 items, which includes ‘Around Friburgo’, ‘Friburgo Garden’, ‘Inside Friburgo’ and others. One of the folders is ‘Sunsets Sunrise sky and Fog’. For this blog I started looking at this folder because it really defines my dilemma. These photos are exclusively of our view off the veranda. It has 1390 items. How can one view have 1390 different looks? I went through it (2 hours of time) and deleted many questionable photos, most of the of the moon which never turn out the way I want. After this clean-up, I still had 1369 photos. How can I delete more? {Just in case your good at math this is only a net of 21 photos because I found more sunset etc. photos in other folders – I actually managed to delete nearly 100 photos}

I have put a sample of 20 photos in the album above.   Basically they are of the same view. Look at them, which one would you delete? What I need is someone impartial to go through my photos and delete as many as possible. Then go away, so I can restore them…. I can not delete photos that is my dilemma. Everyone has something I like about it – of course it does – why else would I have taken it?

Note that in the album you can look at the photos in a slideshow – and enlarged, that is very nice.

I promised you flowers

Single lilies line the lower walkway at the house in Friburgo (Muri-Condominium Stucky)      We have never bought any of these lilies, Manuel, our 'jardineiro', trades with other gardeners for bulbs and cuttings and also from time to time brings flowers from the forest. We don't talk about that though because for some of them it may be illegal to take them from the forest.

 

 

Double day lily - from a neighbors yard. Colors are not edited but I cropped all of these photos to bring the Flower to our complete attention. Double (or triple?) day lily - taken April 2005, Nova Friburgo - lining the entrance of a local Pousada. The photo has been cropped but not edited. Many of our flowers bloom in late fall (April/May). During the summer (December - March) there is too much rain and clouds which makes for a lot of growth and a lot of green but no flowers. It takes the sunshine of fall and winter to bring out the flowers in both the garden and in the forest's trees.

Tis the season - Hydrangea in Stucky

Normally the Hortensias bloom, starting the first week of December and are in full bloom for Christmas and New Years, this year they began blooming before the first of November. Also this year there were more color variations among the blooms.

Today around the house

Flowering trees in the area