Yesterday afternoon when I got home from work I didn’t plan to take any photos, but Mother Nature had different plans for me. While I was feeding the dogs, I came across a really cool little spider. So of course, I grabbed the camera. While photographing him, a beautiful dragonfly flew by and landed quite near where I was working. Camera’s already out, and even though I see dragonflies regularly, I don’t have any decent photos, so I took some shots of the dragonfly, too. Now as most of you have probably noticed, dragonflies don’t stay still for very long, so I ended up following it around behind the kennels until I was able to capture the shots I wanted. Actually, the best shots came from when it landed in the gardenias, and I saw the first gardenia blossoms were opening. So guess where that led?!?

I have always loved gardenias. I love the way they look, and I love the way they smell. Last winter my gardenias took a bad frost, and a lot of the plants died way back. I wasn’t even sure it anything would grow this year or not. But it did. When spring came little leaves began popping back up on the lower parts of the plants. I waited to see what was and what was not going to grow and then trimmed off all the dead stuff. I don’t expect a bumper flower crop this year, but I was really glad to see that we were going to at least get some flowers. Aside from just loving the flowers, they hold kind of a special place in my memory when it comes to photography, too. Two years ago I started taking photos of the gardenias just because I liked them so much. I shared a couple on social media and with some family and several people told me I should be selling them. I was skeptical, but then I thought why not try. So that was the beginning of my photography and blogging journey. It’s been an interesting trip so far, and I look forward to what the future will bring! It has also been an incredible learning experience! Wow!

While I was behind the kennels anyway I thought I should check on the passion fruit vines and see how they were coming along. They are growing well, and there are a few buds, and there was one open flower! Yeah! I say that because last year I fell in love with the passion fruit flowers and vines! The flowers are very cool, the fruit is delicious, and the vines host all sorts of insect (beetles, ants, flies, butterflies, wasps, etc.) and bird life. I had never had passion fruit vines in my yard before, but I really enjoyed them last year and I’ve been looking forward to seeing them again this year. Last year I literally took hundreds of pictures of the passion fruit flowers, and to take another was probably not necessary, but I couldn’t resist a photo of the first flower of the year!

It just seemed absolutely crazy that I should find my first gardenia and my first passion fruit flower of 2021, two of my favorites and both with a lot of significance to me, on the same afternoon. And on an afternoon where I wasn’t planning to take any photos at all! In my free time (ha ha!) I want to go back through my pictures from last year (and 2019 for the gardenias) and see if my photography has improved. I’m sure that it has thanks to lots of teachers, mentors, on line friends, people from the blogging community and the photography groups I’ve joined, friends, family, and of course all of you who read and look at my content and make comments and suggestions. Thank you all!!!