This one smells like strawberries

While we were at Pactola Lake this weekend, I took a moment to scratch off a little bark & sniff this tree. This particular one smelled like strawberries. I haven't done this in years. It was delightful.

If you're not familiar with this practice, the idea is that you scrape off just a little bit of outer bark, just sort of flaking it off with your fingernail, until you get to that pinkish layer underneath. Then you sniff it, and it can smell like strawberry, vanilla or chocolate. I remember doing this a lot as a kid.

Have you ever done this? Do you still do it? Have you never heard of this and just think I'm crazy? Let me know in the comments. 

Cut! Costume Exhibit, or Encountering Fantasy in Reality

My daughter and I visited the Cut! Costume and the Cinema exhibit at the Durham Museum during her Christmas break. It broke my heart that we weren't allowed to take photos, but I came across this video last night which lets you get an idea of how amazing some of the costumes are:

 


I have to admit the costume that took my breath away wasn't the most spectacular or elaborate. I've always loved the movie Howard's End - E.M. Forster is one of my favorite authors, I've had a long-standing obsession with Merchant Ivory films and I just lurve Emma Thompson - so encountering a dress Emma Thompson wore in that film (below) made me tear up just a little bit. That emotional response was surprising. I think it was a result of encountering such a familiar item from fantasy unexpectedly in reality. I even considered snapping a clandestine picture of the dress, but didn't feel confident in my sneakiness, so I didn't. Maybe I'll have to go back before the exhibit leaves, just to visit Margaret's dress one more time (and to check out Captain Jack Sparrow's outfit, as well. You know, as long as I'm there).

via  Enchanted Serenity of Period Films: Howard's End (1992)

If you can't get to the exhibit, but would like to see some of the costumes in more detail than what is in the video, I just found a Flickr set by annesstuff  which shows many of them when the exhibit was in another venue.

Dreaming of spring, remembering summer

We get to the beginning of March and I start really itching for spring, so I thought I'd share a picture with a bit of green today. I took this last summer in Custer State Park.

As I was looking through my photos recently and came across this one, my first thought was "I don't remember getting down in the grass near the buffalo..." and wondered how I'd had such an adventure without remembering it (after all, being out of your vehicle this close to these animals could be really dangerous). Then I realized I shot this from the car window in an area where the road was down an embankment from the area where the buffalo were grazing. Sometimes great shots come from working with what feels like a less-than-ideal situation at the time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License (which means you can repost the photo where you want, as long as you give me credit - and it'd be nice if you include a link back here or to the Flickr page)

Only create things you can’t not create [Quote]

By Me

"Fear of protecting your platform can’t be what drives your creative process. Only create things you can’t not create. Even if that means losing some of your audience."

from Dear musicians, authors, bloggers & me. | Jon Acuff's Blog

As always, some great points from Jon Acuff (make sure you click through and read the whole post).

Flickr Favorite: Paris

Just like birds on a wire, I'm a sucker for pictures of the Eiffel Tower against a sunset. This one is by Flickr user  [phil h].

Fairy Tales and Dragons

I hadn't thought about this quote in a long time, but it's one of my favorites. I came across the quote again the other day on a Tumblr blog:

Not a dragon, but the closest thing I have in my Flickr account :)

“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” - G. K. Chesterton

via mbthecool

Christmas Countdown: Am I a hundred years too late for this toy?

I was looking at some photos in the Library of Congress' Flickr photostream and noticed the Eiffel Tower in this window full of toys. Was this a model for a child to build, do you suppose? Some quick Googling didn't come up with anything, but I may take some time to search deeper later. Whatever it was, I think I would have wanted one!

Christmas Countdown: Packages, Packages, Everywhere!

The postal service says today is the biggest delivery day of the year, while tomorrow is the biggest mailing day of the year. I found this picture from World War II in The Smithsonian Institution's photostream on Flickr. Click through to see some humorous notes users have applied to parts of the photo (just mouse over the photo once you've clicked through). Unfortunately, more keep being added, so I think some of the funnier ones are getting buried - kind of like some of the boxes in the photo. :)

Click through!

 

I like pumpkin pie

View on Flickr

I spotted this sticker on the ground in my parking garage at work this morning. I have no idea who or what it's from, but I thought "Yes, yes, I do!" I think I look forward to the pie even more than the turkey.

So, what's your favorite pie to have after Thanksgiving dinner? Or, if you're not into pie, what's your favorite alternative dessert?

Birds on a wire

I'm a sucker for birds on a wire and sunsets, so I had to shoot this as I was leaving work yesterday. I love the little loopdey-loop in the middle. :)

Awww, isn't that sweet...wait...what?

When I look at photographer Trey Ratcliff's blog, I usually skip to the photo at the bottom, then go back up and read the stuff at the top which explains the photo, thus my initial reaction to this photo was "Ooooh, that's just the most perfect old French cottage!"

Click through for full size

Then I read the photo description. Of course it's "the most perfect old French cottage," that's what it was painstakingly designed to be: It's part of the “Hameau de la Reine," Marie Antoinette's own sort of Disney-fied version of a French hamlet. I'd heard of it, but had never seen a picture before.

Anyway, it's still a nice photo, so here ya go.

Tiny House in France

My current wallpaper

I've started posting whenever I change my desktop wallpaper, mostly so I have a searchable record of what I used when, but also to share the wallpapers I find (and occasionally photos I've taken myself which turned out really well).

This was taken by Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs. Click through to the post about this photo to see a much larger version and then explore the rest of his site - it's inspiring!

Some Monday cuteness

by Attila Lábodi  

I came across this photo today in the featured photos in Picasa Web Albums (soon to be Google Photos) and had to share. Enjoy! :)

I knew there was a reason I meant to take a different way home

I inched past Memorial Park as the masses descended for tonight's concert.