52 Photos Challenge: Good Luck Charm

Belle's challenge this week at 52 Photos Project is "Good Luck Charm."

This is my Money Tree. It is supposed to bring you luck with money.  Tina gave it to me in 2005 for my weekday apartment when I was temporarily assigned to work in Atlanta for a while.  I have faithfully watered and fertilized it ever since.

Sugar: A Challenge In More Ways Than One

The prompt this week at 52 Photos Challenge is: Sugar.

The Community Ministries Program and Highlands United Methodist Church in downtown Birmingham serves breakfast daily to 100-200 homeless or unfortunate folks, among other services.  Donations are always appreciated.

A lot of them like their coffee sweet; nothing fancy, just a plastic cup and spoon, but hot.

I can't stand sugar in my coffee, but I can certainly get up close and personal with it in a LOT of other foods.

Patience

Finally, after years of babying by my wife, the pineapple plant grown from a top looks like it's going to do something besides stick me.

Eeyore's Food Source

Besides the Queen Anne's Lace, the roadsides are well populated with Thistle.  It is a quite lovely weed through many of it's stages (three shown here together), but those spiny leaves and stalks are a real pain.  I don't know how Eeyore eats the stuff, but then maybe that's all he deserves, hmmph.

Here it is a little further along.

And then finally it spreads itself around for next year.

The change it goes through from the initial flower through the final seed parachutes is rather incredible.

A Queen Anne's Journey Into The Unseen

This time of year, the road sides around here are graced by an abundance of Queen Anne's Lace. Whether to call it a weed or wild flower is pretty much up to you.

It starts out as a small budding flower head,

and blossoms into these large white heads, made of many individual little flowerettes.

But wait, what's that in the very center?  It's a tiny little purple bloom, and they all have one.

And if you get in really close, there's some sort of little creepy crawly on that little purple flower.

I don't know if they all have a creepy crawly.  I didn't even know this one had one until I looked at the photo very closely.

52 Photos Project: Criss Cross

52 Photos Project: Criss Cross

Playing with my new extension tubes and the telephoto lens.  If you think you know what this is, let me know.  The prize is, you get to know you got it right.

Go to Bele's site to see other interpretations.

Happy Mother's Day

A Mother's Day Bouquet for my lovely wife.

Yeah, I know the first one is a weed, but the grand babies call them flowers and love to pick them for Mimi.

Also, since this bouquet doesn't wilt and is easily shareable, all you other mothers feel free to enjoy them too.

Two Tones

A two toned Peony in the early morning light.

Times Four: 52 Photos Project

Each week Bella posts a challenge on the 52 Photos Project web site.  Participants post their interpretations on their blogs and link them to her site.  The first challenge this year is "Fire."

Here is mine, times four.

If all you see is this one post, and you want to see older or newer ones, simply click the banner photo at the top of the page.

Yikes! A Peony and Friend!

I spent about twenty minutes setting up and shooting this lovely peony.

Just as I was finishing up, I looked off to my right, just outside the flower bed, and look who was watching me, lying very, very still.

He's a gray rat snake, and didn't seem to mind me taking his picture at all, even with the flash popping every few seconds.  In fact, he just lay there, frozen, hardly even breathing, . . . probably terrified I was going to eat him.

Once I had his picture, I retreated to the patio and watched him as he slowly, so slowly you could barely tell he was moving, crawled off into the woods.  I try not to kill these guys; after all, they are "rat" snakes, and I believe they might even indulge in one of those pesky little chipmunks occasionally.