Plants – ScaredyCatFilms

Highland Park

This year the Lilac Festival seemed to come before the lilacs peaked, and was a little rainy, but that’s good for me, as I visited the park a full week after the closing day, and the flowers and lilacs were just past peak bloom. It was pretty nice, as everything seemed to be blooming on Saturday June 24th this year. Lilacs, Azaleas, Peonies, Dogwoods, and even a few Magnolias were still blooming. About all that wasn’t blooming was the lilies, and ours bloomed a day or two later at home. I walked around the park for a few hours and spotted a few of my favorite lilacs that made it through another year, including the yellowish primrose. It was a nice day, the park is really nice and well thought out. The giant sycamore trees that surround the reservoir are really huge, and way cool. Here’s a few photos.

Newer Pergola Area	Magnolia
Highland Infrared	Deep Purple
Highland Reservoir	Sycamore Trees

Beautiful Spring

Spring turned out really well here in Rochester. It was a little cool, but mostly sunny. I think this was perfect lilac season, as our lilacs started blooming around the 16th of June, and they are still blooming 2 weeks later. We got a lot of really nice blooms this year, and our one lilac (the primrose) that got hit with the pesticide last year is growing bigger than ever. Looks like a full recovery. Our cherry trees and dogwood we planted last summer survived the winter and are doing great. Everything is blooming and still looks nice. Our blueberry plants made it through the winter too, and this year we planted some pepper plants and a watermelon too. Here’s a few photos.

Sensation Lilac	Cherokee Chief Dogwood
Katherine Havemeyer lavender pink	Primrose Growing
Violet Glory	Beauty of Moscow

More Creatures!

We’ve been catching more and more creatures on our critter cam this spring. This time we think we saw a skunk, and one of the pictures may have a fox visiting our bird bath for water. One night a deer showed up and “trimmed” Tracy’s bonsai plants! Still exciting, still a lot of cats around, and some bunnies as well.

Pretty sure this is a skunk	Night Cat
Possible Fox, or Creature?	Bunny
Bonsai Trimming	Trimmed Bonsai

Critter Cam

For Christmas this year I was able to pick up 2 refurbished “Game Cameras” at a very reasonable price. I gave one to my Mom and Dad and one to Tracy for Christmas. Cue the excitement as we wait and see what we can capture with the cameras. We stuck our camera outside at the beginning of February and aimed it at our bird feeders and birdbath water. We caught deer photos the second night the camera was out there. The night mode is pretty good. So far, the deer seem really interested in it, as we have captured a few pictures that appear to be the deer looking right at it or sniffing it. One photo even has one of the cat’s two eyes watching out the sliding glass door. Should provide fun for months to come. Here’s a few photos.

Deer Photo	Deer camera
Monkey Eyes	Backyard Deer

State College Visit

I went to visit my sister in State College this summer, and as I like to do, we took a trip to the Penn State Arboretum to look at the pumpkins and plants that were blooming. This time the place looked better than ever, with all kinds of flowers still blooming, pumpkins all over, and really nice weather too. had a great time. Didn’t get my photos up on flickr yet, so here’s a few from the trip.

Fancy Pumpkins	Water Lily
Meredith in the big chair	Gardens ay Penn State
Colorful plants	The succulent pot

Boston 2012

Our second quick trip to Boston saw us atop the Coca-Cola roof deck seats, except we were standing room only. It was a really great place to see a game, except of course for the rain delay again. Grumble. This time we saw the Sox lose to the Atlanta Braves. Red Sox loses tend to happen quite frequently to us.

Saturday we spent the day at the Arnold Arboretum, which was very cool. Lots of trees, including Redwoods. We walked around a great portion of the grounds. Then back to Fenway for a night game where we got to see the gigantic American flag unfurled to celebrate our veterans service. We’ve seen the huge flag twice now, and I don’t think it is something they do all that often at Fenway. This time after a brief rain shower the game started on time, and it was a beautiful night, plus the Sox finally won!

Tracy and Dave – Rain Delayed	Boston Skyline
Redwood trees at the Arnold Arboretum	View from the hill top.
Hanging Hydrangea	Hanging Garden
200+ Year Old Bonsai	Fenway Park Sunshine
Red Sox Win!

Summertime Fun

Finally getting back to posting a few picks on the ScaredyCat site. Its been a busy summer, with most of my photos going directly to flickr. But with a little time on my hands, I’ll try and post a few here. So to start, I have a few photos I took around the yard this spring/summer. These were taken at the end of May. The cottonwoods were in full effect.

Blueberry Bushes	Lupine Plant
Patio Picture	A viola plant
Lilacs	Backyard

Penn State Arboretum

After our visit to the air show we had some time to visit the Penn State Arboretum. Although only a small part of the massive grounds have been completed it was still fun to go see. If I know one thing about arboretum’s its that they are great for Infrared Photography. Here’s some photos from my visit there. There are more photos in my Infrared Image Gallery on Flickr.

Penn State Arboretum	Sculptures in Infrared
Infrared Water Plants

Lilacs Peak Early in 2012

Because of the freakishly warm spring this year (in Rochester, March was our warmest on record, and the average temperature was higher than the April average), this year the lilac festival peaked a whole week earlier than the festival (May 10-19). On a beautiful sunny Sunday I went to Highland Park to view the lilacs early, and then home for the Kentucky Derby.

The lilacs were pretty much in peak bloom. Even the lilacs in our yard were blooming. This year the Rochester area also saw a massive influx of Red Admiral butterflies. There were tons of them. I’ve never seen anything like it, they were flying everywhere like flies. Anyway, took lots of photos of the lilacs, and butterflies on lilacs. The majority of the lilac photos are in my lilac flickr gallery.

Beauty of Moscow	Pink lilacs at Highland Park.
Lilac bush at Highland Park.	Butterfly Lilacs
Red Admiral Butterfly	Red Admiral on a white General Sheridan lilac.

After my walk through Highland Park, I went downtown to High Falls, and walked across the Pont de Rennes bridge to the baseball stadium and back. Here’s a few photos from that walk. I have a lot more photos of the falls in infrared on my infrared flickr page.

infrared high falls — Infrared High Falls

Early Spring, or Summer?

This year we got a treat of an early spring, or actually, an early summer, as temperatures reached into the 80’s for a week in March. It caused our flowers to all bloom early. Unfortunately it may cause some issues because in the next couple weeks it was back to freezing weather and snow. We’ll have to hope the plants all survive and have a good summer. Anyway, here’s some spring pictures.

Crocus and bees	Yellow crocus and bees
Ghosty Orchids