I joined some friends Saturday evening for an Italian themed potluck. I contributed the classic prosciutto and melon appetizer.
I raided the archives to find this sunset photo to post today since today is the longest day of the year. Here in Arizona we will get a little over 14 hours of sunshine. For those of you further north, you will be getting almost 2 hours more sunshine than we get. I'm sure there will be solstice celebrations all over the world. I know there will be a big one at Stonehenge.
Yesterday I posted a poem by Dorothy Parker and it brought back memories from back in 2003. I was visiting New York City with a group of friends and we all wanted to have a drink at the Algonquin Hotel where Dorothy Parker and other members of the "round table" met for drinks, gossip and literary discussions. My little group of friends were all people I worked with and one of them snapped this photo of me finishing off my martini. The photo quickly became something of a joke among us. So here I am looking a bit like a lush with two empty glasses in front of me and one in my hand. I might have fit in perfectly with that little "round table" group from the 1920's.
By the way, those two empty glasses belonged to others. One martini is all I can handle. For more about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Hotel, check this link.
Have you ever seen a more perfect rose? This one was tucked into a bouquet that I saw recently and I was struck by how perfect it looked without a single blemish on it. It made me think of a Dorothy Parker poem.
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
Ms. Parker wrote with a satirical wit that could be both biting and ironic. Some might call it acerbic humor. I enjoy all of her poems. I also quite like this lovely rose!
I think almost everyone has little collections of things in their kitchens. I certainly do. I bought this little tile trivet on one of my trips to Santa Fe New Mexico. The image on it really appealed to me so now I can see every day.
A friend of mine has this cute little chef sitting on her kitchen shelf. I love seeing him and on my last visit, I decided to get a photo.
The kitchen is a good place to place for items that remind us of interesting places and happy times.
The Arizona Biltmore Hotel is just a short distance away from where I live so it's easy to pop up there to meet a friend.
I'm always surprised by the number of people I see in the lobby of the hotel at this time of year. It just proves that some people do travel to the desert southwest during the summer months.
I love to photograph the different patterns and designs built into the stones that make up this great, old resort. I even managed to catch a photo of myself in that mirror.
My exposure to the outside was rather limited this last weekend. Our summer heat has arrived and I need to get used to the idea of 100+ temperatures before venturing out in the heat. That's when the photo archives come in handy. I pulled out three floral close-ups to share. This first one of a gerbera daisy is almost as bright as the sun is.
This African Lily grows at the front of my complex and it blooms all year long. I think the blooms look so exotic.
This one is a cluster of blooms sitting on top of a barrel cactus. Barrel cacti bloom in the spring but I've seen blooms showing up well into summer.
I saw these two trees that seem to be competing for attention. They were on either side of the driveway for a house.
The one in the back looks like a full sized ficus tree and the one in front on this photo is a palm tree. Two totally different trees but both big and bold.
I went to see the new Steven Spielberg movie "Disclosure Day" and loved every exciting minute of it. And, there were a lot of minutes to enjoy, it runs 2 hours and 25 minutes. That might seem long but the time just flies by. The movie is in same genre as "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". It also has all the heart-racing excitement of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Can you tell I loved it? I might even go see it again and that says a lot since I've only seen 3 movies inside a theatre since 2020.
Bougainvillea is one plant that is abundant here in the desert southwest. It is actually, everywhere. The main reason is that it can take full sun, does not need a lot of water and it blooms all year long. It also has wicked thorns so when you trim it, be prepared for some scapes and scratches.
I recently saw a red bush right next to a pink bush and thought they made a great contrast.
Oh yes, one more thing to keep in mind. Those petals are like paper and they fall and blow in the wind like crazy. Clean up is a constant problem. That's another thing to keep in mind when planting these beauties.
I was near the SkySong campus last weekend so I stopped in to see if anything had changed since the last time I visited. The campus continues to grow and at this point, there is no way to get a full photo of those white sails that anchor the center of this complex. There are now tall building on all four corners.
I have a little indulgent secret that I'm going to share with you. For the past two years, my friend Glenda and I have been celebrating Thursday by drinking champagne and talking about the week's events. We call it "Champagne Thursday". We usually split a bottle of champagne while munching on lite snacks. Sometimes it will be popcorn other times potato chips and every now and then cheese and crackers.
Last year when I took that iPhone photography class, I got into the habit of taking an iPhone photo of my champagne glass using the portrait mode. Then I got to thinking that I would create a little photo book with some of the photos I've taken.
We usually meet at Glenda's house. I'm always looking for the perfect place to take the photo and Glenda decorates for the seasons so around the holidays, there is always some new place to get the shot.
One day last spring, we sampled a sparkling wine from South Africa and I thought putting the glass on the desk in front of this photo would set the mood.
So now you know my little Thursday night secret. I decided I'd gather a year's worth of photos and then put a little book together to celebrate my indulgent habit. I might put one or two on this blog from time to time.
A flash of bright colors caught my eye as I drove past this house so I tuned around to see what it was.
If you need to spruce up your garden a bit, the garden center also has everything you might need such as these colorful ceramic pots. There are always lots of these at the garden centers here because desert soil is not the best for growing things. Most people have lots of pots in their gardens where they can control things a little better.
For those without a live pet to roam their garden, a cute little statue might work. I thought this little fellow was quite cute but, he had a rather large price tag hanging around his neck. Luckily the iPhoto "erase" tool made it disappear completely and you'd never know it was there.
They had several of these hanging baskets on display and several hibiscus plants. This yellow one caught my eye.
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I cropped the image so you could get a better look.
It turns out there is a tiny little nest attached to the inside of this light fixture and that's where this little fellow was sitting.
After I watched for a while, the little guy flew out of the fixture landed on this grating that was hanging from the ceiling.
That was a totally unusual find but I guess living at a garden center is a pretty good option for a hummingbird.
As a follow up to yesterday's post, I decided to do a little more playing with that editing app to see what other "Superman" images I could conjure up.
This one is from a photo of me with Tower Bridge in the background.
It looks like the River Thames has been paved over!
This one is also a photo of me standing next the Tardis from Dr. Who.
In this one it looks like Superman has brought along the instruction manual for operating a Tardis.
And, here I am sitting on the front patio of my friend Glenda's house.
Just look at those muscles!
I tried the same effect on a photo of an angel statue and this one turned out rather strangely. There is a sort of sinister look to this guy. I think he might be about to cast a spell.
I was playing around with one of the options in my photo editing app and discovered one particular option that intrigued me. I used a photo I posted back in 2024 of an artwork at the Celebration of Fine Arts. You can see the original piece in my photo here. I loved this version of that same art work created by my editing app.
When I'm working with a photo, this option gives me multiple versions but in order to see each option I have to select the each of those samples at the bottom of the screen one at a time.
I took a little detour through the Alvarado Historic District last weekend and stopped to snap a couple of photos of some of the houses there.
Each of the houses in this district have their own unique style.
This neighborhood is near downtown Phoenix and right in the backyard of the Heard Museum. There are lots of interesting houses on these streets.
Papago Park is where we find the tomb of Arizona's first Governor. I posted the story of this unusual tomb back in 2011. (Yikes, 15 years ago.) You can read about this unusual pyramid tomb in the link to my past post. Governor Hunt began serving as governor before Arizona was a state. He guided the way to our statehood. The tomb has been here since 1931 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
I actually went there to see if I could photograph any of the waterbirds that hang around the lagoon but, the park was too busy so the birds were staying away. So the only photos I got were of the buttes that surround the park. This view is looking north and the top view is to the south.
