Unfortunate Damage

I'm sure most of the world has heard about the major hurricane/storm the East Coast of the United States that happened during the last week of October, named Sandy. Luckily the area where I live in Newark, Delaware, and most of the Northern parts of Delaware were spared from any major damage. Unfortunately, while taking a drive out to the historic area in New Castle, which is located alongside the Delaware River (about 7 miles from my home), I came across some of the storm's damage.

This was a wooden pier that walkers could go out to the end and get a nice view of the river and the surrounding area. It has many memories for me, as I'm sure it had for lots of local residents and anyone who visited the park where it's located.

As you can see it's completely destroyed, and the lovely rose bushes at the entrance also succumbed to the nasty weather.

It looked like quite a few trees, limbs and other debris was being cleaned up by the time I got there, making the entire area look more like a messy construction zone than a lovely historic river front park.

While this wasn't by any means any major devastation that other states incurred, it did make me quite sad to see what did happen, and I hope that the town of New Castle will be able to clean, repair and restore the area back to the former neat place it once was before that horrible storm ripped through.

A Kitty Enhancement

Being on mandatory home confinement with hurricane Sandy wrecking havoc in our area, I decided to take time experimenting with some of my photos, doing more than the usual crop and enhance colors. Here's the result of a photo I took on Sunday of one of the local kitties who resides in Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.

Here he is looking a bit annoyed at me for disturbing his busy day. Earlier in the day, right during an author presentation we were attending, he moseyed right into the room where we were all sitting and made his way along the perimeter twice before disappearing.

I thought his eyes were so beautiful and intense that I needed to enhance them and bring out that great green hue. I normally don't create black and white photos, but this looked so neat in contrast to his eyes that I had to keep it. Incidentally, we found him in this picture here after the presentation was over. We walked into the ladies' room and there he was lazily lounging on a counter in front of mirrors!

Chanticleer

Upon the recommendation of a local photographer who gave a presentation on bettering your garden photography that we attended a few weeks ago, we visited Chanticleer in Wayne, PA,  two Saturdays ago.

Known as  "a pleasure garden," this estate, bought by the Rosengartens in the early 20th century was originally built for a summer retreat, but became a year-round residence by 1924. It is now a 35-acre public garden and definitely a lovely area to spend the day not only photographing the many plants and trees, but a great place to breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the beauty.

Mr. Rosengarten is said to have named his home after the estate "Chanticlere" in the novel entitled The Newcomes, by William Thackeray. Chanticleer is also the name of a rooster that appears in medieval fables and is why there are several rooster themed statues and other designs throughout the gardens.

The gardens are also filled with neat and unusual sculptures, including a strange pool-like area that has several floating faces, which is quite creepy!

It's officially fall in our area and the leaves are in their full, vivid colors, but when we were visiting the gardens, only a few leaves had begun turning colors and several flowers were still in full bloom making it doubly wonderful in my opinion. Being able to see the colorful leaves and flowers at the same time is a rare treat because it doesn't last too long.

We had quite an enjoyable day spending time appreciating the wonderfully warm weather too, and even were able to spend some time goofing off in the late afternoon sun.

A Day At Kilby Cream

This past Saturday, my friend Lin and I went to Kilby Cream in Rising Sun, Maryland, to participate in their corn maze and enjoy their other fall activities.
 
The day looked dreary and the skies threatened to dump rain before we left, but thankfully the weather changed and it turned out to be a lovely, crisp fall day.

 The neat thing about the corn maze was that it was designed to look like a medieval castle
(check out their map of the maze from above), and when walking through it, you went along in search of 15 different questions that followed the medieval theme. If you correctly answered all the questions at the end, you not only were able to successfully get out of the maze, but you also won a prize, which of course enhanced the fun.

Can you guess the answer to these questions? (If you can't read it, don't forget to click on the photo to enlarge it) Check the end of this post to see if you're right!

After we successfully made it out of the maze, we headed over to their market area to try some of their yummy ice cream made on site and then we went over to visit their small petting zoo that included the usual goats, miniature horses, bunnies and of course cows. What a neat place!

Answers: #1 An Atilliator is "D" and #2 The dragon living in Honalee is "B" Hope ya got them right!

Wordless Wednesdays - Library Statues

Check out other wordless photos here and here

Our World Tuesday - Shenandoah National Park

Last week my mother and I spent a few days with my Uncle and his family in a resort area in McGaheysville, Virginia.

On our 4.5 hour drive to the area we took a short detour to the Shenandoah National Park where we drove a bit of the way on Skyline Drive, the only public road in the park that is 105 miles long.

This great mountain area is known as the Blue Ridge Mountains because of the bluish color they display when seen from a distance, and is a part of the greater Appalachian Mountains which covers a bit of area in Southeastern Canada all the way south-west, down the East Coast of the United States, passing through eighteen states (it completely skips over my home state of Delaware!) where it ends in Alabama.

Along with a large variety of wonderful flowers and animals (stay bloggy tuned for more pics from this trip!), this tunnel, entitled Mary's Rock Tunnel, was constructed in 1932 and is one of the many engineering feats completed on Skyline Drive.


For more interesting photos from lands far and near, check out Our World Tuesday

Macro Monday - Up Close Flowers

We've been having some unusually cool weather lately in our area so it was wonderful to get outside and be able to enjoy the summer and snap some photos of flowers without getting burnt to a crisp.

Unfortunately, it was still quite humid, and it got a bit windy at times, which made it quite difficult to keep the flowers steady in order to snap a shot. It was funny chasing after the moving stems, I'm sure I looked silly to passersby dancing around with my camera. If only I could tell them to stand still!

To see more macro photos - go visit here!