I often walk to the community park up the street, which has quite a few Silk Floss Trees, which bloom in the fall with large, lush pink flowers. I was photographing the flowers the other day, and this Anna's Hummingbird photo bombed my shot. The Silk Foss Trees grow quite tall--up to 60 feet for older trees. After blooming, they develop large seed pods with the seeds embedded in a white fluffy silk. Older trees often develop conical prickles on their trunks. They are native to tropical and subtropical forests in Argentina & Brazil. 11/5/20 www.sparhawkphotography.com
In that I'm mostly in the house all day, when I finally get out for my walk, I've taken to carrying my Canon G12, which is compact enough that it doesn't weigh me down, does zoom in pretty well for a small camera, and can shoot in Raw. This big old tree is in the park up the street from where I live, and as many zillion times I have walked past it and noticed the branches that grow every which way, I've never photographed it until this week. It is getting its new leaves but is not fully leafed out, so the branches show up more than they will later. The bark looks like a Sycamore, and the leaves resemble that species, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one with branches quite like this. 3/29/20 My website: www.sparhawkphotography.com
I ran across this old photo of mine taken at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens in Claremont, CA. They had sponsored a calendar competition one year, asking for photos taken in the garden. This was one of my entries (back in film days), which ended up being selected as First Place, with a quite nice cash prize. I was surprised that with all the pretty flower shots that were entered, my old pinecone took top honors. The comment was, "It was so different". It was fun seeing my work in the calendar. 3/3/20 www.sparhawkphotography.com
