Sunday, April 14, 2013

Random nature

I seem to have taken a lot of random nature photos this week.


Along the road, not far from us, the fields are filled with wild rape flowers.  Japanese do eat these but if the flowers are so far in bloom I think they are past being edible...  Such a pretty splash of color though.


I took this picture on a drizzly morning.  I got wet traipsing through the fields but I got my picture!


This was taking at the peak of plum blossoming week.  These are plum blossoms...


...and these are cherry blossoms.


This is a shot of the tollway heading back to Nikko.  Mt. Nantai is in the distance.  We don't really use this tollway very much as there is only a 5 minute difference between using this road and the regular road when going to the next city...  But I knew from past years that the highway would be bordered in pink by the cherry trees so I paid the $1 toll for the opportunity to take this picture.


Maybe this isn't nature.  It is a "fence" surrounding an old Japanese house.  It is made of densely planted bamboo... the kind that doesn't grow tall, and it is held back by a different type of long bamboo poles.  It was just beautiful!


So the daffodils are out and I've seen crocus.  The plum and cherry blossoms are fading but the rape blossoms are vibrant... and I came across another little plot of land that was just a blanket of dandelions!  Dandelions always make me smile!


I was quite pleased with the success of this picture.  At the top of a very tall, far-away tree, this heron perched itself and watched his domain.  It was quite far away and high up, but Tetsu urged me to try and photo him.  Okay... I have a telephoto lens that isn't very strong... But when cropping the photo in the editing process I find that my heron is still quite sharp!  This season the herons are vying for the best tree top to make their nests.  In the mornings their racket can be heard from the other side of the forest!

5 comments:

Mary Johnson said...

Your flowers look wonderful. It's still snowing here in Minnesota!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

Just read about the earthquake in Kobe. Google maps says you are 11 hours away, but, I'm still worried about you. Hope you are ok.

Cassandra said...

Pretty photos!! Your heron is quite lovely and I can imagine quite loud!

Lois Evensen said...

Oh, Tanya, Spring is so very beautiful there. Your pictures are wonderful.

Sunday best from Port Canaveral.

Hugs,
Lois

Gert said...

I found your blog today (I was doing a Google search for Patchwork Tsushin Magazine) and I would like to tell you I really love it. I'm a Dutch male quilter and I'm very interested in (Japanese) quilting. And I'm also interested in Japan (never visited it) Friends from the Netherlands are in Japan right now on vacation, and I get a daily email update from them. So I'm glad I found your blog, I will add it to my read-list. Best reagards from the Netherlands, Gert