So what does a beanie do when forced to stay home during a pandemic, and then finding oneself without a job, and no schedule? Well this beanie makes and sends cards to friends and family.
So in the process of creating cards I went out into the garden and started taking photos every day as the iris flowers started to bloom. I discovered that these flowers are amazingly, extravagantly, gorgeous, and detailed in a wonderful way. Which led me to working on different composition and aperture settings on my camera to get the detail I wanted.

Wowzzaaaaaaaaa – I’m so excited with the shots I got and wanted to share them here – cuz why not?
It isn’t a sense of bragging at how great they are – but more of a sense of awe that I was able to capture these incredible images!

And I wouldn’t have had the time if I wasn’t isolating at home and not working.
Enjoy!!!
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    Beautiful. Thanks you.

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      Thank you @marcusnyc20 – it’s been a fun and satisfying challenge this spring. Next up is the poppies and peonies!

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        Looking forward to these too! I love letter writing too, and the joy of receiving a handmade card is like nothing else in the world. I’m sure the recipients will be absolutely delighted.

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          This all started when a friend of my ended up with Breast Cancer, then early retirement from where we worked and on top of it has to stay home due to the pandemic. I was sending her my homemade cards now and then and she loved them. So I started writing her every day – and then that turned into a ‘theme of the week” for photos where I had to go back into my old pics and pull all sorts of shots. One week it was trees, then architectural and even portraits I’ve done of moms and new babies.
          Well this has now gone on for 12 weeks now and it’s become sort of my “covid – diary” as she said she’s keeping them. Someday I’ll read them and see what I was thinking.
          But it has become a habit. Last week she had her surgery in Portland so I made all the cards for the week in advance. But it was so weird not sitting down at my desk and writing her every morning, that by Thursday I was back at it.
          Let’s just say it feeds my soul right now.

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            Oh what a beautiful idea! It will make for a lovely diary to read at some point of time. Maybe make it into a book or something 🙂 I’m sure she treasures it even more than you can imagine!

            Your story reminds me of my craze for pen friends – I am not a photographer, but I love writing letters. I used to seek out pen friends in the early ’90s, and had many – just before email happened. Only one of them stayed on, and we met in person ~20 years after we first started writing to each other. We are now good friends IRL too, and meet and talk and email and message often, but because both of us like to write the old-fashioned way, we try to send snail mail to each other ever so often. My friend is far more creative than me and a bit of an artist, and designs letterheads and envelopes, so every letter I get from her is special. I have a carton full of her letters, and she has many of mine (mine are just reams of pages in bad handwriting, nothing creative involved). We always tell each other that one day we’ll swap and see how naive and crazy we were as kids and remained unchanged as adults…

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            The summer after my high school graduation *cough – we’re talking decades now* I met a friend when we were both in Birmingham Alabama. She was from PA and I was from OR. We have written letters all these years. There was a time that we didn’t keep in touch so much but now we are writing again. I think that i have every single letter she’s written to me.
            Hey if you want a pen pal friend let me know – I love to write letters but it seems no one else does….. I’d be happy to send you letters.

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            Ooh that would be lovely! I’d be happy to write to you too 🙂 🙂 (note that I’m on another continent, a few timezones away!)

            My gmail handle is the same as my DB handle. Send me an email, and we can swap addresses 🙂

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            sent email

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        I meant *looking forward to posts of poppies and peonies too!*

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          The poppies are so amazing. One morning I went out in the garden to find that the blooms emerge from their pod in a matter of around an hour. Did you know that???? I’m trying to put the photos together to show how fast it happens.

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            I didn’t! Are you taking time lapse photos? In any case, these should be awesome. Poppies bloom here for a very short season, but they are so gorgeous. I try to visit the local flower shows around the time to make sure I get my fill!

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            I don’t know how to do time lapse photos but I did use my phone and take a video. Of course that is the poppy that took over an hour to fully throw off the pod. the first one I watched threw the pod off in about 45 minutes.
            But now looking back at the video I listen to the sounds of all the birds that morning.
            I’ve been slowly going through them to mark them and then I’ll add the times to each one so you can see the difference.

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        Omg I love peonies!

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          There is a Peony farm about an hour north of me here in the Willamette Valley. Talk about bliss – you would go nuts for how beautiful they all are…. And the fragrance…….
          sigh – all the gardens are closed to the public right now so I’m just using my garden – and it saves on gas too!

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            Sigh~ that is my kind of heaven..

            I have been waiting for my peonies to grow. We’ve had crappy spring so they are growing so slow.

            I love your iris pics 😍 Keep them coming!

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            If they are coming up from the ground and you can see something they will grow and you will have those blooms!!!!!
            **fighting!**

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            This sounds so beautiful!

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    They’re gorgeous!

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      Thank you @bbstl! They are pretty wonderful flowers aren’t they? I am thrilled with what I got and I feel like the little child who takes the artwork to mom and says “see what I did isn’t it cool?”

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    Are they orchids? They’re gorgeous! beautiful photos too! You have a good eye 🙂

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      They do look like orchids don’t they @pickleddragon? I didn’t see that before – they are called Bearded Irises!!! It wasn’t until I started to really get those close ups and looked at them on my computer that I saw how gorgeous they are.
      And of course early morning rain helps with the water drop effect.
      And thanks for the compliment!

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        Ah nice! I missed the iris reference in the post and went straight to the photos (they were so distracting :D) – sorry my bad! I don’t think I’ve seen bearded irises before! I am not sure they grow in my part of the world, in the tropics where its dry and really hot and horribly polluted most year round :/ You’re so lucky to be able to wake up to so much beauty every day. 🙂

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          But I bet you have lovely flowers in your part of the world that we don’t have here. Yes I am thankful every day to live here in the Pacific Northwest….
          except during allergy season

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            Hah! Yes, we have some lovely flowering trees here. In my neighbourhood, in March-April-May (the season just ended), the skyline is just a series of colours – reds from gulmohar (flame of the forest, I think is the English name) and silk cotton; yellow from laburnums; and purple from jacaranda. I have wasted many hours just staring at them. After that, we have to survive the long dry summer, and wait for the blip of a winter we have here for the flowering shrubs to bloom.

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    These are beautiful! And I love irises – such an underrated flower.

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      Thank you @snarkyjellyfish – they were certainly underrated for me until this past month.
      There is an iris farm about 40 miles north of me but I went only for their english garden and rarely took my camera into the acres of irises.
      Next year I’ll spend more time in the fields!!!
      So color me hooked…

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        Oooh that sounds lovely – I can’t wait to see what pictures you have from that. English garden sounds nice too – the only thing I miss living in the city is having a garden. My mom’s is always fantastic and very English, though apparently her roses are giving her hell this year. I remember when we moved to the suburbs my mom’s only solace was having a garden, because we are very much city people. There’s just something about flowers and gardening that is so cathartic. I have lots of houseplants but it’s not quite the same, though it does help my small apartment feel alive.

        I think irises may be my third favorite flower (after sunflowers and purple lisianthus). I love the unique shape and the texture added on the edges of the bearded irises is delightful.

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          I always remember you as the sunflower – lover!!!!! I’ll post more photos later.
          But gardening is truly my therapy – pruning and weeding are even better for stress….

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    Wow so beautiful! 😀

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      Thanks @edgarpordwed I’m having way too much fun making them into cards and sending in the mail. Funny thing is NO ONE writes back. But I get lots of texts…
      It’s okay – everyone loves to get mail and I can still write and it’s my way to support the post office.

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        Aah thats alright! Really it used to be a lot of fun to write letters and make cards.

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    These shots are beautiful!! Thanks for sharing.

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      Thank you @eazal – it truly is my pleasure – after all who doesn’t like to see beautiful flowers in this crazy scary world we are living in right now..

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    These are beautiful.

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    Can I add a footnote to this? My friend who has cancer and has been the reason I ended up taking these photos told me today that my photos of these flowers calms her soul. I can’t think of a better compliment.
    Sorry – I don’t have anyone else to share this with – but it is the ultimate compliment for me as a friend and a photographer!

    now if they could just make me some $$$

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      What a lovely compliment! I’m sure your talent will be recognized soon. Make a book, or start a website to sell your photos.

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    Whoa! These are gorgeous! You should submit these to a photography contest. Reminds me of Georgia O’Keeffe.

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