The Amature Photographer. Playing with photo editing and fliters.

I am a very amature photographer.  But I love going out and photographing things.

In all of my blogs in previous years I never did any 

editing to my photos other than croping them. 

I will admit I take hundreds of photos and then pick my very best to post.

This year I have started to play with the very basic photo editing programs

that came with my new computer.

This post is just showing the same photo using different photo editing filters.

I find the changes interesting, some photos work good with the changes and others look really awful.

Some of the filters have a dramatic change

this is burlesque.

Other filters you can barely tell what the change is,

this is the Icarus filter.

Neo.

Rouge.

Sahara.

Sauna.

Slate.

Zeke.

So which one do you like the best?

G.G.

Hellebore. A study of spring flowers.

This is a Hellebore flower.  It is often called a Winter or Lenten Rose.

It is not part of the rose family though it is part of the Ranunculaceae plant family.

This plant comes from Eastern Europe where it grows in meadows. 

Some of the native countries it can be found in are

Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Greece and Italy.

The flowers of these plant come in many colors.

I think I have photos of most of the colors in this post.

The colors can be black,purple, rose-pink, green, yellow and white.

In the past when flowers were sent in bouquets to send a message to 

the person receiving the flower,  Hellebore in the bouquet meant : Scandal and

Calumny.  The person who received the flowers would most likely take the 

message as one of  a wish from the sender to overcome or prevent such a disaster.

Do you know what Calumny means?  I didn't so I looked it up here is the definition,

Calumny: The act of making a statement about someone that is not true and is intended to

 damage the reputation of that person. 

Ouch! That's not nice, makes me think of a Taylor Swift song.  Perhaps she needs

to put some of these flowers in one of her music videos.

Most of the time the flowers are pointing down and it 

is hard to get a good photo of them.  I find that these photos that 

I have give a good view of the flowers.  They are pretty interesting

looking.

It always amazes me how one type of flower can have so many

different variations.  I just love looking at and studying flowers and plants.

Do you like Hellebore plants?

What is your favorite spring flower?

G.G. 

If I go missing....Reasons why you should not murder your husband.

My daughter and I are very into listening to crime podcasts.  She is the one who got me into listening to them.  We listen to "Crime Junkies".  So some of the post I do that are titled "If I Go Missing" are due to us listening to these podcasts.

          It was April 1, 2019 and we were all excited because my son was coming home from his mission.  I got up early and made my husband lunch and then headed back to bed.  I had a little time to rest before I needed to prepare for my sons return home.  About a half an hour later my phone dinged.  That means someone is texting me.  I was thinking it was my daughter texting good morning, but it seemed too early.  It wasn't my daughter it was my husband.
       "URGH...somehow I have your car keys in my coat at work."  was his text.
     " Please tell me this is an April fools day joke."  I texted back.  And then there was no answer.
I realized soon that this was no joke.  My question of questions which will probably never be answered is "Why does he have my keys???"  Which I think I may have texted and asked him.  Most of the things I wanted to do that day involved driving places.  Thankfully some I didn't need to do and I have a nice neighbor who was willing to run me up to the store to get the things I really needed.
           I have to say even though it was an accident that my husband had my keys I was a bit mad, a bit stressed and thus I decided to google "WHY SHOULD I NOT MURDER MY HUSBAND."
I mean do you ever just get so annoyed that you might think of killing someone?  I really wasn't that annoyed, but having a list of reasons why I shouldn't kill him at this panic stricken moment of my life would have helped.  Do you know what information I found from google about this topic?  Nothing.  There are absolutely no articles about why you shouldn't murder your husband. 
      Well the day went on and all the stress finally melted away once my son was finally home, and I was in a much better mood.  But I did have fun telling people about my crazy April fools day morning.  One person I told googled "how to kill my husband" and found tons of posts.  Post on how to kill someone and get away with it and I was pretty amazed.  I said to them that is not what I googled.
I wanted to know why I shouldn't kill my husband.  I didn't want to know how to kill him, I wanted some sane, good reasons as why I shouldn't. 
       The interesting twist to this whole crazy question is that the next week on "CRIME JUNKIES"  their podcast was about a lady and her boyfriend and how they almost got away with killing her husband.  It was interesting to listen to and also sad.  Because as you listen to the story, there could have been so many other ways to end a relationship than to have you new boyfriend, who happens to be your husbands best friend kill your husband.
Any ways here are some reasons you should not kill your husband.
Number one it's illegal. 
Number two if you have such big issues then you should find a way to leave him, but murder is not a good choice.
Number three probably whatever he did to annoy you was not done on purpose so maybe just give him a chance to make it up to you.
Number four in a few days you just may need him to fix the car, help with something broken in the house so then you will regret the fact that you murdered him.
Number five you most likely would regret killing someone.  I don't really know anything about it but I know I would not be able to live with myself if I did something that terrible. 
So while in a moment of annoyance you may think my husband is driving me crazy, remember murdering him is not something you should do. 
I really love my husband.  He is a hard working sweet guy.  Some days he does things and I am like whatever made you do that.  I will never know why he had my car keys, I don't think he even knows why he had them.  It did cause me a bit of stress, but you know what we survived.  Things worked out.  Life moves on. 
If you enjoy learning about true crimes I would highly recommend "Crime Junkies"  their podcast is pretty cool.
G.G.
Have you ever got really annoyed with your husband?  What helped you get over it?

Day Date The Red Butte Gardens. Scheduling time to rest and relax. April 27, 2019

I had a three day weekend this week which is very unusual.

The nice thing was my husband also had a long weekend and we

decided to take a day and go out and explore one of the gardens 

near where we live. We went to the Red Butte Gardens.

What I love about the Red Butte Gardens is that pretty much

every plant and tree has a plaque telling you about it.  I love learning about nature

so this is a nice place for me to go and learn and enjoy a beautiful garden.

Something that I learned in the past few years is that if you don't 

schedule time to relax you will be constantly doing things.

So be smart and schedule time to relax and remove yourself from the 

rat race of this world.  Find places to visit where you can feel far away from

all the pressures of life.

I think this is a type of Trillium plant.  It is just cool looking.

The Red Butte garden has nice brick walkways and then all kinds of paths

that take you out into the woods.  They have benches to sit on all over the place.

We sat on this bench and just enjoyed the sound of the water running by us.

A pair of geese sat behind us.  It was fun to just watch them and enjoy the moment.

The water wise garden goes up a steep incline and you

get some wonderful views of Salt Lake City.

My husband found a comfortable chair up in this part and just

relaxed for a good hour while I continued to wander around the other gardens.

I believe this is a violet, I've never seen one that was all speckled before.

I believe this is a bee.  My camera was having a hard time 

focusing on things today.  Maybe it was that the bees and butterflies were 

just not staying in one place long enough.

I love seeing wildlife on my day trips.

After spending hours out in nature we felt so much more refreshed and ready to 

start a new week.  So if you feel worn out and stressed.  Schedule some time

to relax and be away from computers and phones. 

Hope you enjoyed my photos.

G.G.

My Garden Walk. Week 5 Hundres of Tulips. April 24, 2019

This I think is probably the best week to see the tulips.  If you could only go 

once you would want to go when more of the tulips are in bloom. 

I think all our rainy weather has made for a much better year

at the Tulip Festival than last year.  It seems like the flowers lasting longer

than they did last year.  

I will have to look on their website to find out how

many tulips they plant for this event.  There seems to 

be hundreds if not thousands of Tulips.

I often wonder if they come in early in the morning or

late at night and plant extra tulips.  As I don't remember this

having so many tulips last week and now it's all tulips.

Many of the Tulips in the Fragrance Garden are now in 

bloom.  I have taken photo's of as many as I can with their name plates.  

I'm going to do a separate blog post with them later.

This is a new favorite place to take a photo.

I just like the effect of the light in the door way to the Secret Garden.

These are the flowers you see from the doorway.

The flowers in the Italian garden are looking really nice.

Last week the flowers in this area had not yet bloomed.

I like the pink and red colors.  It is very hard to get a photo in 

this spot.  There is always someone on this walk way.  I'm going

to try to make it in the morning soon and see if I can get a better photo.

Here we go...#Savethebees.  I'm thinking of making

a bee photo book.  Did you know that there are native bees that

come in colors other than yellow and black and they don't sting. I need to learn more

about these amazing insects and how to help them survive.

Now this is an amazing cabbage patch.  

There will probably be another blog post with these flowers so you can see 

just how small they really are.

Are these hairy tulips?  No they are Pulsatilla vulgaris or Pasque flowers.

I'm glad that they are putting more tags by the flowers and trees in the gardens.

I love learning about flowers I will have to read up on theses.

Well I hope you enjoyed looking at my photos. 

Have a wonderful week.

G.G.