Category Archives: Landscape Photography

Late Fall vs Early Spring

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Woodland Path in Late Fall

Woodland Path in Early Spring

I love the four seasons. Above is one of the reasons. In early spring the red buds are bursting and the daffodils are blooming. Leaves on the woodland maples are just starting to emerge. Six months later, the leaves on the red buds have dropped and the leaves on the maples have turned brown and are just starting to drop. The foliage on the perennials have turned brown and are starting to die back. As winter moves in, the branches of the red and yellow twig dogwoods along with the red winterberries will provide winter color to the woodland.

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A Painting from the Woodland

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Snow-covered Maple Tree Leaves
Heatherwood Woodland

Our October Glory maples are one of the last trees to display their fall colors and to drop their leaves. The first two light snowfalls this year sprinkled the leaves with patches of white, leaving a beautiful woodland winter scene. Last year, an early heavy snowfall blanketed the branches with a layer of heavy snow. Several large branches bent over and broke, leaving large wholes in the tree’s shapes. This year, we have not seen any damage, yet!

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Winter Is Coming Early

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Winter Color
Heatherwood Lower Garden

Even when the ground is covered with snow, the color of Heatherwood shines through. This is one of my favorite intimate scenes in our lower garden. The bronze of the sawtooth oak, the red of the oak leaf hydrangeas, the yellow of the yellow-twig dogwood, the the grey-blue of the blue spruce, the purple-brown of the nine-bark, and the background orange and green highlight the winter garden.

This image was taken during our first snow about a week ago. Today we are getting our second snowfall of the season. It looks like it will be a big one. The good news is that I have my tractor back from its seasonal maintenance check up to plow the driveway. The bad news is that we have not put on our snow tires yet.

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An Eastern Washington Blue Sky Winter Day

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Looking Up to Selah Ridge
Heatherwood, First Snow

We had our first snow of the season a couple of days ago. After the snow flurries stopped, the sky opened up to this beautiful blue sky. Off I went with my camera! The remaining late fall color created a nice contrast against the fresh snow. It will be several months before we will have a morning cup of coffee here in one of our little garden hideaways.

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Hills and Ridges

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Along Sage Ridge Road
Badlands National Park, SD

Colors, light, shadows, hills, ridges, and valleys … they are all here in the Badlands. The late afternoon sun pops out the colors, shapes, and textures from a rather grey-brown scene at midday. This image is not as sharp as I would like it to be, but it still captures the feeling of awe I had gazing over the vast landscape.

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Disappointment Followed by “Ah Ha!”

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Devil’s Tower
Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming

On my recent trip to the Badlands, I took a several hour detour to see Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. I drove into the park and was disappointed when I encountered a stopped line of traffic. After what seemed to be an eternity, I slowly moved around a corner and saw a sign, “One Hour to Parking Lot”. I grumbled and turned around and started driving back to the park entrance. After a bit, I broke out into the open from the tree lined road. I looked up and saw this sight. Ah ha!!! It was worth the drive.

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Driveway Welcome

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Looking in from the Driveway
Heatherwood Autumn

This is one of the several views that we have designed into our Heatherwood garden. Its purpose is to create an interesting view into the garden from the street as walkers stroll past our driveway. Late autumn provides beautiful color contrasts with the whites of the birch limbs against the reds of the Autumn Glory maples. The foreground of grasses, perennials and evergreen shrubs give it a little extra punch.

It is our pleasure to share the garden with our neighbors to brighten their days as well as ours.

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Thanksgiving Colors

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Path to Center Circle
Heatherwood Autumn

Oranges, reds, yellows, and browns are the colors of Thanksgiving. Heatherwood, in the late fall, displays these colors throughout the garden. We cook our Thanksgiving turkey outside. So even with all the football games going on, we venture out every half hour or so and enjoy the fall colors around us.

We have so much to be thankful for, including this little spot of Eden. We wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving as you enjoy it with family, friends, loved ones, and each other!

K & M

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Brightness on a Dreary Late Fall Morning

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Winter Garden Color in the Lower Garden
Heatherwood Autumn

We designed Heatherwood to have color throughout all four seasons. Color provided by the Midwinter Fire, red-twig, and yellow-twig dogwoods complements the brightness and textures of the ornamental grasses. In a few years, the evergreen trees will get taller creating a nice green background. Together they all provide brightness to a dreary late fall day.

This part of the garden is three years old. We have enjoyed watching the plants grow from one gallon pots to these mid-sized shrubs and grasses. It will take a couple more years for them to fill in and mature into “garden-sized” plants. By then, the evergreens will have grown several feet taller. Watching a garden grow provides so much enjoyment for Mary and I!

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Buddies

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Chief Joseph Lodgepole Pine & Sester’s Dwarf Blue Spruce
Heatherwood Autumn

I woke up this morning and read the news headlines. My spirits were down in the dumps. To bring my spirits up, I started reviewing my images of our garden that I created earlier this week. I stopped when I saw the image above and started to contemplate. Here are two completely different species growing up side by side, complementing each other in complete harmony with the other trees and plants in the landscape around them. Why can’t we do the same?

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