Weekly Photo Challenge: Color
Kniphofia uvaria, Red Hot Poker or Torch Lily depending on your mood. These lovely flowers originate from Cape Province, South Africa. This example resides on some family property in South Carolina. The vividness of their colors always amazes me.
Guilin: Forest of Sweet Osmanthus
Guanxi Province is known for its stunning natural beauty: green rivers meandering by lofty, tree-covered hills and jagged, gray karst spires that reach into the sky. There’s a national forest, subtropical mangroves, and miles and miles of farmland. The province is also home to several minority ethnic groups, Yao, Miao,Dong and Zhuang. Its history as […]
New Friends, Ancient Roads
We had the pleasure of our first couchsurfing experience with the Higashi family in Sakurai, about an hour south of Nara. For those not familiar with couchsurfing, it’s a program where people open their homes to travelers who not only benefit from a free place to stay, also get to know local hosts (and vice […]
Blooms and Volcanoes
Arriving in Kagoshima in the late afternoon, we checked in and relaxed for a bit before heading back out for dinner. It was great to see Miwa, who was in town for the weekend as well! She had been an exchange student to Cape Cod around the same time I was in Japan, and it […]
Brekky on the Beach
After a quick breakfast on the beach by the picturesque Geraldton Lighthouse, we head inland to the real Wildflower Country. In this section, the most common were pink, yellow, and white everlastings, along with banskia, purple scaevola and in a few areas the rare wreath flower, which grows in a circle, flowers around the outside […]
Wildflower Way
This morning we drove the 18 km loop through Leseur National Park, one of the most important reserves for flora conservation in Western Australia. There are many endemic and rare species here, and September is prime, spring wildflower viewing time. On the drive we saw many of the 900 species of flora in the park, […]