eevy24012's photostream Pro User

The first blooms this year, this plant is also fragrant.

I took this a few years ago on a visit to the Roan Highlands, the first night of the trip. Grassy Ridge Bald is my favorite and normal preferred spot to backpack up and camp for the duration, but after enduring a multi-hour lightning experience during the night there in June '08, I will not risk it again when there is a chance of storms. Such was the case this trip, so we opted to car camp up on Roan Mountain where the vehicle and greater safety could be accessed in the event of storm. Turned out being a fortunate decision since there was one this time, and we did spend about an hour and 1/2 insulated by rubber tires....and what a downpour!

Roan High Bluff is the westernmost vantage point in the highlands, so therefore it affords the best views of the sunset since this mountain isn't in the way like all locations east of Carvers Gap. This was taken from the observation deck on the cliff edge. Oddly enough I don't recall seeing anyone else with sunset photos from here, a rather undershot location considering the Photgrapher's Mecca that is the Roan Highlands.

This was 3 shots blended using luminosity masking, taken with my old camera and lens combo.

May has been delivering for me with the sky and better than average shooting conditions, this from over a week ago on the parkway heading up Thunder Ridge from the James River area.

My wife and I have been plating fragrant flowers around the house the past several years and in the warmer months there is usually something sweet smelling to some degree anyway. I have some fragrant deciduous azalea that on a calm muggy morning can be smelled from 20 ft sometimes. NOTHING beats a Fringe Tree though on fragrance or distance. Today the wind has been howling and it has thrown the scent from the front yard to the back, probably 75 ft. The first time I ever encountered one of these trees I was hiking in the local mountains with some friends and we kept smelling something really nice, but couldn't see the source. Finally spotted a large white tree well off the trail, and I later learned it was a Fringe Tree. The day was calm and fogged in, we picked it up about 1/4 mile away. I knew I had to have one, so now I have 2 small ones next to the driveway. They get covered up in blooms and oddly enough around my area you don't see a lot of them in yards.

Our fragrant items include deciduous azalea, rose, oriental lilies, some jasmine, Carolina Jessamine, apple trees, hosta, coneflowers, Sweet Autumn Clematis, Yellow Trillium, gardenia and the Fringe Trees. I love it when I go out in the mornings and being greeted with some nice fragrance from whatever happens to be in bloom.

I was fortunate to finally catch my favorite parkway dogwoods with a suitable sky, though the blooms were a little on the fade. These trees just don't put out like in the past, perhaps they are suffering from a blight or something. Anyway this one and another about 1/8 mile down the road are like old friends to me.

Hope you have been getting out if you are a bloom fan, I'd say now we are about at halftime with most of the early flowers gone in the low and mid elevations, now is the time I like to see the Pink Ladys Slippers and chase rhododendron and azalea from the low elevations all the way up the highest eastern mountains. I've been enjoying this spring so far with the prolonged milder temps and extended bloom times as a result. It has been a gift.

This image was just a single exposure with some levels adjustments and sharpening.