tropical colors

a few weeks ago we squeezed a bunch of valentine's day arrangements right before jetting off to lisbon, portugal for an extended long weekend.  i think everything went off successfully.  my only regret is not having really nice shots of the arrangements -- oh well.

i spent our trip lugging around and shooting with my film camera, a used mamiya 645D.  i've been trying film more.  returning home to process 500+ digital images is not fun (i've done that a lot) and likely those images would sit untouched in my hard drive.  so with 16 pics and $25+ to process and scan each roll, i came back with only 3 rolls shot and 200 or so digital files.  the whole "think-through-the-shot-before-hitting-the-shutter" on my mamiya certainly carried through to our digital work.  i say "our" because pete used the digital camera most of the time and i borrowed it for a few shots here and there.  hopefully, i can post my lisbon pictures by the end of the week.

but here are some flowers to bridge the wait.  i've been doing a lot of purple work lately and thought a lively palette would provide a nice change for you and me.

juliet garden roses, cappuccino roses, sweet peas, icelandic poppies, leucothoe and fern  

hand-tied bouquet of tycoon yellow roses, icelandic poppies, sweet peas, leucothoe and fern

macaron update

yeah, so, it turns out that my oven thermomenter was completely broken.  i thought that my oven was overheating by 25-30 degrees, but it turns out that it under-heats by 5 degrees (oops)!

accordingly the original laduree macaron recipe seems to work as printed.  300 degrees for 15-18 minutes.  yup and no hollow macarons.  i made black cherry ones and it's pretty eff-ing good.

blue astilbe

local lavender anemones, local cream ranunculus, japanese purple sweet peas,
 japanese lavender/blue astilbe and japanese spirea

yeah, so i spotted these blue astilbe at the wholesale market.  stopped me dead in my tracks.  they're japanese and dyed -- i wish they came blue.  true blue flowers are a rare thing indeed.  

hellebores

oh hellebores.  these are from holland and my best estimate of vase life is 2-3 days without the assistance of a cooler.  i need my own hellebore patch but in the meantime these will do.

i'm trying to get this blog post done for the week before the start of the Super Bowl commercials.  i'm rooting for the seahawks (can't stand peyton and wes welker is a traitor).  but at the end of the day (game), i only care about the score.  i put $20 into two squares with 7 and 7.  i need these guys to score, perhaps 7-17 and the end of the first quarter.  hold it there and i'll be $1000 richer come monday.