Suddenly, I remembered that the Rhododendrons are up and from the glance I took at them, there are a lot of them this year. It is beginning to look like rain, so I didn’t want to wait. Grabbed the camera from the table next to me and went to take a few pictures. Rhododendrons and anything else that looked good.
I was looking not only at the flowers today, but at the bark and I realized that this is an old rhododendron. The bush was in the yard when we moved here, but it never bloomed. It threw up a bud now and again, but no flowers. It was only after we cut back the roses and it started to get more light that suddenly, it grew a whole new branch. It flowered last year, but it’s flowering a lot more this year. And oddly, the buds are pink, though the flowers are still white. Maybe some of them will turn pink?
As I was growing up, we had rhododendrons growing all around the house and they almost never bloomed. When they did, the flower was always white. I didn’t know they could bloom in other colors. Mostly though, they didn’t bloom because the garden was dark like this house, it was in a woods. In another time, I grew up in a different oak woods.
My father was here one afternoon — years ago right after we moved in. He looked around and said: “Do you realize how much this house is like our house in queens? Surrounded by oak trees?” That was when I realized I had moved home. With a 40 year break between, I came home. Again.
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Categories: Cee's Photo Challenge, Flower of the day, Flowers, Photography, rhododendron
Serendipity Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth 
Beautiful rhodies for today 😀
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Thank you Cee. They have really revived. I THINK it’s because we heavily pruned them and for some reason, that brought them back.
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I love the difference in those graphic shots. I suppose this is done with some wildly expensive thingy?
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It’s part of a not very expensive set of filters from Topaz, but getting a specific look takes a little practice. I’m always trying to make pictures look like graphic pictures from magazines. Sometimes, I almost get there.
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Thanks for the info, Marilyn… I shall check Topaz out!
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I wait for sales. They have changed their format recently and you have to figure out what you will need. Also check out NIK filters and ON1 filters. They are ALL good. You just have to try to figure out what you want. I’ve been buying them one at a time for years, so I have anything I need and some things I don’t. Topaz has an actual framework you can use to process photographs. It’s not expensive and it’s not a subscription AND they give you upgrades free for quite a while.
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Thank you, Marilyn!
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Yes, rhododendren are like that. But they also can’t stand too much sun, the fanciest ones were all living in England, soft climate, enough shade and sun, mild weather. NOT what you have over there….
Several of them died on me in France – because the linden trees plus the hedges hemmed their well being. I love them, such lush leaves, shiny, and they can grow HUGE.
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We pruned them way down and that seems to have revived them. I can tell from the size of the stem that it’s an old plant. I think the roses were strangling it.
Nothing gets too much sun around here. There’s no such thing as too much sun, not with a couple of thousand oak trees!
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