Alpenglow: Pennsylvania Style

"There's the wonder of sunset at evening,
The wonder as sunrise I see;
But the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul
Is the wonder that God loves me."

We sang the words to this hymn in church this morning ('The Wonder of it All' by George Beverly Shea).  Since I was planning to write about Alpenglow - the beautiful, almost unexplainable special light occasionally seen at sunrise and sunset, it was really neat to have that particular song chosen as one of our worship hymns just before I was going to write this post.
 
We don't live in the Alps... or even very high mountains-- but our hills are really beautiful anyway, especially now with the trees almost at their peak of fall color. Whether this is a photo of Alpenglow or not, I cannot be sure....

Alpenglow is light which occurs at sunrise or sunet, after the sun has gone just below the horizon.  Since the sun is low, the light has no direct path to touch the mountain, but is light reflected off particles in the sky, such as water, snow, or ice droplets.  Another possiblity for the light is that if you were high on the mountain, you would still be able to see the sun.  Whichever is the reason, it's really beautiful!

 It is the prettiest in the fall, when there is already a glow from the colors of the leaves, but it can happen anytime of year.

As I said earlier, it can also happen at sunrise or sunset.  These next photos are from just before sunrise.  I'm going to put the times they were taken in the captions.  After I took the first two photos, I turned in the opposite direction and took one looking toward the sunrise (which hadn't happened yet!)

7 : 36 : 26 a.m.

7 : 36 : 56 a.m.

7 : 37 : 15 a.m.

I think in this case, the sunlight was reflecting off the air droplets in the clouds above the trees on the hill, since I don't think the sun was high enough in the sky for its light to be hitting them directly.  That would fit the definition of Alpenglow.  

Either way, Alpenglow or simply direct sunshine lighting up the top of the mountains, I'm in awe of the wonderful beauty of it!

 

Colors of the Last Day of Summer

In my last post, I mentioned that I've been a little busy lately which is why I haven't blogged as much as usual.  So, before I get back to my 'regularly-scheduled programing', let me just show you a bit about what I was up to.

I love all the colors God created.  Every season has its' special palette.  The last day of summer had very special colors for our family.  Green was very much in evidence, but so was purple, pink, and yellow!  Let me explain.

It all started with seed packets back in January.  Seed packets for a special type of flowers.  You see, my daughter was planning a September wedding and she has always loved dried flowers.  Years ago, I grew and dried flowers as a hobby and to sell a few to make a little extra money, so she asked me about doing dried flowers for the wedding.  I was happy to say, "sure"!  

I doubt many brides-to-be and their mom's start out planning a wedding by looking at seed catalogs, but that's one of the things we did! This summer both my vegetable garden and flowerbeds contained some of the plants that were grown from the seed packs we ordered.

Here you can see the some of globe amaranth and strawflowers in our vegetable garden.

They were also nestled in between the marigold in my flowerbeds.

By the end of summer, the strawflowers were really reaching to the sky!

I was busy picking them everyday to dry, as well as many other types of flowers, such as statice... and wildflowers - goldenrod, joe-pye weed, boneset, and yarrow.

My clothes-drying racks dried flowers, not clothes, this summer!

 

 They all went on racks in my sunroom and then into boxes once they were dry.
Some may have gotten inspected first by Ruby.

These are the beautiful colors of the statice before it is dried.

Then after they were dried, I got busy making flower arrangements of various types.

Arrangements in progress at my work table.

Sara made the beautiful paper flowers in this swag and Dad made the arch they were placed on.

Dried flowers went on the flower girl's basket...

and even the homemade boutonnieres had a few dried flowers in them.

Thanks to Sara for her paper-flower making skills, as she made these, too!

It was a lot of fun for me to grow, dry and make these things, as well as being a "labor-of-love" for my daughter.

I did not make the bridal bouquets... they were purchased, but I think they were lovely.

The colors of the day... green, purple, pink, yellow, and white!

A Misty Morning Walk...

Or "How Almost Any Photo is Better with a Basset Hound Somewhere in it!

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been busy working on things for a special event (which I might share with you after next Saturday).  But Dr. Ruby is here today and I thought you might need a "Ruby-fix".  So I decided to just snap a bunch of photos on my walk with Ruby this morning and share them with you.

It was quite misty when we started out.

 I love the colors in a misty fall palette though - the soft greens and yellows and browns.   Now, let's add some white and rusty red.

 

"Glad to be of service to help with your photography" says Ruby.

It was misty, then it started to rain - very gently.

The leaf and raindrop seem to be leading my eye to -- wait, who's that? Ruby!

Ruby forged on ahead while I tried to take photos.

We waited out the rain for a few minutes under a sugar maple tree.

Ruby was eager to move on.  

"Hurry up so I can get back home and take my nap!"

The leaves are changing... some subtly like these Striped Maples, some more drastically like these Burning Bush.

 I enjoyed my walk with Ruby... even though each time I tried to stop to take a close-up photo, she wanted to keep going.  And when I looked at my photos on my laptop after we got back, I found she had photo-bombed quite a few of them!  Oh well, maybe every photo is better with a basset in it!