Colors of the Pacific Northwest

Posted on December 15, 2020 by

37 Comments

Despite my dreams of a Winter Wonderland there’s no snow yet in the Great Northwest only rain, rain, and more rain. What’s a person to do? Time for an indoor project and it so happens I’ve got one.

For the last couple of months I’ve been going through the photos on my blog and resizing them to save up media space. I use free software, either ‘Paint’ or Sony’s ‘Play Memories’ that came with my camera. (Remember file size matters? )

In so doing, I’m cheered by the beautiful colors of the Northwest which I happen to need during this gray and dreary time and I’m hoping they’ll cheer you too!

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, a visit to Skagit Valley a few years ago during the Tulip Festival with Mt. Baker in the background. Hopefully by April the Tulip Festival can safely resume with the rollout of vaccines to curtail this miserable virus!

How about some purple hydrangeas? I’ve never seen any prettier than these at Soos Creek Botanical Garden. Fortunately the garden was open to masked visitors all season long.

I found the azaleas at the Washington Arboretum – the yellow and orange are my favorites. I hope to return in the spring to breathe in their sweet fragrance.

The salmon are all colors of the rainbow as they return to the Cedar River to spawn.

Finally I’ll close with one of my favorite hummingbirds who seemed to wink at me while I took his picture.

That’s enough for today.

~ Susanne

Category: Nature, PhotographyTags: , , , , ,

37 Comments on “Colors of the Pacific Northwest”

  1. I love the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I took my mom once and she thought she was in heaven. Some colourful pictures here!

  2. Nice to revisit some colourful images at this time of year. It was totally dark here by 3:40 this afternoon. 😦
    Best wishes, Pete.

  6. Lots of lovely color there. The salmon are spectacular. I hope your project’s going well.

    • Thank you. I do a little at a time and have already saved tons of storage space. I’m probably 75% done. It also lets me review my old posts which is interesting.

  8. Pingback: #SundayStills ~ Winter Wonderland On the High Ground #Snow #Mountains #Nature – Picture This ~ My Photography

  11. Cedar River! Oh my that brings back memories. Our family farm was on the bluff above the Cedar River in Maple Valley, this was in the 1960’s and 70’s. All summer long, at least two or three times a week, we would ride our horses down to the river to swim them (yes, the horses loved it!). Early in the late spring/early summer we had to be very watchful as upriver the Army Corps of Engineers would occasionally do a water release for flood control and it would not be a good thing to be in the river when that happened. We learned to watch for a quick water level rise and get out FAST because we knew what was coming next. At other times, salmon spawning kept us from taking horses into the river as we did not want to step on slow-moving fish. We were always entertained by vacationers’ dogs (in those days a lot of folks had cabins or camps along the river) rolling in dead salmon, we could only imagine how many dirty dog baths would ensue.Would love to know if the formerlly high levels of returning salmon have come back up, as when we sold our farm in the 1980s so few salmon could be found in that area of the river.

    • Thanks for sharing your history of the Cedar River. 🙂 I remember going to Maple Valley when I was a kid to the Aqua Barn, remember that? (No longer there.) Now that I live in the area I love to watch the salmon spawn in the river. I’m not sure if levels have improved or not but when I went down this year I didn’t see that many.

  12. Yes — Aqua Barn – as a kid that is where I took ballet classes for a long time; in the Maple Valley area the Aqua Barn was pretty much the activity center of the area. We never rode their rental horses because we had our own, but we did buy one of their retired rent string horses so that she could live out her life on our farm, a beautiful black mare named Bonnie. We did ride her sometimes but she was the only one of our horses that saidm”no thanks” about into the river.

  13. Beautiful pictures! I need to resize mine, but I’m unsure how to do it. I need to get to researching that. Great post!

    • Thanks so much! I’m mostly using ‘Paint,’ which came with Microsoft windows on my PC. Very easy to use. Just open your photo in the app and ‘resize.’ I usually size down to 30%. I have saved tons of space!

      • I used to use Paint, but I have a Mac now, so not sure what to do, But I do need to check into it since everyone wants to limit storage these days, unless you pay extra for it.

      • I figured it out on my Mac, thank you so much for posting about it so I even thought to do that. And BTW, it is now snowing over here on Christmas afternoon, I am so stoked!!

  14. I can definitely relate with ya. We got a dusting of snow a couple weeks ago. Not even an inch.

    The last 2 days have been awesome. Heavy fog. And I got to see the ghostly rolling fog today.

      • I hope you get what you want! I fear spring will start soon here… or worse, 4 season weather until June when summer comes in full force.

      • I like a few snows lol! I at least like cold weather… haven’t had much of that either lol!!

        I’m overly talkative. I’ll let you go!

  15. Pingback: Postcard No. 5 - On Color And Thirst - anon gray

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