This is Page 2 of 2 - the best of January 2011!
posted: January 31st, 2011
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This page begins Sunday, January 9th - a trip to Jindai Botanical Garden - and takes you through January 28th - a trip to Nogawa Park to check on the progress of spring. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
Begin January 9th
  On January 9th Kazuya went to Jindai Botanical Garden right at opening time. We wanted to try and find Frost Flowers. Wd found some, but they were so very tiny compared to the ones which we found at Mt. Takao last month (HERE) (will open in new window) that we didn't bother to take a single photo. We did find ice on the main pond (first shot) - which is rather rare for us to see. They also had a couple of little bonsai displays (2nd photo) and several displays of the "Seven Spring Vegetables" (3rd photo). I don't know the names of all of these edible vegetables, but 1 of them is daikon, another is turnip and a 3rd is chickweed. That's all I know.
  They had a fairly nice outdoor display of Tree Peonies, one of which you can see in the first photo. We went to the Plum Garden and found a few of the Plum Blossoms to be open already (2nd and 3rd shots).
  Here is one exquisite Plum Blossom in first position. I used the Magnetic Lasso in Photoshop to Lasso just the flower and then used Shadow Illuminator Pro ONLY on the flower. Then I copied that flower and pasted it into a new canvas. I like it - hope that you do too. The 3rd shot has not been adjusted in any way.
  We took a quick trip through the greenhouse and we found this Calliandra haematocephala to be in bloom, we had never seen it in bloom before. The 2nd and 3rd shots are a flower which I have shown you before. I think I finally got it perfectly this time and I won't have to photograph it again. The 2nd and 3rd images are both 3-exposure bracketed photos of an Amazon Basin Water Lily - Victoria cruziana. I took 3-exposure bracketed exposures in each case and then Tone-mapped them with the Details Enhancer Option of Photomatix Pro. For comparison - the October photos are on Page 1 in Row 1 HERE (new window) and the December photos are on Page 2 in Row 5 HERE (new window).
  On January 28th Kazuya and I went to Nogawa Park to check on the progress of spring. We found the Shibateranthis pinnatifida (Setsubunsou in Japanese) to be barely started blooming. Quite often it is better than this by now. This is the first spring "ground" flower.
  We found some birds, but the only one which cooperated with us by sitting around long enough to be photographed was this Dusky Thrush (Turdus naumanni).
End January 28th, End Page 2, End January 2011's Photos
  Here are links to separate web pages - all of them will open in a new window (or new tab). The first link shows some photos of our DVD Collection, an AVI Movie of our Home Theater System and 9 photos of our Sharp Aquos TV. The 2nd link shows our entire DVD collection in DVD Profiler (if you're asking yourself what might be good to rent for the weekend). The DVD's will be sorted by date purchased. You can click on the "Title" Column to sort that way if you desire. The 3rd link shows our entire DVD collection in php DVD Profiler, which is much more sophisticated than the plain vanilla DVD Profiler just above it. The 4th link takes you to a set of pages which show you the FRONT cover-art of our entire DVD collection.
February 22, 2009 - DVD Collection & Home Theater System
Please check it out by clicking on the above button. (Click on the "Studies of Plants and Wildlife"  link in the new window.)
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Thanks so much for taking the time to look at the website this month. We hope that you found something which you enjoyed. You can use the e-mail link below to respond with any feedback you might have.
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