I started on this corner of the back-yard sometime in early March; I did the work in small increments whenever the weather allowed. My goal was to have all the prep done by Mother’s Day, the frost-free date for this part of the country. The main work was putting down stone-fill to anchor the various shelves, cinder-blocks, pavers and posts that held the pots. I also needed to eliminate the many tunnels and bolt-holes that the supports had created behind the stones and under the pots. In behind the flower-pots and rock-walls, the tunnels and bolt-holes had become home to a family of Northside rats. (And you can imagine how the dogs – also known as Ratters – reacted to the squatters in their back-yard.)

A secondary goal was to delegate all ceramics into this landscape. Ceramic pots look great, but man they are a bitch to move; and taking them in for the winter was becoming too much work. The large greenish-blue pot in the back corner has been coming in and out of the house for almost 10 years; I was done with that routine. (The large urn in the foreground has always been decorative and therefore empty.)

This year, I added the small flowerbed in the right-hand corner of the landscape image. I want to grow rosebushes that I can trellis in front of my neighbor’s garage wall. When we first moved into the house back in January of ’83, there was a spectacular rose with wine-red flowers. It lasted all of one year; the next winter killed it. And since then, I’ve been trying to grow roses with minimal success. Am hoping that the rosebushes will work out.

On a separate topic – I’m trying to figure out the optimum location and light for the Ƶ-7. The two image in the above composite were first shot with the Mirror-less camera, but they were too dark. I re-shot with the the D7100 and used the new images from that shoot to recreate the composite.

The Ƶ-7 is a great camera for indoor, no-flash photography. The images of the quilts that I shot at the Westmoreland Museum were absolutely amazing. The colors were true and touch-ups were minimal. I will use it for indoor shoots throughout my trip to Italy. The D7100, with a zoom lens, gives me better results out-of-doors and so I will use it when walking the streets of Florence and the alleyways of Venice.