I do not need to travel to Washington DC or to Japan to enjoy the blooming of the cherry trees. We have them right here in the valley around lake Balboa. Lake Balboa was created to use water from the Tillman reclamation plant. For some reason people don’t want the reclaimed water in their faucets. What nature does in three years, the reclamation plant does in a month or less. I guess that is just too little time between sewage and drinking water. So most of the water is used for irrigation as well as creating this wonderful lake and park.
In 1992 a Japanese company donated 100 cherry trees, they are of a variety that can handle the heat – but apparently not the draught. More than half have died over the years. Now that we’ve had some very rainy winters, maybe they will do better. I did notice that new younger trees have been planted.
I started taking pictures with my regular lens. It does a beautiful job. Then I switched to the Macro lens.
Closer. This image feels very Japanese, off center, a lot of negative space. That is if you consider the sky to be negative… almost like a modern quilt.
Ahh, these closeups! I am really enjoying what the camera can capture, that my naked eye can’t. Sort of like the incredible slo-mo extreme closeups in the nature shows on TV. We wouldn’t be watching them if they were at normal speed.
This lake is known for the birds. In the past I have shared pictures of the duck and geese. But I didn’t have this amazing camera, so here you go with incredible detail.
A Canada goose. They have to make sure to keep the numbers down. These guys can get nasty! They also are very tame, people are walking by, driving by and feeding them.
White and black. I was concentrating on the swan and his reflection, lets say the black duck photobombed the image.
Cherry blossoms aren’t the only thing at the park. We have some wisteria. I used to have a neighbor down the street with a lovely old wisteria vine. Well, he sold the house and a McMansion is rapidly being built on the property. Other neighbors had hoped to transplant the wisteria, but no, it was ripped out and tossed. So I come here to the lake to visit wisteria.
Image taken with my regular lens, very nice. Good detail in the foreground, faded out in the background.
Look at this! The clarity of the details I get with the macro lens.
This must be a different variety of wisteria, flatter, less complicated.
This is a closeup of the flowerbeds before they elongate and burst into that wonderful waterfall of petals. Oh, as it has gotten warmer, the cherry trees were busy shedding their flowers. Maybe another week or two and they’ll be gone. Lets hope the wisteria lasts a little longer.
Leah