Thursday 13: The Bonsai Tree Edition

This week’s Thursday 13 comes from running out of storage on my laptop.  We’ve set up a trail camera to see the groundhogs eat, and those videos are taking up a lot of space on the laptop.  (If you want to see the groundhog videos, here’s a link to see them.)

So, I started looking through the files on my computer.  I have so many pictures and videos!  I’ve been slowly uploading things to my Google Drive, and in the process, I’m coming across things I meant to post before. 

These are from a trip to the NC Arboretum in the spring of 2022.  Better late than never, right? 

We usually manage to go when it’s too cold for the bonsai trees to be outside, and we only get to see a limited display inside, but this time, we timed our visit better and got to see all of them outside.  So, here are thirteen pictures from our visit to the bonsai tree exhibit. 

This one was my overall favorite.  I love how it's covered in little pink flowers.

Here’s a closeup of the flowers.  I think they look like tiny azaleas.  

I liked how these two looked like tiny little forests. 

 I liked how these two leaned over.  It seems like, normally, only very large trees lean like that. 

The exposed roots on this one were interesting.

Here’s a closeup of them. 

 Here’s another one with pink flowers. 

Finally, four more that I thought were pretty since I’m showing you thirteen of them.

How do you store and organize your videos and photos?  Do you ever forget about them once you save them to your computer?  

A Catch Up Post

I basically took a month off of blogging right after my post about keeping up with blogging in January.  That’s the way it goes, right?

It hasn’t been a terribly interesting month, and work has been insane.  Most of the time at the end of the day I just want to come home, crawl under a blanket on the couch, eat lots of junk food, and watch Netflix.  That doesn’t lead to doing much blogging, or much of anything else.

Nick and I have been passing some sort of cold back and forth for the past couple of weeks, so that has also made us much more inclined to spend a lot of time on the couch watching TV.  We’ve been taking lots of vitamins, so I’m hoping we’ll finally shake it for good this time. 

February and March seem to have traded places as far as what the weather is supposed to be like.  We had several beautiful, warm days in February.  Our daffodils and hyacinths bloomed.  It really seemed like winter was over, and spring had arrived early.  Nope.   March has been cold, rainy, and windy.  We’ve had some snow, and there’s more snow forecast for later this week.  We’re kind of at the point where it feels like winter is never going to end.  The daffodils and hyacinths are still holding on, so that’s a hopeful sign. 

We finally visited the North Carolina Arboretum on one of the nice Saturdays in February.  Nick had been before, but I hadn’t.  We had been talking about going for years, but just kept putting it off.  We finally picked a Saturday to go with our friend Alex.  We met Alex at the Farmer’s Market first, and spent some time walking around and perusing the booths there.  It’s still a little early for some things, but we bought some fresh produce and a few jams and sauces.  I absolutely love farmer’s markets and produce stands, so I always find something I just can’t live without. 

After the Farmer’s Market we had lunch and then headed to the Arboretum to walk around.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and honestly tried to keep my expectations pretty low so I wouldn’t be disappointed.  I was definitely not disappointed.  It’s huge!  There are so many different gardens, picnic areas, lots of walking paths, and more strenuous hiking trails.  We only had a few hours before dark, so we stayed off of the longer trails, and mostly stuck to the gardens and walking paths. 

Of course most things weren’t in bloom yet, but some of the trees and flowers had bloomed.  We saw some Royal Star Magnolias that were in bloom.  They were absolutely gorgeous!  I think I want to try planting one in our yard, despite my terrible track record with trees.  They’re gorgeous enough to make me want to try again.  Being there and seeing the gardens made me really want to get out in the yard and start planting things. 

I think it will be absolutely gorgeous at the Arboretum once spring is actually here and more of the flowers are in bloom.  We definitely want to go back.  I think it could be nice to take a picnic and spend the entire day there. 

I think that’s really the only interesting thing we’ve done for the past month.  Other than that it has mostly been work and just day to day chores.  I’m hoping we’ll be able to get out and do more once the weather stays nice for a while. 

So what about you?  What have you been up to for the past month?  Is it finally spring where you are?  Or is winter still holding on?