Foto Friday - Some bees, some butterflies and a few trees

This week I am thankful

for the bees,

the butterflies,

and the trees.

I took another walk,

but this time it was back to my favorite trail

and I started off at the butterfly garden. 

Okay, let's say I lost myself in it!

But then I made my way 

over the bayou

and through the woods

to the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

I was so immersed in my walk

that I almost forgot about my son's

basketball game -

how does one forget that?

And had I not filled the card on my camera

I might have missed it altogether.

So, to say the least

the last part of that 5 mile walk

that started out at 74

became a challenge

in what ended up a 90 degree day!

"Praise the bridge that carries you over"

- George Coleman

I love this walking bridge, it has carried me over many things in my thoughts!

{linked to Photo Art Friday}

After doing some of my favorite go-to's in Picnik I decided to try a few different things. First I used a little

orton-ish, then cross process. Then I tried ripple blocks fade 20%, HSL filter until I got the color slide

I liked. Then I added Hex cells at 55% size 8.68 and softened at 50% brushing off the bridge. The last thing - circle splash on screen mode faded 48% at a radius of 246.49. This is really different for me!

This is the before picture - no edits.

Before I even left the house though, I walked to the end of my sidewalk to enjoy the incredible smell

of this trailing purple lantana and was instantly graced by this skipper butterfly.

Maybe someday technology will be so incredible that I can share this fabulous scent with a scratch and sniff!

This one done in sepia brushing off to expose some color.

{linked to Fabulous Friday and Shoot, Edit and Submit}

From the butterfly garden, an orange sulfur butterfly which had an incredible brown markings on the inside

of it's wings. Of course it didn't stay long enough to capture that!

And the bees, lots and lots of bees - it almost felt like a spring day, not fall!

But I guess they are busy gathering and storing for the winter.

All summer I hadn't seen any Monarch butterflies, until the last couple of weeks. This garden was FULL of them, dozens and they were playing tag-your-it with each other and made it really difficult to capture

a photo. I couldn't get within 5 feet of one before they would fly off, so my experience last week when I got one to go on my hand is just that much more special!

The light that day was just perfect . . .

I even came across a little Christmas in the forest!

I kept thinking that any minute when I turned another corner I would find someone building a new

bench or something - it sounded like someone was pounding wood - more like pecking.

Is that not just a gorgeous woodpecker? A red headed Pileated Woodpecker!

Just a beautiful day all around!

Have a really fabulous weekend!
Love, Kim
XO