Oma's Garden

My grandmother turned 104 last month and is still doing very well. She has always loved gardening, a passion that was strongly picked up by my mother and that my sister and I are trying to carry on. Even though she has people come care for the garden these days (under supervision, of course), the garden still reflects her influence. When I was visiting there in June of last year, the garden still looked beautiful even though the winter was coming on and there was a serious drought. I was impressed by the wide variety of blooms that were there - there are more photos to come in this series!

Floating Flowers Note Card

This photo has a much less inspiring history. For Chinese New Year in 2007, Wes and I went to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to visit Angkor Wat and the surrounding temple complex. It was a wonderful trip - I am sure many of the photographs will be here soon. In our hotel's restaurant, there was a large container of floating flowers the entire time we were there. I could not say with certainty what they are, but I thought they looked pretty neat so I took this photo on our last day there.

Our first listing

The first picture I chose to put up on the shop is of a lotus flower in the garden of a monastery outside of Hue, Vietnam in September 2007. We visited the monastery after spending the day on a motor bike tour of the countryside surrounding Hue. The weather was perfect and the pond full of lotus flowers was a center point of the tranquil garden. On the way to the garden, we passed by young apprentice monks doing their studies inside.

I am not sure what thoughts this image inspires in you, but for me it conjures memories of that day and the feeling of peace and tranquility of the quiet garden.

We have launched!

I have started this blog to chronicle my efforts in the new etsy store (AWPhotography.etsy.com) that I set up to share some of the pictures that we have collected over the past few years. So far, Wes and I have enjoyed going through the pictures together to choose the ones that we like the best. As of today, we have our first official listing. I plan to put up a little back story for the pictures that end up in an item for the shop. We hope it goes well!!

Feel free to add your comments on how you think we are doing or if there are any kinds of photos you are looking for.