365 Photo Challenge - April

In April, I had what will likely be the easiest of my monthly challenges - Foliage. Unless one lives in a desert, we all have an ample supply of foliage to zero in on. But in the Pacific Northwest we are sometimes overwhelmed by foliage. Gardeners here spend as much time figuring out how to stop things from growing in their yards as they do actually encouraging plants to grow. In April, you can see the landscape greening right before your eyes on a daily basis.

So I was spoiled for choice. I found however, that like the omnipresent grey rockery variety of rock I encountered in March, unless you got very close, green foliage was very much of a muchness. So I tried to get close, and I went for what caught my eye.

Maples caught my eye more often than anything else, I left a lot of maples on the cutting room floor. What surprised me most was how much red there is in spring growth - one of those things I think I knew but had never really considered. Much of the red remains in stems but you must catch some red leaves quickly before they turn.

New rose growth

Another group of surprises came when I was at my computer looking more closely at some of the tree leaves I had shot. Quite a few of them turned out to be very much in bloom, something I tried to remind myself of when shooting the May Florals.

Just because it's green, doesn't make it foliage

When one is planning, whether it be a flower bed or a much larger landscape, your color palette is supremely important. I have always been drawn to the blue-grey and the chartreuse foliage for that defining 'pop'. Had I done foliage later in the year I think I would have found more of the blues and greys.

One of the many grasses now being cultivated

I suspect I could have done an entire year of foliage photos - and I might do that one year, if only to catch the autumn leaves turning. Until then, here is one from 2010 taken from my deck.