2012 in pictures

 As a final goodbye to 2012 I took a look through my photographs and thought I'd post a little season-by-season review of the year here.  Most of them are of the natural world because that's what attracts my eye.  

Late Winter 

Not much snow happens in Victoria, but when it happens we love to go out and play, especially the dogs.  This snow was in January.

We have to feed extra concentrated nectar to the hummingbirds in the cold weather so it doesn't freeze.

Winter here is mostly cloudy and rainy with lots of dripping branches and not much except a few dried up berries in the garden.

The exception is the Hellebore, which blooms throughout the winter and the crocus which pops its head out in February.

                 

We took a few weeks in February and March to visit the southwest, notably Arizona and New Mexico, to get out of the rain.   Here are a few images from that trip. This is our good old motorhome at Borrego Springs.  We sold it on our return to Victoria.

Here are some desert plants...

Sajuaro and blooming Ocotillo                                                  and Aloe Vera

and some scenes from the dry southwest....

 On the left a rusted classic car from Bisbee and on the right an adobe building at the Tumacacori Mission historic site near Tubac.  Both are in Arizona.   

These chairs are outside the museum in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

 

And both of these are from the Tucson area.

                                                       Lastly, the ancient village at Acoma, New Mexico.

By the time we got back to Victoria, spring had arrived.

March and April are the months of beautiful blooms, whether on the Magnolia trees or the apple trees.  And of course in the gardens where tulips reign supreme.

In May and June I love to visit the wildflowers.  This is the cheery California Poppy that grows wild all over the rocky hills

And on the right the gorgeous Blue Camas that blooms in the Garry Oak meadows.

Along with the Satin Flower, here sporting rain drops.  We had such a cool, wet spring this year that the wild flowers just kept on blooming right into the summer.

The photograph of the Lupine below was taken in Vancouver in June.

Summer

This year we didn't get summer weather until mid-July but after that we had lovely warm weather right into October.

Our summer involved a trip to our friend's place on a lovely marsh...

the building of a new arbour and gate in our garden, eating raspberries from the canes and sharing Italian food in the back yard....

...hanging out on my sister's deck watching her gourds grow,

and several visits to beautiful Saturna Island where my brother has a cabin on the cliff.

Fall

September was taken up by our trip to Italy, six days in Rome and four weeks in a small village in Abruzzo with a car to explore the area,

Abruzzo landscape

Gran Sasso Mountains                                  

The Adriatic Sea from Atri

A ruined chapel near the village we stayed in

And a side trip to Dubrovnik, an ancient walled city in Croatia, just across the Adriatic from Italy.

We returned to Victoria in the third week of October to falling leaves and pumpkins.

November was foggy and soggy.

with lots of walks in the woods with the dogs.

Winter again

with dark evenings and colder weather, 

and more walks in the woods with the dogs.

This is along the Lochside Trail just down the road from our house.

So that's my year in pictures.  I hope I haven't bored you.  For me it was a lot of fun selecting these from the hundreds if not thousands of photos that I've taken this year.  

Reviewing them has shown me what an incredibly lucky girl I am to be able to experience such beauty in my own home and on my travels.