A New Year of Garden Images
As I have for the past six years, I have once again created a calendar of images from Jean’s Garden as gifts for family and friends. For the past several years, I have used Lulu.com as my vendor; I have been very happy with the overall quality of their calendars, especially the color reproduction, and with their customer service. For the first time this year, I did not make any problem-solving changes from previous years. I continued the practice of using the free Google program, Picasa, to create a white border around each calendar image and of using the photo software provided with my Canon camera to add a caption. Like last year, I created a cover collage with a large central image surrounded by smaller images. The only difficulty I had this year was with the lettering on the calendar cover; the dark lettering I used did not show up well on the printed cover. In the future, I will stick with white or pale pastel lettering.
I very much enjoy the process of going through my photo archives and choosing just the right image for each month. Here are the images from my Maine garden that I chose for 2016:
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January |
February |
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March |
April |
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May |
June |
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July |
August |
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September |
October |
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November |
December |
The Jean’s Garden 2016 calendar is available for purchase from Lulu.com.
Happy New Year to all my Jean’s Garden readers.
Beautiful calendar and a lot of work. We may be getting winter down here next week. Meanwhile I have been enjoying all the out of season blooms.
Carolyn, Winter has arrived here. We had a significant snowfall last week, enough so that there is still a few inches of snow cover even after about half of it melted in above-freezing temperatures. The first arctic blast of winter got here today. The temperatures aren’t that cold for this time of year (-5 overnight and teens during the day), but it seems frigid after all the unseasonable warmth.
Such gorgeous images, and such a wonderful bit of beautiful to share…Have a wonderful 2016.
Happy New Year, Charlie. I do enjoy sharing my garden in this way.
The images you chose are beautiful, Jean. I can’t imagine the work that goes into reviewing your photos to make selections for your calendar – just going through my vase posts to make selections for a post earlier this week caused my eyes to cross.
Best wishes for the happiest new year! I look forward to seeing how your garden continues to evolve.
Kris, I usually have a few photos during the year that seem like good calendar candidates; when that happens, I make a folder and put them in. At some point in fall, I find myself taking photos specifically to fill certain months in the calendar (the October and November images are examples). Then I scour my photo archives to fill in the gaps. For me, the difficulty is more often finding enough photos that I think are good enough rather than having to choose among an abundance of candidates.
Great selection of images. Glad you included common milkweed.
Jason, Last year, I had a great image of an exploded milkweed seedpod. It was nice to have a flower image to include this year.
What a great overview of your garden! I have toyed with the idea of doing something similar. Yours is an inspiration. Happy New Year and best wishes for you and your garden! Deb
Deb, I’ve been surprised by what a big hit these calendars are; several recipients of these gifts have told me that I’m not allowed to stop making them. It’s a very gratifying way to share my garden. (I also have a couple of the calendars hanging in my own house to enjoy through the year.)
Happy new year Jean!!! Your calendar looks gorgeous, I am envy of your image of december with snow, we had such a warm year that it looks as they new year will skip winter and will open to spring right away. Let´s hope for rain or we will be in deep trouble.
Lula, We’ve also been having an unusually warm fall and early winter, and it was a relief to finally get some snow in the last week of December. The December photo was actually taken about a year ago, in early January (but we had plenty of snow in November and December of that year, too!). I hope you get some rain or snow, but these El Nino years are always tricky.
Happy New Year Jean. I adore these calendars you create.
Thanks, Donna. Happy New Year.
I particularly like your December image.
Cindy, I like that one, too. I didn’t take many wide-angle views of the garden this past year because the garden was under construction and a bit of a mess. But a garden under fresh snow is always beautiful.
Your choices for each month are absolutely beautiful. Wishing you all the best in this new year, Jean.
Happy New Year to you, Karen.
Beautiful images, and I applaud your control of the tech aspects. May you have many such happy views in 2016.
Pat, Your “year-in-review” images of spring arriving in your Heath garden last year have me already dreaming beyond winter.
Beautiful work, Jean. Those will brighten the days of all who received such a thoughtful gift. I may do that myself next year. Maybe. We’ll see how well I manage to update my blog this year!
Jodi, sometimes I find myself taking photos specifically for the calendar in late summer and fall.
Hello Jean, this is a lovely collection of images and a great way to see the season. What interested me which season you attributed to which month, calling August “late summer”, when for me it’s “high summer” (July being “mid-summer”) and September is “Autumn” whereas it’s late summer here. November is Autumn here whereas I’m sure it’s firmly winter with you.
Sunil, Because winter is so long here (we usually have snow on the ground for about 5 months and only 4 frost-free months on average), the garden season is compressed. The first spring bulbs, for example, don’t appear until April, but by May, it’s the end of spring. Early summer plants bloom in June, high summer comes in July, and by August the garden is starting to look blowsy. With September, comes the danger of frost and fall foliage colors.