Welcome to Shangri-La

Today dawned cold and damp in Maryland. Later this afternoon, however, the sun came out and by the time I got home from work, the sky had become a beautiful blue with puffy clouds and the grass had turned a luscious green from all the rain we've had for the past several days.

So I grabbed the camera and George and I headed out.

As I walked, I remembered what a reader said to me recently in a comment. She said that it looked like a live in a Shangri-La of sorts. And today, when I looked in the viewfinder of my camera, I thought the same thing. George is way up this fenceline, almost to the barn.

You see, I see these fields and this driveway, and the horses, and the whole picture every single day. It doesn't always look wonderful, but some days it's downright picturesque. And when you look through the viewfinder at the little bits and pieces that I've captured today, it truly does look like heaven on earth. To me, it does.

That's George standing on the loading berm on the main farm driveway. Horse vans pull up to this little loading dock of sorts and it makes it easier to load and unload the horses. This is right in front of the breeding shed. George probably likes the view the added height affords him. Don't the trees look almost ethereal?

And here's what it looks like to stand under one of the ornamental cherry trees. This is someone's front lawn, and when we used to live along this driveway, years ago, we had these same cherry trees in our yard. My youngest son loved the 'pink snow'.

I used Pioneer Woman's actions on a few of these pictures, either Lovely & Ethereal or Boost. But what I was most excited about was the cloud trick I learned in this month's Popular Photography magazine. It looked a little complicated at first, but after practicing it several times, it's actually a breeze. Oh, get it? A breeze!

I used the cloud trick on the 1st and 2nd photos of this post. The trick involves a total of about 8 different steps with a layer mask and use of the multiply blending mode and so on and so on and blah blah blah. Like you really want to hear all about that!

Well, that's my walk with George. I know that when I get home, the house will smell really good and it will feel wonderful to be there. And it's not that I really really hate to cook. It's, well, it's one thing that my husband really seems to enjoy doing and providing for me. And I think it's really nice of me (don't you?) to let him do it. Um, yeah. That's it.

UPDATE: About that cloud trick, I need to tell you that these are REAL clouds. All I did was boost them to make them look what they looked like to me. I did NOT put fake clouds in there! Thanks to those who contacted me to ask.