Socks said "Lindsey, I think that rose is fake!!! Just kidding, of course. It's stunning, looks like velvet. Good old Mr. Lincoln is a great red rose." I can assure you the rose isn't fake. :-) The Mr. Lincoln rose tree is one of several rose trees that line the walkway from our driveway to the front porch. When I first saw the photo when I loaded it from my camera to my 'puter, I also thought it looked fake! I used a Canon PowerShot SD1100IS with the lens on the Macro setting. Here's the same rose, taken with the macro setting (the same photo above) and without the macro setting. I took the macro photo on Sept 29, 2008, at 6:48pm, and the other one at 6:49pm. I love taking closeup photos of flowers, but they nearly always end up out of focus! The macro setting helps a bit with the focus (for me, at least). It doesn't help that there is generally a breeze when I'm trying to take pictures of our roses, so they won't "sit still" to have their photo taken! :-)

Karen, I didn't know there was a phrase for military exercises - thank you! I always enjoy your pictures so much. There is little chance of me getting to Nova Scotia, so I am very appreciative. indianakat, that is a really beautiful rose. Do you know the name? Thanks to you all for your postings.

Unfortunately we didn't go....we were just walking by and had Jake with us and he was too young to sit still and be quiet. Maybe when the kids move back to Tokyo we can go. (I don't know if they will be moving there in the near future but it is always a possibility.)

Don't ask me to name the flowers because even though I am a farm boy, sadly I don't know pumpkins from petunia's, but I know when I like what I see.