As I was scrolling through my photos, I came to one that made me smile and brought a tear to my eye all at the same time.  It is amazing how many fond childhood memories this one photo can invoke for me.  For my color challenge, I am sharing with you all a photo of my German grandmother, my Oma, at the age of 90 on her market stand in Heidelberg, Germany.

My grandmother is a strong, free-spirited woman who up until this year, at the age of 93, still sold flowers at her market stand.  After fleeing the Soviet invasion of Latvia and, winding up at a displaced person’s camp in post-war Germany, my grandmother started selling flowers on the market to make ends meet for her family.  She has been selling flowers to people with a true devotion to her floral works of art ever since …. approximately 60 years.  Market work is hard but my grandmother had a true passion for “her” flowers.  She treated them almost like her babies.  If a flower lost it’s bloom, she would pick the bloom off the ground and put it in a bud vase on her windowsill.  She hated to see any single flower lost.  She had an amazing eye for which flowers went together and hands of steel with which to hold her bouquets.  The roses she used had thorns like daggers.

As children, we spent many summers in Heidelberg helping her sell on the market.  This requires getting up quite literally at the crack of dawn and working until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  My grandmother bought many flowers from the wholesalers but was an early adopter of locally sourcing her flowers as well.  This meant driving around tiny farm roads picking up freshly cut snapdragons, sweet peas, daisies, roses, and anything else that was in season from local gardners.  For us children, these old farmers would always give us little bags of freshly picked cherries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.  We would then stop at the local bakery and pick up some pastries and a canteen of coffee to have on the market.  I’m pretty sure my Oma is the source of my sweet tooth.  She would buy so many wonderful pieces of plum cake, apple cake, and of course there had to be freshly made whipping cram.

She became such an icon of the markets in Heidelberg that on her 90th birthday, the main newsaper in Heidelberg (Rhein Neckar Zeitung) wrote an article about her and her history on the market.

I’m sure I’m way off of topic for the color challenge but I just felt compelled to share this story with you all.  I hope you enjoy it and

Up close and personal with a bridge held together with what seemed like Paper Clips!! It took every ounce of strength I had not to look down! Love the Weekly Travel Theme’s from Where’s My Backpack!

I recently had the privilege of trekking to the first Mt Everest base camp in Nepal.  It was one of the most amazing adventures I have ever experienced, in part, due to the group I travelled with.  There were 12 of us (from 19 to 60 years of age) who made the trek together with fierce determination to make it to 17,500 feet.  Despite a few minor mishaps with altitude sickness, we all plowed forward and made it all in one piece with an immense feeling of accomplishment. These photos below were taken by my friend and fellow traveler, Rick Burns and represent my view of ‘Forward’ for the photo challenge this week!

Please see the WordPress Photo Challenge:  Forward for a peek at other great talents!

I typically do not capture images of people smooching – kinda grosses me out to be honest……but I did manage to dig up my version of animals kissing!  This image of 2 zebras was taken at the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, Africa.  I think this is much more appealing and meaningful ;-).

To view other amazing talent please see the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge main page.

So I don’t seem to have a terribly large amount of pictures demonstrating the concept of illumination.  The ones I do have, however, I think really portray illumination beautifully!!  Let me know what you all think!  The first one is from a sunset picnic dinner Todd and I took on Rialto Beach while camping in Olympic National Park.  I love the luminosity of the light in this photo.  I was certain this was the moment we were going to get engaged.  Everything was perfect.  Alas, I had to wait another year and a half for him to pop the question.  The second picture is from our first campground on the Serengeti.  I totally felt like we were in the movie Out of Africa. This was such a great camping experience.  A minute earlier a massive elephant had walked right by the front of our tents.  I love how the lanterns illuminate the background and our tents.  The final photo is another one from Olympic National Park.  This was the view from our tent at our campground on the Ho River Trail.  I love how the sunrise illuminates our campground.  Click on the images individually to enlarge each one of them.

Thanks so much for taking the time to have a look!!!