I don’t know who said it but I once heard that blue and black are two colors that don’t exist in the flower world. I find it to be true. No matter how black or blue a flower is, there’s always some violet or red visible under the right light. Never a true blue or black.

Still, I find those dark colors fascinating and have been trying to grow some very dark colors flowers in my garden, but with so many seeds and options to choose from, I would forget every year.

Anyway, I found this very dark (almost black) tulip at the 2024 Tulip festival but couldn’t find it at the 2025 Tulip festival. I wonder if I attended too early because I was at the festival 3 weeks earlier than I was in 2024. I should’ve gotten some of these bulbs to be planted in the garden. Oh well, maybe next year.

Next, how about a raven walking alongside the beautiful trail at Sunset Point in Bryce Canyon? I always love to work on my portrait photography on birds and animals because I like them to be in natural poses, unlike a human standing still with a smile pasted on his/her face.

Here is one of my favorite black and white photo in my collection to-date. It’s from Yellowstone, May 2017. It snowed hard the night before. I remember I didn’t have anything to clear the car windows. After all, it was May, the car was a rental, and snow was not expected. Having previous experience, I turned on the car, cranked up the heat, and turned the dial to defrost for both the front and back windows, intermittently activating window washing fluid on the windshield. It took a while but it worked.

Inside the park, clean up was underway. My aunt and I couldn’t go any further than the junction at Norris, so we were stuck with the sites prior to the junction. I don’t remember where this was taken but the snow was quite deep. I wore my hiking boots (bad idea in this weather) and when I got back to the car, the snow had melt around the boots and the boots got soaked.

Finally, I missed the hunter’s moon this year because of the weather. This is last year’s hunter’s moon. It’s funny because even though it’s been a year, I can remember like it’s yesterday when I perched the camera on the top shelf in my backyard for stability while trying to capture the moon as it rose above the mountain.

For SundayStills