Exterior and Landscape

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South Panorama, 20 Mar 01
Here's a view to the south from our kitchen window. This was taken in March, so understandably, it's overcast. To create this panorama, I stood in one spot and took four pictures, turning to the left with each picture. I then used a good imaging program to join them together. You can still see where the breaks are, but I think it gives a good perspective of our 150-degree south view. Those of you running resolutions lower than 1024x768 will need to scroll left and right to see the full view.
 
Front Yard Panorama, 16 Jun 01
Here's our front yard in this three-segment panorama photo.

This is the tree in front of our front door and to the right side of our garage. It's an Acer japonica, a Japanese Maple. This is what it looks like during the spring. During the winter, the tree is bare, but still very attractive.

This shrub is particularly unattractive during the winter, where it takes on the appearance of an upright tumbleweed. But during the early spring it has nice lush green foliage. By June (in this photo) it is covered with brilliant yellow flowers. This is a Potentilla fruticosa "Jackman's Variety."
Here's a close-up of the Potentilla flowers.

During the winter, this dogwood tree has long, slender vertical stems that are a deep red color. Then, in mid spring, it develops beautiful variegated foliage and dense clusters of tiny white flowers. While not really "recognizable" as a dogwood, it is actually a Cornus alba "elegantissima" or flowering dogwood tree.

Here's a close-up view of the dogwood's flowers and foliage.

This is a small (8 foot tall by 5 foot diameter) magnolia tree in our front yard. As I'm typing this (early June) it still has no flowers, so we're not quite sure what actual variety this is.

This is the side yard on the west side of our house as seen from our deck above. We have some maturing rhododendrons here. The farthest one just got done blooming with beautiful bright magenta flowers.

This is the west edge of our back yard as seen from the second story of the deck. Among the landscaping here is Heavenly Bamboo (which has bright red berries in the spring) and the dark maroon cluster on the right is barberry (beautiful, but really prickly).

This is the south side of our back yard. You're facing west. We have another magnolia back here, which isn't flowering yet either. For now, we're under the assumption it's the same variety as the one our front yard.

Here's another panoramic view of the south farmland. This was taken in mid-May.