On a cool drizzly early spring morning, there were plenty of beautiful sights in the garden, from honking geese to blooming flowers of various varieties (including, yes, rhododendrons). Oh, and one huge nutria.

An award-winning farm that ships irises all over world, with custom hybrid varieties that you cannot find anywhere else. If you are like me and love the smell of irises, this farm is a heavenly place to visit. Bring your nose!

We visited the fabulous tulip fields during one of the all-time coolest and wettest Aprils on record…

Springtime flowers are made for this wild weather, and do not even seem to notice…

My favorite season at the Leach is springtime, when the first flowers appear and everything is deep, bright green…

About 80 acres, separated out into different sections like “wetlands” and “conifers” and so on. A lot to take it…

What is more fun than rows and rows of spectacular tulips…

Rhododendrons and magnolias and daffodils and countless other flowers were blooming and the aromas were wonderful…

May in Oregon's Willamette Valley means many wonderful flowers are blooming (and therefore tons of pollen fill the air too, gesundheit!), and one of my favorites is the iris…

Two incredible flower farms (both family-owned) north of Salem, Oregon: Adelman Peony Gardens and Schreiner's Iris Gardens…

It's a gorgeous little park adjacent to Reed College, and it is packed to the gills with a wide assortment of rhododendrons. And ducks and geese, for that matter...

April 2017. It was time to return to Camassia Natural Area in West Linn, Oregon. Why? Because the camas lilies were all in bloom of course! Brilliant blue hues blanketed the fields in the park, which is about 26 acres of protected oak groves nestled across from Oregon City. There were other flowers too, white, pink, yellow...

The best part of late winter is tulips begin appearing. They are one of my favorite flowers, though they aren't around for as long as I'd like them to be. (Roses, for instance, can hang around this area for half the year.) But because of that tulips symbolize the return of spring to me. New life is here, and many other flowers will soon appear as well. Oh, and the amazing Wooden Shoe tulip farm will soon open. Can't wait for that!

Last April I went hiking with Meghan Sinnott and four-legged friends, Maddy and Journey, up Coyote Wall at the eastern end of the Columbia River Gorge in Washington. The outing offered a great chance to try out my newly purchased Velvet 56 lens from Portland's own Lens Baby; the lens can do some really fun "velvety" bokah tricks (particularly along the frame edges) and looks nice whether you're shooting landscapes, portraits, or macros...