Beautiful pink peonies.

Peonies are one of my favorite flowers. And now they are blooming in our garden! Definitely flowers has some power to change our mood - may be there is some scientific theory behind it (Val said in her Val's diary video that she found some explanation of it on line), but I was thinking about different power - power of the past.
When I was a child my grandparents (in Russia of course) had a garden, and my grandmother was growing lots of different sorts of plants - flowers, fruit trees and so on. Of course, peonies were there too - right near the entrance, and I couldn't get enough of them - looking and smelling like some kind of addict. So imaging how happy I was when a little bush in the corner of our garden turn out to be a peony (we are renting a house just for a few month, so we keep discovering things on the 4 acres property).
Anyway, here are photographs of these beautiful peonies which I took with macro- lenses, and the last photo is sort of abstract, it's was taken very close-up.

Dandelions, black and white photo.

This photo of Dandelion I made right in my yard. It's too bad they are considered as weeds, I think they are very pretty with their fuzzy heads. The second - is taken with macro lenses. Sun shining through their little parachutes and dark blue sky made them very good object for black and white photography.

Photographs from my travel to Alaska. Aurora Ice Museum, Fairbanks.

Aurora Ice Museum is located near Chena Hot Springs, not too far from Fairbanks, Alaska. I was there in early February. It was chili outside - about minus 30F, but inside a Museum where everything made of ice, was relatively warm - about 20F.
Museum features the work of award winning artist Steve Brice, who had to create all sculptures in a temperature below freezing! Brrr...
The beautiful colors are designed to replicate the aurora borealis. There are several exhibits - two knights, a huge chess set, a chapel alter that has been used for wedding ceremonies, the Coca-Cola polar bear and the beautiful hanging chandeliers. In the central part of the room is the real bar that is totally made of ice, even the bar stools (with a fur covering on the top though). Even Martini was served in an ice martini glass! And it was good too!
And in the back of the room there is a hotel with bedrooms and beds of ice with reindeer fur sleeping bags!

Photograph of roses.

A few days ago, exploring my big yard (about 4 acres) I found those beautiful roses near the well house. They just started blooming, and probably for a while nobody took care of them - it took me for over an hour to remove all the dead vines. Hopefully, they will survive my care.

Photographs from my tavel to Barrow, Alaska (cont.)

Artctic Ocean, frozen waves under the snow.
And people have sense of humor here too - those are summer cabins a little bit outside of Barrow, palms of course not real - they made of baleen (plates for filtering food from water).

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see polar bear, although when taxi driver was showing us around they said on a radio that a polar bear was spotted near high school, but when we got there it was gone.