You get me every time. I can't walk by without stopping to take a closer look. This beauty didn't have a name tag, but it was in the National Botanic Garden, one of my favorite spots in D.C. The horticulturalists there bring in the most amazing plants each summer and plant them in bright blue pots, dispersed around the gardens. If you sit around the pool, surrounded by succulents, you can easily imagine yourself in some cliff-side Mediterranean locale with cobalt waters, where you can ride around on donkeys, eat olives and drink wine. Well, a girl can dream.

I'm kind of ashamed that I've been hiding these gorgeous photos of Bonnie for months! So I finally got around to posting them today. They were taken on a beautiful April afternoon in a park that has lots of sticks - her favorite!

The fireflies have been getting down to some serious business lately, lighting up the trees, completely unashamed of their publicly displayed mating rituals. It's pretty cool to watch, but even more cool to wade through the grasses in the dark taking bets on how many mosquito bites you'll have the next day.

Check out these super mamma-jamba clouds. Seriously, that is their name. Well, technically they are called mammatocumulus clouds. Imagine my surprise after coming out of a new-to-me Mexican restaurant that delivered the best tamales I've had east of the Mississippi and then I look up and bam!- these clouds! What a night! Although I am a sucker for both clouds and Mexican food. And here's another photo to put it in perspective. I can't decide which I like better.