Canola, or Maybe Mustard

I have to admit, I can't really identify any of the plants that grow in the Palouse.  It's not like the Midwest where I grew up, corn and soybeans are pretty easy to tell apart.  I don't know wheat from lentils.  I initially assumed that this yellow flowering crop was canola, but I read online that canola and mustard are hard to tell apart to the untrained eye.  I also read that if you plant one of these crops in a field than you can never plant the other, because they cross to form a plant known as rapeseed, which is evidently a very unwelcome crop.  When I was in the Palouse last week I wandered through the Moscow Farmer's Market, and there was a vendor selling something I believe he called Canolina Oil, which was made from a mustard seed, but not the same as the mustard oil you would find at an ethnic grocery.  I tried some and thought it tasted delicious!  He had a lot of statistics and data worked up by the WSU campus to show all the health benefits, but I was a little skeptical on how well it would store given that he compared it against flax oil which oxidizes so quickly.  Anyway, that's my wishy-washy experience with this yellow flowering crop, whatever it is.  Not exactly my most definitive post!  :)

Palouse Study #3

Continuing my Palouse series with a cheery crayola scene... Visiting the Palouse, I got a sense of the region right away, but conveying that sense in a photograph has been tricky for me. I think it helps to have a subject in the frame; it still shows the vastness of the terrain, and in fact maybe even more than with just open field and sky. And as for subject, I always love a red barn!

Palouse Study #2

I visited the Palouse last spring during a college-shopping trip; that was my first chance to photograph this grain and lentil-growing region.  Then I tended to photograph in a more abstract way, which I have a habit of doing.  This year I decided to try to get a better landscape view and in fact I never changed my 17-55mm lens the entire time I was there, which is really rare for me because I love my zoom lens.  I struggled with the larger view though.  Over the course of the day I decided that a higher vantage point looking down was better, but I don't entirely object to a flatter view like the one photographed here.  There was certainly no shortage of rolling hills, shades of green, and puffy clouds for me to practice on!

Palouse Study #1

I've just returned from a beautiful weekend in the Palouse, and I have a series of photos to share from this grain-growing region in Eastern Washington and Western Idaho.  Saturday was warm and sunny, and puffy white clouds increased throughout the day, culminating in a dramatic isolated thunderstorm over the Snake River.  I decided to show my favorites in order, so the clouds will grow with each photo.  I stayed in Moscow, Idaho, home of the University of Idaho and in my opinion the cultural mecca of the Palouse, so my sightseeing starts in Idaho on a sunny morning under minimal cloud cover.  And in spite of the low cloud cover, the morning weather included a lot of moving cloud shadows, which show in this photo: a dark shadow in the background and growing shadow in the foreground, with the cute little tree in the bright sun.  Be prepared for a sunny, cheery week of photos!

Waves of Green

Here's a good Palouse example of the freshly planted grain next to the unplanted rows.

Palouse Fence

I'm getting ahead of myself with this photo, but I wanted to include it in the Thursday Good Fences meme.  Plus it's a good image to follow yesterday's wide angle shot, because this is a pretty good example of using my zoom lens to abstract a scene, in this case into shapes and colors.  This scene is deep down one of the many unpaved roads that snake through the Palouse.  It's not the best introduction to this region, but I'll have to save that for tomorrow...