Busy day yesterday. I had 17 coming for dinner. Exciting day. In the middle of the cooking I heard a loud explosion and lost power. As it turns out a transformer on the pole in front of my house had failed. My Son and Daughter came and got the partially cooked food and finished cooking the dinner. Then the power got back on. Everyone enjoyed dinner and my son and son-in-law pitched in and cleaned up the kitchen. My frig is full of leftovers and my son and a grandson have been here for leftovers. Others will come later. A quiet day so I've been voting a few categories at a time and just finished. Thanks to everyone for sharing your lovely pictures.

What a day you had Paul! Having electricity is certainly something to be thankful for!

I have been voting off and on today. So many beautiful pictures to choose from that it is very difficult to narrow it down to three in a couple of the categories. There are some real stunners out there!

Oh my goodness! I just voted for my favorites in the Landscapes and Gardens category. What a difficult decision that was! So many deserving photos.

I found looking at lovely garden photos was an excellent way to spend the morning after Thanksgiving! Big thank you to everyone who shared their photos.

The landscape photos were tough to decide on.....

I just finished! Now I need a drink. I would apologize to all that I rejected. Just too many great photos to narrow down to three. Landscape is always the toughest, but they're all difficult...especially when they aren't in the correct category. Lots of confusion there, so I just vote on what I like the most.

...my what a grand selection of photographic entries. Well done everyone. The category I got most hung up on was the Irises.

I'm having a hard time voting too! So many great pictures. I'm really hoping that many of them were posted into more than one category because I'm feeling very limited having only three votes in each. Like so many of you, I'm finding the landscape category to be difficult, but others too.

This is going to take a while!

As soon as the voting began, I spent hours upon hours looking at all of those beautiful photographs. I didn't even make it through all of the categories. Also, I didn't vote but merely marked ones to go back to narrow down.

I did get really confused and would sometimes have to scroll to be sure I knew which category I was looking at. And I swear (if I did) that I saw the exact same picture in several categories. And I could also swear (if I did) that I saw pictures that had been in the 2016 contest. Guess my eyes were glazing over and my brain was on auto-pilot. Thus I decided to go to a matinee this afternoon for an escape to a different type of screen.

BTW — Anyone who is the least bit observant will immediately recognize one of the few pictures that I posted. Please feel free to ignore it. (Yes, I know y'all feel free to do whatever you like. Just saying.) I merely posted it because it made me grin. No worries.

Okay, I now have a new favorite category--the wildlife and plants. So many made me smile, and I have starred so many!

Off to bed with me now, and I'll deal with it another day. What fun!

I voted too. Wow - some great stuff there, gardens and photos both! Enjoyed it!

I voted. Should have entered.

Legalily said:I voted. Should have entered.

Next time!

So far all I've done is enjoy the pretty pictures. Lovely shots, some miscategorized or not even garden related, but oh well. Wildlife is a difficult category - how does one compare bugs to birds to bears?

Bonehead said:So far all I've done is enjoy the pretty pictures. Lovely shots, some miscategorized or not even garden related, but oh well. Wildlife is a difficult category - how does one compare bugs to birds to bears?

I wondered that too. I guess the interpretation needs to be loose so that we don't end up with way too many categories.

joannakat said:

I wondered that too. I guess the interpretation needs to be loose so that we don't end up with way too many categories.

There are over 350 entries in that one category, I had a difficult time and finally decided to vote for my favorite bird, then butterfly/insect and then animal for my three choices. Honestly I don't know the difference between a lily and daylily, yet two categories for them... I had no idea where to put my rain lily...LOL.

Sherri lilies have bulbs so they go in the bulb category. Daylilies don't have bulbs. I'm not familiar with rain lilies but if they have bulbs they would go in lilies or bulbs - correct anyone?

sunkissed said:

There are over 350 entries in that one category, I had a difficult time and finally decided to vote for my favorite bird, then butterfly/insect and then animal for my three choices. Honestly I don't know the difference between a lily and daylily, yet two categories for them... I had no idea where to put my rain lily...LOL.

Lilies and daylilies are two different things. And I believe that water lilies are too (are they part of the lotus family?) I can't complain though because when I first joined this site, I posted about my lilies in the daylily forum! I was gently corrected when my post was moved to the lily forum and I was kindly informed by the moderator. This is one way we learn, right?

Legalily said:Sherri lilies have bulbs so they go in the bulb category. Daylilies don't have bulbs. I'm not familiar with rain lilies but if they have bulbs they would go in lilies or bulbs - correct anyone?

There are categories for both the lilies and daylilies, separate from bulbs.

Oops I forgot they could go in either category Joanna. Thanks for the correction