Edisto Gardens

    As soon as I realized I had the power to make panoramic photos (easily I mean; I've been doing it by hand for decades), I wanted to go to Edisto Memorial Gardens in Orangeburg, SC, where a world of roses awaits. It just seemed like the perfect place for a panorama: roses everywhere, surrounded by tall trees hung with Spanish moss. Also, next door is Horne Wetlands Park, a boardwalk along the Edisto River with panoramic opportunities of its own.
    Unfortunately, today promised to be overcast at best with a high chance of rain. However, this isn't the deal-killer that it might be, because the Panorama app on my phone requires you to be able to see the screen, and a sunny day makes this pretty tricky. Also, pewter skies go well with roses.
    So I gave it a try. The rose-centered panoramas went very, very well. I also brought along my Nikon and shot some ordinary closeups of especially striking roses. Generally, I liked these well, too. The Edisto though didn't work out. It was just flat astonishing. On the boardwalk twenty or maybe fifty feet from the water, you would think there were no mosquitoes at all. At the water, however, there was nothing but. Panorama app requires you to hold the camera steady for a few seconds each several times; it was all I could do to manage a single second. So I bailed on smart phone panoramas. I did go back and shoot four shots with the Nikon, panning the river fast enough to beat the mosquitoes. When I got home, I finally put the Nikon's software on this computer, including a Panorama application. So I got my Edisto River panorama after all. It's huge, but it's great. I used a cut down version for my new Facebook cover picture. I like it a lot.
    T-Mobile was pretty good to me on the trip, but by the time I turned around to head home, I was knocked down to 2G. There was supposedly a good Thai restaurant in Orangeburg, but at 2G I couldn't get directions, nor could I get a decent map. So I came home and instead got Thai from a formerly reliable restaurant here, but they seemingly have taken to putting pad thai in their MSG instead of the other way around. Still pretty good, though, and a good enough ending to a crazy fun morning.