The Perfect Picnic

May 06, 2013

"What are you doing before scrapbooking?" Rebekah asked.

"Nothing scheduled," I replied.

"Well, you and I are going to Secor and talking," she informed me.

"Well, that sounds lovely," I replied. "We could picnic."

"We should do the whole basket thing," she suggested.

Have you ever gone on a picnic?

Of course, everyone has been on a picnic. That is, pretty much everyone has eaten outdoors. But a real, true, proper picnic few have experienced. Until this past week, I never had.

That is, never with a proper wicker basket.

Nor with befitting food in decorous, appropriate presentation.

With a vase of flowers picked on location,

on a blanket spread in the bright green grass,

in the dappled shade of a tree,

drinking from glass jars,

surrounded by dandelions,

wearing skirts,

going barefoot,

and taking picture after picture,

this was the perfect picnic.

I stole that picture from Rebekah (hers is much cooler, however), so I gave it my own twist. Bark is pretty cool.

This is one of my favorite of the pictures I took that day. Rebekah's too, of course, since it's her style as she set it up:

A tree with a perfect crook in it made it unnecessary to go back to Rebekah's car to retrieve my tripod, which we had left there, in order to get both of us in a picture.

After spending the majority of our time taking pictures, we stopped to eat.

Who am I kidding? No stopping for us. We just continued taking pictures as we ate.

Real picnicing is not for the germaphobic at heart.

Aww...I like that one.

We were glad we went with wax paper and twine for our sandwiches; a ziploc plastic bag just wouldn't have done.

Though the sandwiches were a little bit soggy, the food was generally delicious and perfect.

Eating pictures are generally awkward, gross, or some other unattractive adjective, but this time they turned out more desirable attributes like amusing and funny.

Busy asking whether she should eat the stem or not (don't ask me why), Rebekah allowed her yogurt to drip off of her strawberry onto her skirt.

Food finished, yet it was so lovely no one felt like leaving.

"Do we have to scrapbook?" Rebekah asked.

"Too bad we can't scrapbook outside," I said.

In any case, we remained there, relaxing and taking pictures, and suggested to Ashley that she join us.

Obviously, since I could not see what I was doing, the arrangement of this picture is less than optimal, yet I kind of like how it turned out:

We were joined by Random Moth. Rebekah wouldn't add it to the list of strange creatures she has kissed.

I managed to spill a significant amount of Gatorade onto the blanket, the grass, and Rebekah's camera. Thankfully, it was mostly just her strap and didn't affect it adversely except for the stickiness and smell.

Then I managed to spill it on the blanket again.

Then I managed to dump it over, but thankfully I had already decided I ought to drink the rest before I did it again.

Then Ashley joined us, enjoying the beautiful setting as we had.

We also enjoyed the rest of the strawberries and the oranges we had neglected.

And I enjoyed taking pictures of them.

I had some fun editing later, as is evident by my pictures. Pretty much all of the ones in this post are edited.

Generally, I try to avoid editing pictures. For one thing, it takes a long time. For another, I generally prefer the more natural look. However, I found with these that they looked much more natural with a little bit of editing.