All photos in this post were taken by Davin Risk

These first two photos show a restricted access carnivorous plant room at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. I found out later that I could have got a tour had I only asked!

I am tackling my New Year’s Resolution early. Doomsday predictors believe we only have a few days left — I should probably get busy.

Do something with all of the travel pictures. I’ve been fortunate enough to go on quite a few journeys over the last few years. Many were work-related, but when I could I tried to tack on a few extra days so that I could see a place that I had never been before and probably would never see again. No matter where I go, there is always something to see.

And so there are pictures. Heaps and heaps of pictures. I am buried alive in pictures. First there is the digital stuff. And you know how it is with digital. You snap away like a maniac and deal with it later. Or you don’t. Instead you look at it and think, “Seven hundred images. Ugh. I will do this later.” But later never comes. And then there is the film. These days it is abhorrently expensive to buy and even more expensive to develop. So I sit on it and roll it out in affordable chunks. Then I must endure the slow process of scanning it, image-by-image. Once that is done I am tired so I take a break that lasts indefinitely.

This is where, Do Something With All of the Travel Pictures, 2013!, comes in. It would be nice for some of those pictures to see the light of day, never mind the stories that accompany them. I want to tell more stories. That’s my other goal these days: Tell the Stories. There are many stories inside me that want to be told. Lately they have been punching at the walls inside my head, desperate to work their way out into the world. Some of these stories relate to small things like travel, plants, and food. But others are more complicated and so much harder to tell. I suppose the good thing here is that the drive to tell them has finally superseded the fear that my writing skills are not “good enough” to do them justice. I am working at it.

A field filled with carnivorous pitchers (Sarracenia), Venus fly traps (Dioneae muscipula), and assorted native, wetland grasses and flowering plants. I love the simple bamboo edging depicted in the second image.

This is what you can expect more of from me in the future. More image stories and more word stories. Less traditional, straight-up How-to. This is where I am now and where I want to be.

In the meantime, I’m filling this post with photos that were taken by my partner Davin Risk on a trip we took to Atlanta, Georgia to speak at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in September 2011. I loved this garden and have lots more that I am eager to show you as per my resolution. When I saw these sublime images come up on Davin’s computer recently, I knew they would be a good starting place to introduce what we saw there.

A living wall filled primarily with hardy, drought tolerant, shallow rooted herbs including oregano and thyme.

Also from the food garden, a decorative and productive wall of espalier fruit trees backed by greenhouses.

A final image taken in the edible garden.

– More of Davin’s photography can be seen on his site, Low Resolution.

– The Atlantic Botanical Garden