Arbitrarily setting aperture...

In preparation for the arrival of my new camera (yippee!), I decided to take my Canon Powershot SX210IS (aka. the Friends Camera according to Phil; I wanted to call it Cody or Kobe or something K-sounding) outside and play with the manual setting.

I'm not reallllyyy quite sure about how they turned out, but here goes:

My (+13 other people's) house! 
Putting my "reading lots of reviews about cameras"-cap on - I think it currently suffers from "barrel distortion"?

Some flower thingies that look like grapes... No idea what they're called :( Also, I think my hand wobbled.

I overheard some people outside my room discussing these flowers, and promptly forgot their names. Good thing I'm not a BioNatsci.
Actually, I think this would've turned out better in "Auto" or "Easy" mode. Fail.

With photo 3, I know the paved area is overexposed but I couldn't capture both the pavement AND the green leaves (they turned out pretty much black in some photos), so I opted for the leaves instead. Also, the pink petal tips are unnerving - another thing I need to learn about. Damn sun, if it had been less sunny, the patio would've made it into the photo.

I've noticed that the department that takes care of the foliage have been uber active today! There were DANGER! TREE CUTTING signs everywhere (and fallen branches to tell the tale) and the sprinklers were on outside my window :)

Happily, I managed to get some work done - haha, finally! - (but blog-whored from about 10pm onwards). Reading economics journals about something I'm interested in actually makes the time go quickly. Yay ^_^

MW x

EDIT: I just googled "big flowers" and I instantly recognised one of the first images.
PEONIES!
I should've known, considering how I've been admiring Jaeger's new dress. When Xinmei (puddingpielane.blogspot.com) and I walked into Jaeger for some browsing post-supervision, I commented that the dress looks amazing on a tall, thin mannequin/model, but alas, wouldn't do much for me :(

Image from mustgetthat.com