Category: Autumn

Day 58 – Raindrops

Raindrops

There will come soft Rain

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale

I have a new toy. For those in the know it is a Lensbaby Velvet 85 lens which is designed to give a rapid fall off in depth of field and a velvety feel to the out of focus areas. I could not wait to get outside to try it out this morning so I had to squeeze it in between rain showers. I have to say, I am very happy with my purchase so far. As for the poem, it is not really about Autumn but I really liked it anyway.

Day 57 – Utensils

Utensils

My Wooden Spoon

When your soup comes to a boil
and starts frothing,
You should place a wooden spoon
atop the pot
to keep the contents
from spilling over.

Alas, i must leave you here,
as i’m going to the kitchen
to clean the stove.

-Middlesteps

Yep, I was getting desperate for something to photograph and for a poem to go with it. It wasn’t fit for woman or beast outside today so I decided to find something in the house to photograph. This jar of wooden spoons caught my eye but by the time I got around to photographing it I wasn’t really in the mood. But with a little help from my creative software I came up with something. The poem on the other had didn’t do too much for me until I thought it through and then it made me laugh so it got the nod even if the author apparently didn’t want to claim it.

 

Day 56 – Frosty Leaf

FrostyLeaf

Frosty

I wake at sunrise
And watch the world around me wake as well
The frosted tree tops remind me of the cold winter to come
The colorful leaves half fallen into the front yard
Reminding me to take in Autumn while I can
Because soon the snow that is falling will stick
Soon the remaining leaves in the trees will fall too
The cloudy skies with a bright pink background remind me that soon there will be no sun detected as the grey clouds will cover my little town for 4 months
The pesty mosquitos from humid summer nights have all died out
Beaches are closed for the winter
And those damn frosty tree tops reminding me of a long cold winter to come
In the beginning the new change will be blissful
But like everything else after time
It gets old

-Madeline Rose

We had our first good hard frost this morning. With another storm moving in tonight temperatures are forecast to stay above freezing for awhile but as Ms. Rose alludes, it is a harbinger of things to come. After looking at the pictures I got this morning with the mirrorless I can see that I need to get out the big girl camera with macro lens and tripod to capture the delicate patterns of the frost on the edges of the leaves. I’m sure the opportunity will arise in the next 44 days.

Day 54 – Rainbow

Rainbow

“Rainbows: The gift from heaven to us all.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

Well I did feel like I’d been given a gift when I looked out my office window on what promised to be a dreary gray day with not much to recommend it photographically. So, I grabbed the camera and ran outside getting just a couple of shots before it faded away. I can also tell you that there are many many bad poems about rainbows on the internet and no good ones that I could find.

Day 53 – Calico Corn

CalicoCorn

IndianCornPoem

-Ronald Johnson

Flint corn, Calico corn, decorative corn, fall corn, there are lots of politically correct names for what we used to call Indian Corn. This poem was published in 1963 so let’s just give him a break. I wonder if the reason the only version I could find was an image from its original publication has anything to do with the title or the subject? Or maybe it is just too old and its author too obscure. In my experience European Americans are more offended by the word Indian than Native Americans. In New Mexico where I lived for eight years the aboriginals seemed to embrace the word Indian as an important part of their identity. Call it what you will, this corn is still beautiful and symbolic of fall in North America.

 

Day 52 – Forgotten Grapes

ForgottenGrapes

Wine Tasting

I think I detect cracked leather.
I’m pretty sure I smell the cherries
from a Shirley Temple my father bought me

in 1959, in a bar in Orlando, Florida,
and the chlorine from my mother’s bathing cap.
And last winter’s kisses, like salt on black ice,

like the moon slung away from the earth.
When Li Po drank wine, the moon dove
in the river, and he staggered after.

Probably he tasted laughter.
When my friend Susan drinks
she cries because she’s Irish

and childless. I’d like to taste,
one more time, the rain that arrived
one afternoon and fell just short

of where I stood, so I leaned my face in,
alive in both worlds at once,
knowing it would end and not caring.

-Kim Addonizio

I came very close to spacing out my duty to post today. I have been taking a Genealogy class and today’s class was about organization. So I decided by files could use a little more organization and went home and went to work. Only when I went down to dinner did I realize I had not done anything about posting an image for today. So, I decided to just start with the last time I was out shooting and work my way back. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far to find these forgotten grapes from the winery the other day. I just love the colors and I think they play well together. And, while I had rejected this poem for my shot of the vineyard I liked it much better today and it seems to fit the photo better as well. We’ll see how it goes for tomorrow with more rain in the forecast and more genealogy files to organize!

Day 51 – Bicyclist

Bicyclist

Maybe Alone on my Bike

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!–
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

-William Stafford

A friend requested twenty assorted note cards. I don’t think she realized I don’t have a stock of them printed up but just print out whatever strikes my fancy at the time. So, I was hunting around this morning for images that would look good on note cards and came across this one I took in Vermont at the Shelburne Museum of a poster in the circus portion of the museum. Since clouds and the chance of rain have put a damper on my planned trip to the Applegate Valley I decided to just use this one instead. And imagine my excitement in finding a poem about riding a bike by Oregon’s own former poet laureate.

Day 50 – Vineyard

Vinyard

November

This is the treacherous month when autumn days
With summer’s voice come bearing summer’s gifts.
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts
Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze
Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,
And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,
The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts
Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning’s rays
Will idly shine upon and slowly melt,
Too late to bid the violet live again.
The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;
Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet’s day of pain?

-Helen Hunt Jackson

Drinking wine at my local neighborhood winery the other day I noticed how pretty the red leaves of the vineyard looked against the mountains. So I came back one morning this week to try and capture the effect. This marks the halfway point in my journey. I’m hitting my stride, I’m getting into a routine but I’m also looking forward to being done and I have so many images now (3791 to be exact) that I could easily cruise through the rest of the project. But of course that would not be in the spirit of the thing and just think, I could end up with another 3 or 4 thousand pictures before I’m done, which should be enough to get me through the winter in terms of creating new art.

Day 48 – Buddha

Buddahw

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I have to confess, I am not much of a fan of Halloween. But, since those of you who subscribe to my blog will get this tomorrow, I thought, well alright I will take a walk around the neighborhood and see what I can find to do a tribute to Halloween. Well, yes, there were a few jack-o-lanterns, ghosts and skeletons. But the most interesting things to me were this statuette of Buddha and this sunflower. So I decided to just go with it and create an art piece from them. And soon Halloween will be behind us. Fred Meyer was already putting out Christmas stuff in it’s place this morning. Sigh.

 

Day 47 – Leaf

Leaf

Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night— 
I walked abroad, 
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge 
Like a red-faced farmer. 
I did not stop to speak, but nodded, 
And round about were the wistful stars 
With white faces like town children.
-T.E. Hulme
This is another image from North Mountain Park yesterday. It was a busy day today and it was Sunday so I felt entitled to relax a little. The poem is not a perfect fit but I like it and I do not photograph much at night so I thought I would stick it in here.