Category: Nature

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 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.

Day 46 – Water on Grass

GrassStars

“Get close to grass and you will see stars.” – Dejan Stojanovic

I set out this morning to see how things were coming along at the Japanese Garden in Lithia Park. I was thinking if I got a good early start it shouldn’t be too crowded. Imagine my dismay when most of the parking slots were already full and it wasn’t even 8:30 yet. Then I got to the road block and realized that there was some event going on. So I turned myself around and headed to North Mountain Park instead. Most of the flowers were gone and the bird feeders are not out yet but the sun sparkling on these water drops (from the sprinklers I guess) caught my eye. And there were leaves, and the more I walked around the more I found to photograph. That’s what it’s all about….getting out there.

Day 45 – Chrysanthemum

Chrysantemum

The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long 
   To show its tremulous plumes? 
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, 
   When flowers are in their tombs. 

Through the slow summer, when the sun 
   Called to each frond and whorl 
That all he could for flowers was being done, 
   Why did it not uncurl? 

It must have felt that fervid call 
   Although it took no heed, 
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, 
   And saps all retrocede. 

Too late its beauty, lonely thing, 
   The season’s shine is spent, 
Nothing remains for it but shivering 
   In tempests turbulent. 

Had it a reason for delay, 
   Dreaming in witlessness 
That for a bloom so delicately gay 
   Winter would stay its stress? 

– I talk as if the thing were born 
   With sense to work its mind; 
Yet it is but one mask of many worn 
   By the Great Face behind. 

-Thomas Hardy

All this beautiful weather had me longing for flowers to photograph so I stopped by the nursery to see if they had any in bloom. Of course, the Chrysanthemums were in peak glory so I bought one for my front porch and of course photographed it before I put it there…with pumpkins of course. Chrysanthemum is one of those words I just love to say, though it is a pain in the rear to spell.

Day 44 – Milkweed Seeds

Milkweed_seeds

Omnipresent

the clear autumn morning
hides nothing from the crow
as the backlit sphere
of the milkweed spore
floats by
tumbling with purpose
take a look
at what fills the air
bird leaf tree debris dust smoke cloud sunbeam
invisible eddies
my intellect

– Jimmy Tee

I was walking to the mailbox to get the mail when it suddenly dawned on me that I had neglected to post an image yet today. I had planned on a photographic outing but then FedEx notified me that I had to be home to sign for a package and one thing led to another. But, I noticed the light on the milkweed pods bursting open was quite lovely so I went back and got a camera and played with it for awhile.

Day 42 – Hydrangea

Hydrangea

Hydrangeas

Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
     turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
     over them.
One sunset after another tracks the faces, the
     petals.
Waiting, they look over the fence for what
     way they go.

-Carl Sandberg

I’ve noticed that flowers sometimes get confused when the day length in autumn mimics that in spring. That seems to be the case with my hydrangea which, after months of fading color has suddenly decided to put out some new blossoms, just in case.

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

I drive past him each day in the swamp where he stands 
on one leg, hunched as if dreaming of his own form 
the surface reflects. Often I nearly forget to turn left, 
buy fish and wine, be home in time to cook and chill. 
Today the bird stays with me, as if I am moving through 
the heron’s dream to share his sky or water—places
he will rise into on slow flapping wings or where 
his long bill darts to catch unwary frogs. I’ve seen 
his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs 
fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun 
and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep. 
I only know this bird by a name we’ve wrapped him in, 
and when I stand on my porch, fish in the broiler,
wine glass sweating against my palm, glint of sailboats 
tacking home on dusky water, I try to imagine him
slowly descending to his nest, wise as he was 
or ever will be, filling each moment with that moment’s 
act or silence, and the evening folds itself around me.
-T. Alan Broughton
I’m looking forward to  return to nice weather this week and getting out to shoot again. But in the meantime I am enjoying the chance to revisit older images and think about them in a more creative way. Out of about two dozed frames of Great Blue Herons in flight this is the only way that came out any where near in focus. But the bird was a little too close to the edge of the frame so I did a little Photoshop artistry and came up with this image that I really love for its simplicity.

Day 37 – Yellow Woods

YellowWood2

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
I managed a walk in Lithia Park this morning before the rain set in. I have to say the colors were amazing and the reflections in the lower duck pond took my breath away. I went with a painterly treatment and texture effect on this one and it immediately put me in mind of one of my all time favorite poems… probably because it was introduced to me by one of my favorite teachers, ’round about 4th or 5th grade.