Tag: nature

Return of the rose tree

The rose tree is my favorite feature of my property. Last year I wrote about it, how old, old rose vines have climbed their way up a tree, perhaps a cherry or a dogwood, and in Spring the roses bloom and the whole tree is full of hot pink flowers, and the perfume they put off is thick in the air.

It’s natural Zen, something made that usually isn’t. Though it couldn’t be anything but what it is, the rose tree, two stories high, blooming with color and fragrance and peace.

There’s good, simple good in the world, simple beauties evolving over years, like a young rose vine that decades ago inched up a tree trunk and inched and bloomed and inched and bloomed for years, so many years before I moved to Long Island and got in the habit of looking forward to spring so I could empty my head under the rose tree. …

This year I’ve snapped more photos with a new camera. But click here to see the photos from last year.

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May 24th, 2010
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At the marsh

Truth be told, most of my nature photos I take on my property, which is fairly large by Long Island standards and features a great assortment of trees, vines, bushes and flowers. But I also leave the reservation.

This batch comes around the same time as my last group of fall photos, but were taken at one of the salt marshes on the Long Island sounds.

They feature thin, wiry vines, some with almost delicious looking blue berries (though I gather I’d get pretty damn sick eating them).

Then there’s the water, which seems to looks cold in the barren fall.

But the algae that lines the ricks on the shore, it’s a green as it is in spring, which makes me wonder what changes aquatic plant life goes through during seasonal shifts.

Enjoy the photos.

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December 23rd, 2009
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At the very end of fall

It’s a tossup for the most depressing end of a season between late late fall and late winter.

While winter tends to linger, and slushy, gray snow, cold wind and barren trees can get a bit maddening by the end of February. But the end of fall, when all of the wild colors fade to subtle brown, when the dead leaves crack and curl in their piles, and the empty trees creak in the chilling winds, well, it’s a real bummer.

These are the last photos I took of the season, just a few days before a fierce blizzard blew in with winter.

It’s all sticks, save for a few red berries. There are even a few photos of my barn, which seems to frown in the cold.

Enjoy the photos.

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December 23rd, 2009
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Falling furthur

This next batch of photos comes from late fall, but not the end of fall. As you’ll see in later photos, this period of the season still had plenty of color left in it.

The middle of fall was marked with bright yellows and plenty of greens, from still healthy lawns, stubborn-to-change leaves and knotty vines. But, closer to the end of the season the greens disappeared, replaced by yellows and reds, while the old yellows turned brown.

At the same time, the leaves on the ground, which once looked waxy and pliable, had browned and shriveled and dried.

So, enjoy the photos. My next batch will come from the very end of the season, when most of the colors were gone.

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December 22nd, 2009
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The thorns outside

Now that winter is here, having dumped more than two feet of snow on Long Island this weekend, it’s time for my usual scramble to get my photos from the previous season online. You’ll see handful of posts coming in the next few days.

The first batch is a small one, featuring a few of the now bare, thorny vines on my property. They’re from either small rose bushes or the thick and abundant vines that create one of my favorite property features, the rose tree.

Of course, these thorns, like sharks teeth, look ominous, especially in the fall when the flowers and the leaves are dead and they haunt in the open.

I’ve taken a fair amount of these in the arms or the legs when I ride past them on the lawn mower, you’d think I’d learn to give them a wide berth. I guess the roses make me forget, and I don’t have to mow in the winter or the fall, when they’re gone.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
December 21st, 2009
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Stuck in the middle of fall

DSC00597So here’s the next batch of fall photos I’ve taken this season, which, on the Northeast has been generally mild. For that, I am not complaining. Anything that keeps the cold away.

This group comes from the middle period of the season, when the leaves left on the trees were bright yellow and red and the leaves that had already fallen had not yet dried and turned brown.

It was during that time that my daughter had her first Halloween. Also, I got to pick my own cabernet franc grapes in the North Fork of Long Island for wine that I’m helping to make.

As I’ve said, most of the trees on my property turn yellow, so the whole yard shone gold in the middle of fall. It’s been beautiful.

Enjoy the photos.

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November 24th, 2009
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Sights of early fall

IMG_2463While I have held back on the photo posts recently, trying to get more writing done than photo taking, I have plenty of photos I’ve taken this fall that I’d love to share.

So here’s the first batch, taken right when the leaves started to fall off of the trees. These are a lot of the same tress and bushes I photographed in the summer, like the hosta, which has lost its flowers and turned yellow, and the hydrangeas that have left behind brown, dried shells of flowers.

Of course, it’s the up close colors and patterns of the leaves that inspire me the most.

Enjoy the photos. And, as always, you’re welcome to download any of them you would like. I’m not good enough a photographer to be stingy with my pics.

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November 10th, 2009
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Dripping wet

Here’s another batch of photos that I’m quite happy with. It’s been one of my favorite activities to take photos of flora after, or sometimes during, a rain. In addition to the great colors of the flowers, twigs, branches or leaves, the droplets or irregular coating or mist add texture and often a sense of movement to the shots.

Some of the “wet” photos have ended up in earlier posts, such as the recent butterfly bush one and the one that featured collection I shot at Channing Daughters Winery several weeks ago.

However, the following are the bulk of what’s left of the nature-themed wet photos. I’ve also taken a series of soaked man-made items, but those photos I’ll save for later.

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October 14th, 2009
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