Tag: summer

Up close and abstract

IMG_2003I’ve been holding on to these photos.

Back in the summer, one rainy day I noticed as I was walking my dogs that the wood grain in the Adirondack chairs on my back patio looked like fish scales. And while when they were dry the chairs were gray, when wet the green moss in the cracks and hidden brown in the wood stood out.

I also took a few photos of a wet sawhorse I had used a few times to hold bed frames as I spray painted them white. With the wet grain and speckles of white paint, the texture in the photos was wonderful. I also photographed one of the rusty wing nuts holding the sawhorse together.

I do love to snap pictures of patterns, and love it when the results look almost like an abstract painting.

These were a batch of really good ones.

Enjoy.

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Publish date:
November 3rd, 2009
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And with this I say ‘goodbye summer’

These are last of my summer flower pics, and though I can’t say they are the best ones I took, I can say the actual moment when I took them was one of the best of the summer.

I credit the wind.

It was a warm summer day, late afternoon, and I had walked outside of my in-law’s house because I had noticed a set of flowers I hadn’t photographed yet, a bush full of flowing purple hibiscus.

Then, when I started taking photos a warm wind kicked up, ruffling the petals of the flower like cotton sheets hanging on a clothesline. It was so quiet outside that i could hear the wind scrubbing my hair. And though the air coursed around me like rapids split by a river boulder, it felt like I too was bending in the wind with the tissue-paper petals.

The joys of the moment. A still joy. A peaceful joy. A summer joy.

I’ll miss it, but the season will return. Now it’s time to dig into fall.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
October 16th, 2009
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Is this jasmine or not?

A little help here would be appreciated.

Judging by the smell of the following vine I’ve photographed, which climbs up the corner of my house, this is some kind of jasmine. It’s a pretty unmistakable fragrance.

However, though a few Internet searches have led me to believe this is some kind of star jasmine, there is one difference I just can’t overlook. Star jasmine flowers have five petals, while the one I photographed only has four.

In fact, I can’t find any four-petal jasmine flowers online. But, trust me, these little white flowers smell like jasmine.

So, if you happen to be, or know, a flower expert, I could use your help.

What is this?

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October 16th, 2009
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The magical, wonderful butterfly bush

IMG_1854This is one of my favorite plants, one I draw a lot of symbolism from.

The butterfly bush gets its name because its phallus-like clusters of fragrant flowers drive butterflies wild, and at all times one can find the bugs with the painted wings drinking from the blossoms. Unfortunately, it also is a bumblebee magnet, so whenever I move the lawn, one of the yellow-striped menaces dive bombs my scalp as I putt by on the tractor.

The bush on my yard is actually two bushes, one with white flowers and the other with purple. All summer long, a blossom grows, turns to seed and dies, leaving the carcass of the flower behind, and then another one grows out just above the dead one, and goes through the same cycle. It’s that effect which always gets me thinking. It’s like the bush makes a point of hanging on to its dead flower. It’s like us. Our memories, though they have lost the life they once had when they were happenin, hang off of us, reminding us of once-living past, but not necessarily getting in the way of the new blooms of our lives. We carry it all with us, the new and the old, the alive and the defunct, growing all the way.

I’ve been working on a poem to that effect. I’ll share it when I’m done.

Meanwhile, enjoy the photos. I shot both the white and purple blooms, and even included a shot of one of the dead appendages. I shot some of the photos just after a rain storm, and I love how the beads of water look on the flowers.

Enjoy.

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Publish date:
October 13th, 2009
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Home sweet hosta

IMG_1335One of the first plants my wife and I planted at our home, lining the front porch, were short, young, big-leaved hosta plants. And though the first year they grew greener and wider, and then shriveled and detached from the earth in the late fall into winter, my wife assured me they’d come back next year.

They did, only, this time they bore flowers. These white little bells, with starburst tips, stood nearly three feet high.

Who knows what they will look like next year?

The photos came out well. I took them one dim afternoon, and you can see the porch blurred in the background.

Enjoy.

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October 13th, 2009
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Falling behind, and getting caught up with summer

IMG_1401There was a time (a month, actually) where I posted on this blog every day. Sure, it took signing up with National Blog Posting Month to get me to do it, but I like to believe my life was also more cooperative then.

Now, that just isn’t so, and as a frost keeps threatening to make me finally fold up my short-sleeved shirts for the season, I find I still have a stack of summer photos I had intended to have posted by now. So, it’s time to get caught up.

I was initially waiting to post a lot of these with companion poems I am writing, but since my free time is so much less these days since I have an infant (something you shouldn’t consider a complaint from me – fatherhood is bliss), I’m going to post them. The poems will come, but I need to move on. I’ve already started taking fall photos.

I’ll start with a rather large gallery of assorted flowers taken in the summer. Some are wild, some are ornamental, some are vivid, and some are delicately muted – the panoply of summer in the Northeast.

I hope you enjoy them.

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October 13th, 2009
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Goodbye, sweet summer

IMG_1106Maybe I’m being dramatic. The summer wasn’t that hot, the month of June was the soggiest I ever remember, July was cool and it wasn’t until August when we got a few of those balmy days I so enjoy. But, still, my favorite season is ending, so forgive me for romanticizing.

I’ve begun looking through my files of summer photos, organizing them by flower type or any other subject for future blog posts. However, the following photos are better presented as an assortment.

Some of my favorite shots are of the Tiger Lilies, though many of the wildflower, garden plants and decorative bloom photos came out great as well.

They remind me of that moment when the hot sun all of a sudden bakes your neck, and the flowers, now hearty, glow in the daylight, and you realize that spring is gone.

And it’s summer.

Enjoy the photos:

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Publish date:
September 14th, 2009
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Photos: The first of the black caps

If you could see me now you’d laugh at my purple tongue and fingers, and I’d let you. Because I just picked my first batch of black raspberries from the vines that grow on my property, risking poison ivy – which I get terribly – just to enjoy a handful of the tangy fruit. It’s one of those activities that defines the thick of summer to me.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
July 4th, 2009
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