America's Roadside Bloomery

I had a thought after I posted this image of Black Eyed Susans (and other flowers) taken yesterday on a Floyd County roadside. Here it is:

It would be neat for contributors from all over the country to offer their images to an aggregate gallery called Unplanted Gardens: America's Roadside Bloomery.

All images would include in their composition a road of some kind, just to place it, and then the wildflowers that grow there unplanted. Hiway department wildflower beds don't count.

Each image should be 72 dpi, max size of 800 pixels on the largest side. Information should minimally include the location, if possible some ID on the flowers, and any other pertinent or interesting information.

If you would like to accept this assignment, send them to me at -- fred1st over at gmail -- with Unplanted Garden in the subject line. I will upload them to a public gallery on Smugmug. I'll collect these through October (there are lots of fall asters, Joe Pye Weed, Iron Weed, etc.) If at least thirty are received, we'll go farther.

We'll vote and there will be a first, second and third prize--some combination of the book (Slow Road Home), the two sets of photo note cards, and screen saver images for your computer.

Please forward this pleasant "assignment" to your photog friends. The more, the better. I will set up the gallery with this image soon, and it will be ready for your submission.

Here's the 800 pixel version of the image above.

Now. Get out there while the flowers bloom. And stay out of traffic!

UPDATE: And speaking of traffice. "AMERICA'S ROADSIDE BLOOMERY, a call to action for photographers. Cool" -- kindly posted by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit Saturday morning. Now you peepers send in those pix! Deadline: 15th of October for submitting, voting completed October 31 and prizes awarded.

A Field Guide to Light

That title contains some essence of what I'd like any potential photography book to be about. In some cases, the actual subject of a photo would be of most interest. But more often than not, it would be about the magic of a lighting moment--the light itself, the thousand different species of light--that come and go in this single small cleft of landscape and span of sky through four seasons.

This grassy composition lies just beyond the maple tree seen here earlier this week. Both scenes become worthy of the time to capture them photographically because they both benefit from the very same early morning light, shifted so far south along the ridge in the summer months that the sun's rays drop just there, just then.

I could create my own private Stonehengian calendar: a shaft of light at nine o'clock in the morning on the first day of summer will spill through the cleft in the maple trunk and strike the earth exactly here, the pasture grasses from must that angle. I could place a permanent marker on the spot to honor the light, the day, the year, the lifetime it marks.

And so it is for all the light that comes to Goose Creek. It is predictable, and it is so very transient and unique to each given moment and place in time.

To be honest, this shot of the grasses came from this day last June. This year, in the very same spot, the pasture has been cut and is only a foot tall now. But I know what I would have seen on this date in that exact place at 9 am when the sun came over the ridge so predictably. Except this June 28 is cloudy; the sky is flat-gray and somber with a thin fog lying over the stubble of pasture grass--its own kind of special light.

Click for a larger image.

Beauty Upon Beauty: Not

Black Vulture Glamour Shot spotted on the same country road from whence the chickory flower pictures came earlier in the week.

I rounded a bend, and greeting me were three black vultures on three consecutive fence posts. Only one remained by the time I stopped the car in the middle of the untraveled gravel road, pulled the camera from the car seat to my eye, and pressed the shutter.

This one is nicely vignetted by a luxurious growth--of poison ivy.

Hmmmm. My Ears Still Ring.

Nope. It don't make me wanna holler hiDeeHo! (Reference to _____ -- you boomers out there?)

I'm talking about two rounds from the .44 magnum short barrel rifle, fired into the bank. I had nothing to shoot at, and didn't want to. But I DID want to distract the dog from tangling with the bear I saw crossing the creek ten minutes after I got home from work. Tsuga had barked twice from the back porch, and was headed fast in pursuit after a lumbering black form headed for the west ridge.

I was, it turned out, barefooted, but adrenalin can do some amazing things to pain. I grabbed the rifle and got as far as the other side of the garden, heard barking beyond the pines, and fired over into the bank. The dog came running, right past me, across the creek, over into the field, and took a...well, you know the saying about having that scared outta ya. Must've happened to him. Whew! Close call, I said to myself about the time the dog bounded back across the plank, back away from the house, back toward the bear. Oh crap!

I ran to the house, BACK across the gravel drive (after noticing thistles growing the yard I would have missed wearing shoes), grabbed some more .44 shells and my boots, and ran faster in this heat than my heart would have preferred, to where I'd last seen the dog. Again, adrenalin is a heady motivator. Another shot into the bank over my whistles and screams, and sure enough, here came Mr., undamaged, tongue hanging, pretty proud of himself.

And I guess I'd never noticed, though neighbors have remarked about it. It just smelled musty--like bear--and knowing that smell, I'll be more tuned in to when one or more is in the valley. The dog could smell THAT from inside the house, no problem.

Quiet Places of the Heart

Dew beads up on Solomon's Seal leaves along Nameless Creek, May 2007

The Seldom Scene

I have a few *pterible images from that Blue Ridge Parkway meadow full of ferns I discovered a couple of weeks back, and will post one or two of my favorites.

As with wildflowers, the first blooms (as if ferns had them) are most attractive. Ferns, in addition to their lacy leafery, often have this seldom-seen "fertile" stage, as in this Cinnamon Fern, when they are busily producing spores by the millions for dispersal in the wind.

As I'm sure you remember from biology class, those spores, against all odds finding favorable soil, can produce a gametophyte, a little heart-shaped leaf that will produce either an egg, or a flagellated, swimming sperm.

Given the necessary film of water between the two (understand why there are no desert ferns?) the multi-tailed sperm swim to the egg along a chemical gradient (they "smell" the egg, in a sense) and voila! a fertilized egg (the sporophyte phase in this "alternation of generations") begins to elongate into what will become a fern frond--either a "sterile" leaf-only frond, or one these fancy feather-duster-looking arrangments (or some variation on the theme generally not as gawdy as this) that is "fertile" and spore-bearing.

Now. You may expect a pop test on this at our next meeting. Do your homework.

*Pteridology is the study of ferns, so if I'm having a pterible day, it means I'm seeing lots of them!

Wildlife: Up Close and Personal

Ann called almost inaudibly from the kitchen. It almost seemed as if she were trying to talk without even moving her lips.

Finally I made out what she was almost saying: turkey. Right. Here.

I grabbed the camera and got a few mostly bad shots, because the window glass reflection played havoc with the autofocus on the lens. There was practically no light, so the ISO got pushed to 800. I can say this: this is the best picture of a turkey I've ever taken. Because it is the ONLY picture of a turkey I've ever taken.

Ah, wildlife. Thursday, driving to work, I hit a deer. It came up out of a ravine and was maybe 20 feet away when I hit the brakes hard, and the deer the same way--broadside. Thankfully, I had slowed enough that I didn't go up and over the deer, which probably would have turned me into the ravine.

The deer didn't tumble, but instead slammed hard into the bank, staggered and ran back infront of the car AGAIN. I slammed on the brakes AGAIN. And the deer bounded back down into the ravine along Union Valley Road, and I feel certain is still out there somewhere, not feeling so very good.

And the Subaru: a few coarse deer hairs under the license plate frame. That's all. This time.

Picture This

"The back page of an October issue of San Francisco magazine displays a vivid photograph of a small boy, eyes wide with excitement and joy, leaping and running on a great expanse of California beach, storm clouds and towering waves behind him. A short article explains that the boy was hyperactive, he had been kicked out of his school, and his parents had not known what to do with him—but they had observed how nature engaged and soothed him. So for years they took their son to beaches, forests, dunes, and rivers to let nature do its work.

The photograph was taken in 1907. The boy was Ansel Adams." (from No Child Left Inside by Richard Louv)