Hope Springs Eternal

Remember this?

So lovely and promising.

Well, chipmunks happened. 

So frustrating and sad.

But then this happened.

Can you say chipmunk proof?

And now this.

We can only hope.

Those poor robin parents have worked so hard.

I'll keep you posted.

Photo Therapy

What to do on a rainy Saturday after Thanksgiving?  This:

I got the last of my pressed leaves from the giant dictionary and played with my bucket of leaves for hours, until the camera battery died.

My daughter helped me with the lighting and composition and editing. I learned to play with the histograms and edit the pictures to make them pop. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do, but I just crop and crank up the black pixels.

I spent hours editing the leaf photo file from November. After deleting all the ones I could part with, this month's file has 1251 photos. That's maybe a few hundred too many. October's has 2055 pictures, so November was an improvement, photo-OCD-wise.

I know I should clean up the files, but who do I delete? All these pretty textures and colors and patterns - 

they remind me of stained glass windows in church, and sunny days, and earthy smells. They make me happy, even if they are filling up my hard drive.

I can't think of a better waste of time or space on a rainy Saturday.

Leaf Abstracts

I was just going to press a few leaves to play with, but I got carried away. I have leaves pressed everywhere, and playing with them backlit, macro has been way too much fun.These are from a frenzied but fun hour yesterday. I can't wait until I have a chunk of time to really experiment with light and focus.

I'm fascinated by the variations that light can cause. This little leaf....

... becomes yellow green and pinkish....

....but a slight tilt and the green fades and the purple pops.

This one is as lovely as stained glass windows. I'll be playing with this leaf a lot more.

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to paint abstracts, but I gave up. Nothing I could create could come close to pleasing my eye like these leaf photos. Nature already made all the art I need. I'm just learning to catch it so I can look at it whenever I want to.

Happy Friday from the land of the easily amused.

Fall Madness

So, maybe I took 549 pictures yesterday, just in my little yard, but it's the viburnum's fault, for being so enchanting. I also blame the incredible quality of light in the woods in the morning, and the glowing magic light as the sun was setting too.  I was so intent on trying to capture the light, color and patterns that I almost forgot to smell. Oh my. I breathed so deep and long I got dizzy. Crunchy fall leaves, earthy brown smells, colors in every shade - I took pictures morning and evening until my hands were numb.  I'm making some DVD's for my mom and a certain leaf loving friend in California so I have a little excuse besides my insanity for all this excess.

These few selections are just from yesterday, just the viburnums, just one variety of the four I have in my yard. Don't even get me started on the Bradford Pear.......

In the blink of an eye...

I wish I could slow down Spring and watch it in slow motion, rewind, pause, and make it last longer. I am greedy that way. I've been doing what I do every May - taking an insane amount of pictures, fighting with my digital point and shoot camera, trying to catch what I'm seeing so I can look at it some more. I keep all my pictures archived on my hard drive by date, partly so I can compare variations in bloom time over the years.I used to keep one of those garden journals, but photos are my shorthand these days. I guess this is what retired lab geeks must do with their spare brain capacity, so I can know that the lovely yellow-green narcissus bud from my last post bloomed in all it's glory last week, May 1st to be exact.

Last year, April 15th:

2009, April 30:

2008, May 1st:

And so on. I think there might be a trend with the two week back and forth thing, but I didn't look back any farther. I've lived here 14 years and I never cease to be amazed and surprised by what will and won't grow here, and how different and yet the same each year can be.

Anyhow, I've been wallowing in this Spring, begging it to slow down, just like every year. I can take all the pictures I want, nature doesn't care. She just marches on in her mysterious ways.

Here are a few more pretty things that had made me happy since my last post, some wild or native, some cultivated, all loved.

It's almost too much isn't it?

Every time I snap pictures like this, I hear a voice in my head, from the finale of one of my favorite shows, Six Feet Under, where Nate's ghost tells his sister Claire who takes one last photo of her family before she leaves home to start her life:  You can't take a picture of this, it's already gone. 

Maybe so. But still we try to, don't we?

Finally, here are two things I love most, my babies all grown up on Mother's Day.

Now I really, really wish I had a pause and rewind button for my life!

Hope something lovely is growing and blooming where ever you are.

p.s.

If you want to hear the wisdom of Nate, it's on the video link at the bottom of the page, 2:16.
I miss that show.