Category Archives: Nature

Sights and smells of the great outdoors.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Three of a Kind

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Have you looked, really looked, at leaves on trees in the springtime?
As in walk over to a tree and examine the little bits of green growing on the branches?

New leaves are AMAZING!

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Tiny New Leaves. Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

Tiny and perfectly shaped.
Reaching for sunlight.
Connected to branch to trunk to earth.

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New Leaves Reaching Upward.  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

Growing from branches old and new.
Unfurling as they expand.
Ready to dance in a breeze.

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Thank-you, Nancy Merrill, for this week’s photo challenge:

… take three photos of the same subject, but from different angles or distances or whatever. This will give you the chance to look at your subject in a lot of different ways. This is the only rule, so have fun.

The pictures are from yesterday’s morning walk (to see post click here).  There are more leaf pictures to come!

Morning Walk

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My initial intent was simply to go for a walk this morning.  But I grabbed our Sony Cyber-shot camera as I headed out the door.  Two miles, 45 minutes, and 118 pictures later I made it back home.  About half the photos were deleted after being downloaded – a great bonus of digital photography.

More than once I wished I’d had my Canon EOS Rebel XTi.  Nevertheless the zoom feature on Sony means I have pictures of geese, ducks and a cardinal!

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Watching You Watching Us.  Photo: TLCLark, 5/2/19.

The ducklings had been following the adults but decided a swim would be easier than hopping over the rocks.  I was surprised to see I’d captured an adult male jumping in.

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Not without Me!  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

The cardinals are very vocal this time of year so they’re often heard even if not so often seen.

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Heard and Seen!  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

All three pictures shown above were cropped from the original.  The next two pictures are unedited.

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Mushrooms.  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

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Smells like Honeysuckle.  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

One last picture, cropped slightly.

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Crab Apple Blossoms.  Photo: TLClark, 5/2/19.

What have you seen while on a walk lately?

A.A.Milne: The Island

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Cape Meares State Park, Oregon Coast. Photo: TLClark, October 2011.

“If I had a ship,” the poem “The Island” by A.A.Milne begins.  The first stanzas describe sailing the ship through the seas to a beach and leaving the ship to climb up the steep white sand to the trees.  It concludes:

And there would I rest, and lie,
My chin in my hands, and gaze
At the dazzle of sand below,
And the green waves curling slow,
And the grey-blue distant haze
Where the sea goes up to the sky . . . .

And I’d say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea;
“There’s nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me.”

A. A. Milne, “The Island,” in When We Were Very Young, Copyright, 1924, by E. P. Dutton, Copyright Renewal, 1952, by A. A. Milne.

On one hand, the last line seems selfishly self-centered.
On the other hand, it reminds me that we all do well to take time away in nature, to spend time alone, to rest, to gaze about, and to wonder.

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Green waves, Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Photo: TLClark, October 2011.

I didn’t (and don’t) have a ship, the pictures are not from or of an island, and the weather was too chilly to stay still long!  Nevertheless they are what I remembered when I read A. A. Milne’s poem.

Wherever you are and whatever the weather, may you take time to rest and to wonder!

Blessings,
Teressa

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Astoria Bridge over the Columbia River, Astoria, OR. Photo: TLCLark, May 2010.

Photo Challenge: Rock

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Rock.  And not rock.  Because, of course, seeing a fake rock is ever so much better than seeing utility connections.

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Rock and Not Rock.  Photo: TLClark, 3/26/19.

Rock.  And water.  And a rock retaining wall of sorts.  The little neighborhood stream – which isn’t always so little – goes under the street, through the Woodland Reserve pond and into Fourmile Creek.  The fire hydrant in the top left corner tickles my fancy for some inexplicable reason.  (The pile of snow near the hydrant might be hard as rock but it will melt away one of these days.)

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Neighborhood Stream.  Photo: TLClark, 3/26/19.

Rock.  On a beach, nearly six months ago, some 2000 miles from home.  Ever so much more interesting than what I saw last Tuesday.

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Rocks. Golden Gardens Park (on Puget Sound), Seattle, Washington.  Photo: TLClark, 10/7/18.

Another great Tuesday Photo Challenge from Dutch goes the Photo!

A. A. Milne: Daffodowndilly

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Daffodils, Reiman Gardens, 5/4/18.  Photo: TLClark.

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,

She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the south wind

And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbour:

“Winter is dead.”

A.A.Milne, in When We Were Very Young, Copyright, 1924 by E. P. Dutton, Copyright Renewal, 1952, by A. A. Milne

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Daffodils, Reiman Gardens, 5/4/18.  Photo: TLClark.

Daffodil season is a month or more away here in central Iowa.  But I read the A. A. Milne poem the other day and couldn’t resist sharing.  The pictures are from an outing last spring to Reiman Gardens, Iowa State University, Ames (click here to discover Reiman Gardens).  The bright yellow makes me smile despite the overcast, rainy, gray day out my window this morning.

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Double Daffodils, Reiman Gardens, 5/4/18.  Photo: TLClark.

Have a beautiful day!

Teressa