An abstract image I took early this afternoon, of some wood oat grass blades along the side of Piney Woods Church Road….
Oct 272014
Oct 272014
I celebrate my 300th day of the Piney Woods Church Road Project with this image of a shriveled leaf connected to a twig with a network of spider threads, against the backdrop of the open road. I thought of the title for this image just after taking the photo, but only after arriving home did I appreciate the pun involved. My project this year has taken place in two locations: the physical landscape of a dirt road near my home, and the virtual landscape of the Web — in particular, here on my blog and on Facebook as well. Today, I celebrate the web and the road, and my pilgrimage which weaves them together.
Oct 252014
A grapevine tendril made a lovely spiral along Piney Woods Church Road, which I paused to photograph early this afternoon.
Oct 072014
From today’s afternoon walk down Piney Woods Church Road, I offer these two simple images: a greenbrier leaf with the shadow of a thorn behind it; and the feathery seeds f a wild rush. The breeze was blowing fairly steadily; every couple of minutes, it would still enough to take a shot of the rush. I spent quite a few minutes beside the road, waiting for stillness.
Sep 192014
Along Piney Woods Church Road, the American Burnweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius) is coming into seed. The flower heads, which stay almost entirely closed while the flower blooms are bursting open to reveal a globe of feathery parachutes with seeds attached. The weed itself is a nondescript native annual with a penchant for cropping up in unmown lawns. And certainly the flower is not spectacular, and does not seem to attract many intriguing pollinators. But even though the wind will carry these seeds far and wide to many a lawn and pasture, still I find seed time among the burnweed to be a time of wonders.
Sep 162014
Here are a few almost surreal images from a brief foggy morning walk down Piney Woods Church Road, before a frenzied day got underway.
Sep 032014
On my way to Atlanta on an errand, almost as an afterthought I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road this morning to take a few photographs. The dew was still heavy on the grass everywhere, and it had rained heavily overnight, too. As is so often the case, I found myself gravitating toward droplets of water. Along the way, I also photographed a pair of reddish-brown leaves (probably pin cherry) at the end of a naked branch. The result is these four photographs, and I simply couldn’t choose one picture among them to single out above the rest. I find delight in the watery marble on a grass blade in the first image; the reflected sunlight in the drop of water on the tip of a sassafras leaf in the second (is that actually a heart I see?); the brilliantly backlit red-brown of the pair of dead leaves against the forest background in the third; and the elegance of the grapevine tendril necklace and with its watery pendant in the fourth. I was blessed four times today, with such moments of stillness and delight.
(As an addendum, I did, in a sense, pay later for my morning. Arriving home from Atlanta with ankles burning, I removed my shoes and socks to find chiggers everywhere! They may have been lodging in my shoes (which I have since run through the washing machine) or they were waiting in the short grass just beside the road this morning to dive onto my feet. Either way, I am beginning to get a bit terrified of the local chigger population this year.)
Aug 292014
From my evening walk along Piney Woods Church Road, I offer these three leaves, in the order I noticed them: the first and third are white oak, and the middle one is greenbrier.
Aug 242014
This morning, my favorite photo was this image of a piece of found sculpture, an old vine tendril suspended above Piney Woods Church Road.
Aug 202014
I ventured out to Piney Woods Church Road this afternoon after an intense thunderstorm. The air was delightfully cool, and thunder still rumbled overhead. I found great delight, as I often do, in photographing droplets of water. I was delighted to discover this one water droplet with a tiny spider, a few millimeters across, just below it, clinging to a slender thread. I was reminded of an astronaut on a space walk above our blue-green sphere.
