I was feeling a bit down and disconnected as I took my afternoon journey down Piney Woods Church Road. My mood seeped nto this image and its title, I think. There is a touch of melancholy to this image of a half-eaten pecan nut (left behind by a gray squirrel, no doubt), resting on a fencepost at the edge of a roadside horse pasture. An old mule barn provides a blurry blue-gray geometric form in the background.
On my early afternoon walk down Piney Woods Church Road today, my attention was drawn to a fascinating relationship between a shrub of some kind and an adjacent muscadine. A woody tendril of the vine cradled a single leaf from the shrub, holding it in place. How did this happen? Did the tendrils turn first, to wrap around some long-gone form, and then the leaf just happened to be blown into a vine’s embrace? Or did the tendrils somehow develop around the leaf, pinning it motionless? Equally mysterious is how I managed to walk past it for weeks, or even months, never noticing it before today.
I supposed my eyes were trained to seek out patches of green and red in juxtaposition along Piney Woods Church Road, after I stopped to photograph a brilliant red ribbon and bit of artificial pine that festooned a roadside mailbox. I actually took a number of photographs of that ribbon, covered in several places with newly-fallen brown leaves. Still, I find this later, and much more natural, bit of red and green far more enticing: a single dark green blade of grass stands next to a tiny sweetgum sapling with bright red leaves. The image forms a natural holiday tableau, equally fitting for Christmas or the Winter Solstice.
A lone brown and shriveled leaf of a sweetgum stands proudly against a backdrop of trees and sky on a late autumn early afternoon somewhere along Piney Woods Church Road.
Whenever I am in need of new inspiration, I seek out the muscadine vines along Piney Woods Church Road. The leaves and tendrils offer endless possibilities. Here are two images from this afternoon’s walk.
On my afternoon ramble down Piney Woods Church Road today, I paused to photograph the very last leaf on a roadside pin cherry. After taking several shots of it, I reached up and touched it gently with my fingertips. It fell away from the branch tip, onto the waiting road edge.
The wood oats have ripened now along Piney Woods Church Road. As the autumn and winter advance, seeds will slowly detach from the seed heads and disperse to the surrounding woods and fields.
On this gray and grim afternoon, with dark clouds filling most of the sky but no rain falling, I went out in search of new wonders along Piney Woods Church Road. I found myself entranced by the bare branches of an aged, weather-beaten tulip poplar standing by itself in a pasture. I took several photographs looking up into the limbs. At one point as I stood snapping a series of photographs, a large bird, perhaps a black vulture but possibly a bald eagle, crossed my field of view. The bird, high above the poplar, turns a photograph that would otherwise be a portrait of a weathered pasture tree into a conversation between tree and bird, high above.
On a chilly, gray afternoon, I encountered a flock of red-winged blackbirds, passing through on their journey south. They moved like a curtain of black across the sky, flashing spots of red in their flight.
From my early afternoon walk down Piney Woods Church Road today, I offer these two images of autumn’s harvest: a cluster of ripe Russian olives (from a shrub that is, alas, highly invasive here in Georgia), and a shriveled beech leaf illuminated by the sun. It was another lovely day for a walk, with temperatures gently nudging 60 degrees.
