After time away from the fascinating worlds of muscadine tendrils, I return for this image from my late-afternoon walk along Piney Woods Church Road. A woody tendril from another year coils and re-coils in a dance among the trees.
Oct 062014
Oct 052014
I set out this morning a few minutes before sunrise, hoping to catch a few images along Piney Woods Church Road before an outing to north Georgia to pick apples. The fruit of my walk is below. There is no opportunity for catching the sunrise itself along the road — trees and woods block all eastern views. But the anti-sunrise (for lack of a better term) in the western sky was quite lovely this morning. It was quite cold (about 40 degrees F), and fog rose from a distant pond. The air was crisp and still. Far away, dogs barked, and the world slowly awakened into another autumn day.
Oct 042014
Autumn had fully arrived as I strolled down Piney Woods Church Road this afternoon, with a strong breeze and temperatures in the low 60s. It was a tough day for nature photography — cold wind kept the critters in hiding, bright sun made for harsh light, and it took quite a bit of patience to wait for the breeze to die down enough to photograph a particular leaf. Returning home, I was surprised to find that my favorite capture for the day was of an everyday Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) leaf. Illuminated from above, the leaf becomes a territory for the imagination to roam.
Oct 032014
I set out down Piney Woods Church Road at mid-afternoon today, after the early morning rain but well before the promised cold front passed through. A short way down the road, I saw this assassin bug nymph (Zelus luridus) perched on a muscadine leaf. I suspected it was an assassin bug after observing its impressive shnozz (to use the complicated scientific term) which betokened a life to be spent sucking the vital fluids out of other insects.
Oct 022014
I cannot choose which photograph to feature today from my mid-morning Piney Woods Church Road ramble. Being pressed for time (a class I teach begins in just a few hours, one hour from where I sit), I will apply my executive privilege and share the three of them as a miscellany. Yellow, reds, greens, and browns — all have their moments here. What an array of colors this season brings us!
Oct 012014
Ah, autumn. Time of leaves. So many marvelous images. I could fill entire walls with images of leaves of many colors — each one a page in a story of the year’s passage. Leaves are vessels for wonder and imagination. I cannot cease admiring them.
The last photograph is of a single leaf, folded over on itself.
Oct 012014
Alongside Piney Woods Church Road near its intersection with Rico Road, kindred weeds — a sedge of some kind and blossoms of Smartweed/Knotweed (Polygonum sp.) form an early-autumn bouquet for my camera.
