gardening and Landscapes 09:13
Driveway? What driveway?
It is actually there, just beyond the young spruce. You are looking north across it. The odd, low evergreen is the Sargent’s Weeping Hemlock, looking flatter than usual due to ice. The curvy snag dead center is on the other side of the driveway. It actually is alive, it is a badly broken black cherry, I really need to prune its top if I am going to keep it.
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Julie's Pond and Landscapes and Modern Photos photography 22:34
Landscapes and Modern Photos gardening 22:01
Are always fascinating. Foreground trees are mostly Norway Spruce. The odd triple trunk in the center is a River Birch (why Do people insist on planting them in small spaces? That one is not small…), beyond is the Ginkgo, the big oak and the Cucumber Magnolia. In the summer the River Birch largely obscures the magnolia and to a lesser extent the other two trees, which shortens the view considerably.
And others!
And the more I look at it, the more I think I will go back and look at pictures from previous years, that leaning Norway doesn’t seem right. Sigh…
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Landscapes and Modern Photos photographs 22:19
From front to back: (off screen, itty bitty American Beech), Red Oak, Cucumber Magnolia, (really, really, itty, bitty white oak) Tulip Tree. Spacing is around 30-45 feet between trees, the beech is closer to the oak than any of the others, because the oak is elderly.
Landscapes 22:59
One periodically reads some determined, slightly desperate, screed about winter color in the garden. And there is winter color, a lovely muted palette of greys, ivory, browns, with a few dusky reds, greens, and blues. But, the thing is….
it comes right after things like this:
Mercifully, of course, we get used to the winter palette. It is only when one flips through the picture catalog and sees a photo from the spring, summer, or fall that the difference leaps out at one.
The barn from the old creamery parking lot on a lovely fall day.
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Julie's Pond and Landscapes and Modern Photos gardens, landscapes, photographs 22:06
particularly reflected light. Many places are so solidly lit that shadows don’t really exist. Try making decent shadows in a fast food restaurant, a store, an office, or a doctor’s office. You can’t. The same is true of many houses: wall lighting, overhead, track lighting, etc. Shadow puppets? What’s that?
Leaving aside the interesting philosophical exercise of stretching points that this can lead to….it also means that all the old tricks to brighten a room seem a little bit dull. Mirrors don’t have much depth in full light. They just reflect precisely what is there, whereas in a dark room: what was that shadow? And if the glass has any ripples! Mirrors have personality, but only when the darkness is there.
I always end up thinking about light at this time of the year. And mirrors, but not just of glass. At this time of year, every night when I do the horse, Julie’s Pond is present down in the woods. No leaf cover of course, and the sun angle is such that it is visible from the hill top. A steel gray gleam in the forest, still and silent, sometimes a tongue of fire at sundown that fades into nothingness.
Other times of the year…it can look like this. (I can’t claim this picture, much as I’d like to) Where does the water end and the light begin?
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Landscapes weather 20:35
Exactly six months ago, contrast this with the Norway spruce photo of a few days ago, or the one of the maple tree! One of the reasons that New England is so much fun is the dramatic seasonal shifts. The large Norway spruce, by the way, is just visible in the background of the right side in between two smaller trees (the right one is leaning noticeably). You are looking south, in the other picture you are looking east.
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gardening and Landscapes and Uncategorized gardening, photography 20:37
Otherwise known as your random photo of the day. Hard to believe that there is a busy two lane road out there!
Norway spruces for the most part, the tree in the front/left is a young redbud. What is funny is that until I was looking at this picture just now, I hadn’t seen the strong diagonal of those spruce trunks…I’ll have to give that some consideration. Lines make a garden!
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gardening and Landscapes gardening, trees 20:20
The old red maple beyond the garden, one of the few survivors from the original early 1800’s line, has a precarious life. It split many years ago and now exists as a carefully balanced, dancing, tree. Someday it will fall. And someday the two young beeches which bracket it will fill the space, now far larger than those little two foot tall, struggling saplings that I transplanted many years ago. For now the old maple rises above the golden beeches still.
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Landscapes northwest Connecticut 20:42
My current commute, such as it is, takes me along when of Connecticut’s nicer rivers: the Farmington. Aside from bird watching for bald eagles while driving, it is always interesting to study the river itself. It is a tame, little river compared to many in North America, though it is bigger than one thinks it is.
The water level in it is largely at the mercy and whim of man; throughout the 1800’s and into the 1900’s, it repeatedly flooded with catastrophic results. Many bridges and chunks of communities went downstream due to spring ice and summer hurricanes. Flood control dams, major drinking water reservoirs, downstream power dams, and the interests of the trout industry all conspire for a constantly managed water flow.
Still in the summer, the rocky, rapid nature emerges. Snags appear and disappear, and the water has a glinting blue color. It is fast running and clear.
And then there are days like today, swollen by the night’s torrential rain on frozen ground. It almost seemed sluggish, how deceptive an appearance, and had risen above its normal high water level,so it had a curious weight: filling its banks completely. The light, even though clear, in the setting sun was that grim pewter color with the faintest tints of orange. A cold reflection. Colder, somehow, than late winter when it is black water is crowned in white ice.
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Acair Fearann 