Pond in winter Sunday, Jan 25 2015
Julie's Pond and Landscapes and Modern Photos photography 22:34
Winter views Friday, Jan 23 2015
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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Amongst the giants Saturday, Jan 17 2015
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.
Riddles? Thursday, Jan 15 2015
Modern Photos photography 18:09
Where does the crow go?
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Amaryllis Saturday, Jan 10 2015
gardening and Modern Photos gardening, photography 20:09
This was last year actually, so far this year both ‘Apple Blossoms’ are blooming, a deep red is definitely going to, and we will see about the rest. We tried marking them last year, but the markers are now illegible!
They spend the summer outside, (happy and green in the shade), a few months in the basement (dark and dry), and then spring into life in the winter with the judicious application of radiators and water. We even have babies from seed. Have no idea how that will work. They do pretty well, the red one in the photo above was a surprise last year. We had kept him for years, but he hadn’t bloomed in quite some time, and then last year he finally decided to once again. The ones you buy at the store are awfully confused for several years.
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On light Monday, Dec 29 2014
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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Not dead yet Saturday, Dec 27 2014
Modern Photos photography 17:48
Honest, just busy.
Utterly bizarre weather, I think we will end up paying for it somehow….it shouldn’t be this mild.
The deer are hanging out up here (our various hunters have been too busy, for the first time in decades). Deer off/Liquid Fence only goes so far though it does work; but there is a limit to the amount one can put on, especially on broad leaf evergreens in weather prone to temperature swings. I think I may need to learn how to keep the herd down….in my copious free time.
The horse likes the mild weather though!
A Christmas photo:
The Barway Friday, Dec 5 2014
Landscapes and Modern Photos landscapes, northwest Connecticut, photography 19:07
This is an interesting contrast to the picture of the old stump of a few days ago. Only about fifty yards from the stump, this area has been heavily thinned in a way that the other hasn’t (I am waiting, patiently for decades if need be, for several massive giants to come down in that other area. Until they do, finished thinning is sort of useless, since young sugar maples can essentially sit in stasis while in a heavy closed canopy, and when those big ones do come down….things will be different.
I have to admit the other picture has a more dramatic feel to it.
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Woodland Monday, Dec 1 2014
Landscapes and Modern Photos northwest Connecticut, photography 21:24
It has mostly melted now, but I rather liked this image of one of the old sugar maples in the Spring Lot, now a snag.
The Old Redbud Friday, Nov 28 2014
gardening and Modern Photos cercis canadensis, eastern redbud, gardening, photography 20:50
Acair Fearann 