Sometimes when I am in need of new inspiration on an evening walk, I walk over to one of the several expanses of barbed wire fence along Piney Woods Church Road, and begin taking photographs. Often, I find that the sunlight illumines something on the fence in an intriguing way — perhaps a spiderweb, a leaf, or a clump of horsehair. These are two of my latest finds, both bits of horsehair backlit by golden light.
Lately I have spent many mornings and late afternoons photographing leaves illumined by sunlight. I have posted relatively few of them, by comparison. In this case, I find delight in the way the late-day sun has touched and transformed a single new leaf of a greenbrier. Beautiful.
Walking along the woods’ edge on Rico Road this morning, I glimpsed a pair of huge white flowers with purple centers, perhaps four inches across, on a vine with heart-shaped leaves. The flowers were at head height, on a vine hanging from tree branches. They looked like blooms that belonged in a tropical rainforest somewhere.
A member of the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae), the Wild Sweet Potato (Ipomoea pandurata) is native to much of the Eastern United States, despite it exotic appearance. The bulb of the vine is described by an Illinois wildflowers website as being “edible (barely) when cooked”, and was evidently eaten by Native Amerindians, according to the same source. Cooking was clearly essential; the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America notes that roots have purgative properties if eaten raw.
For my own part, I think I will be satisfied with appreciating the stunning flowers.
I can’t get enough of Wood Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium). Perhaps it is because oats have been my favorite grain since childhood. Or maybe it is because Wood Oats growing in a forest remind me of Sea Oats growing along an ocean coast. Or maybe it is simply because the seed heads are so beautiful when the morning sun shines through them.
So little is in bloom along Piney Woods Church Road this time of year. I glimpsed one Horse Nettle, and a few bedraggled Daisy Fleabanes. But then, along the woodland edge near Rico Road, I noticed one bright yellow eight-petaled flower. It is a sunflower, a member of the genus Helianthus, and quite possibly the Stiff-Haired Sunflower(Helianthus hirsutus). To make the identification a bit more difficult, there are actually twenty-eight different species of Helianthus native to Georgia! No matter its species, it was a burst of sunlight on my walk, a bit of yellow in a sea of green.
Today did not begin well. I heard a hissing in the wall behind the shower — the plumbing equivalent of discovering an unexpected lump somewhere on the body. Instead of setting out at 9:15 am, when the temperature was a pleasant 74 degrees, I set out an hour and a quarter and a couple of telephone calls later, very much distracted. For the first time in ages, I walked from one end of Piney Woods Church Road to the other without taking a single photograph, the Sun all the time climbing still higher in the sky. On my return journey, I halfheartedly took a few photographs of brightly colored fallen laves on the road and backlit green leaves with shadows — nothing inspired, but something to fall back on if necessary. I still felt no particular worry. For 193 days, I had walked the same stretch of roadway, finding at least one moment of wonder every single time. And today was no exception.
About halfway back to Rico Rd., I discovered this spider in the center of a huge web at head-height, oriented perpendicular to the road edge. It is sometimes called the Crab Spider,, because it is shaped rather like a crab with paired spines along its abdomen. According to Spiders of the Carolinas, it is actually a Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). Like most all Georgia spiders, it is harmless to people, and can even be handled safely by its spines, though I am not clear why one would opt to do that. It is an abundant spider of mixed open hardwoods, like the forest strip edging Piney Woods Church Road.
Today is Day 193 of my Piney Woods Church Project. I announce this, not to prompt awe, but to set the stage for a confession. In 193 days, I had never noticed a large rock off on the side of the road, and how the late afternoon sun cast shadows of grass blades onto the stone. It was humbling to make this discovery, and to begin to appreciate all that I am still missing — all that still awaits to be explored and experienced. And this is only a single dirt road, less than half a mile in length. How could we ever claim to know the world, were we to have a billion lifetimes to live in it?
At the end of my evening walk, the sun was low in the sky, perhaps a half hour before sunset. Walking back toward Rico Rd., my attention was caught by a shriveled brown leaf lying on the grass. I got down onto the ground with my camera at ground level, and started to explore its possibilities as a screen for Balinese shadow play. (For those unfamiliar with Balinese shadow puppet theater, here is a great website on the topic.) The result is a tiny landscape of shadow, color and texture, created by the various shadows on the leaf, a grass blade standing just in front of it, and the textures and colors of the leaf itself. How many such miniature worlds of the imagination do we pass by every day?
On this morning’s walk, I also encountered a moth and a butterfly. Both were unassuming — the moth just a flutter of brown whose wings I never even got to see, and the butterfly with bright yellow wings that were less than an inch across. The little yellow butterfly is, in fact, a Little Yellow Butterfly (Eurema lisa). For lack of identifying features in my photograph, I will call the moth a Little Brown Moth. Who knows? That could be its name, after all.
Below are three photographs from my morning saunter through the fog along Piney Woods Church Road….
Into the Fog
The Old Tulip Poplar
Two Cedars
