Sweetgum Conversations

 Backyard Nature, Landscape History, Native Plants, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 082014
 

On my Sunday morning walk along Piney Woods Church Road, I kept noticing evidence of sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua).  Perhaps that was partly because it is so abundant.  Along with loblolly pines, sweetgums are the dominant trees in the the second, third, and fourth growth woodlands and woodlots of the Georgia Piedmont.  Not only do they grow everywhere from seed, but they also sprout from the roots of other trees, making lines of tiny saplings in my lawn.  Meanwhile, the deer that browse most undergrowth to brown nubs ignore the sweetgums altogether.

And they can be beautiful — particularly their five-pointed, star-shaped leaves.  Here are three photographs from my walk, fragments of an ongoing conversation between myself and the Piney Woods Church Road landscape.

 

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Day 159: Wood Oats, Late Spring

 Agriculture and Husbandry, Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 082014
 

The wood oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) whose tawny dry stalks I had photographed in January have re-emerged from the ground with broad green blades and seeds just beginning to develop.  Along a roadside rich in European “weeds”, wood oats are native to the Southeast, produce edible seeds, and have even been cultivated as a grain.

 

Wood Oats, Late Spring

Day 154: Surfing the Web

 Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 032014
 

We have now gone a couple of weeks without measurable rainfall, and folks are beginning to get uneasy.  Are we headed into another drought?  Meanwhile, dust covers everything along Piney Woods Church Road — dust that settles in clouds in the wake of each passing car or truck.  There is a sugary coating on the leaves of the roadside shrubs and saplings.  There is no water left anywhere — ditches, ruts, and potholes have long been dry.  For a photographer in a hurry, the road offers few opportunities.  Given only fifteen minutes — my situation today — I had only two viable choices:  daisies or spiders.  The daisy fleabane continues to bloom, propelled to continue by a sort of biological inertia, when most all other roadside weeds and trees are spent — at least, until the next rains come.  Pollinating bees and flies flock to the daisies, and some likely fall victim to the orchard orbweaver spiders that have set up shop at numerous locations along the roadway.  Their webs are elegant, among the finest instances of nature’s geometry.  For today, I settled for another spider image, this time a photograph depicting the spider as a sort of Master Controller at the center of its web, working the machinery of its own predatory impulses.  Tomorrow?  Maybe daisies again.  Or perhaps a sunset, red sky intensified by dust in the atmosphere. If only it would rain….

 

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Day 152: New Fence

 Backyard Nature, Geometry and Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 012014
 

Today was, without doubt, the most difficult day I have experienced in my photo-odyssey thus far.  A couple of pulled muscles and tendons in my left leg required me to drive to Piney Woods Church Road yesterday, hobbling my way along only half the distance of the road.  Today, the leg had worsened considerably, to the point that I could put practically no weight onto it at all.  For a few minutes, I actually considered the prospect of abandoning the enterprise.  Just getting from my office to the back door of the house was a frustration; getting across the yard and driveway to the car took several minutes.  I arrived at the car, lifted my leg by the sock top to place it in the car (it is too weak to lift without support), and realized I had forgotten my car key.  Fortunately, the cell phone was in the car, so I was able to call my wife in the house (easily the shortest-distance call I have ever made) and ask her to bring it to me.  I abandoned all thought of getting out of the car and attempting a brief roadside hobble; I settled instead for taking photographs out the open window of the Prius.  Fortunately, a neighbor provided a ready-made subject for the camera — a new horse fence along the roadway, completed just this past week.  Here’s hoping I will be back up to at least a few minutes of groundwork by tomorrow afternoon.

 

New Fence

 

 

 

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