Slender horse hairs on a barbed wire fence along an empty pasture are transfigured in the evening sunlight. Oh, how I relish those golden hours at day’s end, when spotlights of of angled sunlight illumine fragments I pass along my path down Piney Woods Church Road! There is such wonder then.
It was another splendidly foggy early morning as I made my way toward Piney Woods Church Road, but by glancing at he brighter patch of cloud hiding the Sun, I could tell that the fog would soon burn off. I took quite a few fogscape shots before becoming entranced, yet again, by dew-covered spiderwebs. This is my favorite of them all, one that I photographed with my zoom lens last time around. This time, I found a cattle feed bin, stood on that in the roadway, and was able to take quite a few macro images. There are two webs here: an elegant orb web, and a patternless assemblage of threads. The two are separate, yet connected. Was there only one spider involved in this dual creation? Looking at it, I cannot help but be reminded of diagrams out of cosmology or even science fiction; this particular photograph makes me think of parallel universes: one highly ordered, one highly chaotic.
For the past few days, I have been roaming Piney Woods Church Road, seeing few four-legged creatures of any kind — even the flies seem to have grown scarce. Often I would hear the katydids and other musical insects calling high up in the trees, and I would wish that one would make itself visible so that I could take a few photographs. I am delighted to say that a True Katydid (Pterophylla camellifolia) appeared this very day, resting placidly on a white oak leaf near eye level. I took quite a few photographs — these are my favorite four, beginning with the one I will designate the “official” photo for Day 205. Is it my imagination, or does she (I can tell this is a female from her flat, curved ovipositor on her back end) appear a bit upset that a photographer is getting in her face? I tried to disrupt her as little as possible, though I admit that I took another collection of photos on my return walk — all of my favorite images are from that later set.
I was wandering Piney Woods Church Road late this afternoon, feeling somewhat empty inside despite the sunny skies, not in search of anything in particular (or anything peculiar), when I saw these lovely clouds. What on first inspection looks like a single tall cloud resolved itself into two clusters of clouds when viewed from a slightly different angle, a little further down the road.
I glimpsed this brilliant red Eastern Velvet Ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) hurriedly making its way across the pine needles scattered along the edge of Piney Church Road. She (the males actually have wings) scarcely paused on her travels, but thanks to the wonders of high shutter speeds, I was able to catch her in this image. I do admit that her velvety fur almost begs one to touch it. Almost. Fortunately, knowledge of this flightless wasp’s other common name, “cow killer ant” is enough to remind me of her potent venom. This beautiful but dangerous femme fatale is worthy of a song, one that might begin, “She wore red velvet….”
A twirling bit of greenbrier tendril catches the light in this mid-afternoon photograph along Piney Woods Church Road. Day 203, and still I encounter new wonders….
The leaves cling to the trees like jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing. As summer advances, more and more of the leaves get eaten — the edges are no longer smooth, but interrupted by pieces that have been devoured, while leaf interiors develop patches where the green is gone and only a veil of veins, the leaf’s infrastructure, is left.
I interrupt the temporal flow of my images with another photograph from Day 201, yesterday. This was the very first photo I snapped as I set off down Piney Woods Church Road after the rain. Valerie saw it yesterday and urged me to post it, commenting upon its three-dimensional quality. So here it is. I continue to be amazed at how many ways there are to look at everyday leaves: grape, sweetgum, water oak….
It was another cloyingly humid and overcast July afternoon, the kind of day for which the word “blah” seems to fit so well. I had just set out down Piney Woods Church Road when I noticed, beyond the far side of a water-filled rut, a flash of bright red among the roadside weeds. I was delighted (well, comparatively delighted, for the kind of day it was) to find several False Strawberries, also known as Indian Strawberries (Duchesnea indica) in fruit. (Earlier this year, I posted a photograph of one in bloom — perhaps this very specimen!) Briefly I was even tempted to try one — perhaps because of how delicious they appear, and perhaps because I wanted to test field guide descriptions of their powdery, flavorless nature. But I settled for a photograph, instead.
Walking down Piney Woods Church Road during a light rain, I encountered a pair of spiderwebs with water droplets clinging to them, parallel to each other and just a few inches apart. In this photograph, I have focused on the closer of the two, while droplets from the one behind it form bright circles of light in the background. Connecting the centers of those circles reveals the other web, much as stars connected by lines depict constellations.
