Three red greenbrier leaves stand out vibrantly against the forest background on Piney Woods Church Road. After a cloudy spell, the late-day sun shone magnificently through the trees. Much though I eagerly embrace the spring, there is much beauty to the bare branches and lingering leaves of these late winter days.
In the woods along Piney Woods Church Road, the red maple trees are in bloom; gazing through the forest, I can see the red haze that marks their presence. A couple of young maples happen to grow along the road edge near Hutcheson Ferry Road, and their open blossoms betoken spring’s arrival, though the calendar (and the current weather forecast) would argue otherwise.
It is a frenetic time of year along Piney Woods Church Road. Blink, and buds open, trees burst into flower, spring arrives….
From my walk earlier today, I offer these two interpretations of daffodils blooming in the golden late afternoon sunlight.
Spring is underway along Piney Woods Church Road. Late this afternoon, after taking many more photographs of the daffodils, I noticed that several of the shrubs along the roadside are coming into leaf. Winter has not yet relinquished its hold; by mid-week, temperatures are supposed to reach highs in the 40s and lower 50s and lows into the 20s. I worry about all of the spring growth — will it be able to endure the return to colder days?
I arrived at Piney Woods Church Road just after sunrise. I watched first light skim across the tops of the bare pecan trees along the roadside. And in a small pasture ditch, nestled between a power pole and a guy wire, the scene was mirrored in the water surface.
I glanced up from photographing the daffodil to spot this nuthatch scampering down the trunk of a pecan tree across the road. Quickly, without much thought, I snapped this picture. And then he was gone….
This is another image from my daffodil photo-shoot earlier today. The sun was low in the sky, shining through the corona, as if the daffodil had captured the sunlight within its core.
I set out for Piney Woods Church late on a sunny afternoon, with one goal in mind. A daffodil beside a fence at the road edge was finally in bloom (I had scoped it out on a dog walk a short time before). My goal was to find a way to photograph it that would make it interesting. Dandelions and daffodils are much-welcomed signs of spring; they are also ubiquitous, floral equivalents of pigeons in a city square.
I spent half an hour with that daffodil, using my plus four and plus ten macro lenses. I took over sixty photos. I am not even sure which one I was using for the one below — the plus ten, I think. It is my favorite shot — and angle one rarely gets to take in a botanical garden, lying down and gazing upward.
On a gray, slightly foggy morning, I arrived at Piney Woods Church Road with the particular intent of photographing a daffodil bud that I had seen (for the first time this year) the previous day. I quickly got down to work, shooting the leaves and flower bud from various angles, taking over 30 different pictures. At last, satisfied that there would be something of value to show for my efforts, I stood up and looked into the field beyond the roadside barbed-wire fence. A dozen feet away from me were two more daffodils, already flowering! The pasture also contained over a dozen cows, one of which was obligingly grazing beyond where the daffodils grew. The result is this image, a cow dining among the daffodils. (Since the cows avoid eating daffodils, the plants have been flourishing here for many years.)
