If I’m not going to be a popular photographer, I think I will at least be a poplar one! The tulip poplar leaves are continuing to unfold from their buds along Piney Woods Church Road, and I remain entranced by the process. Here are three more images, from yesterday’s walk.
It’s a moth…. It’s a bee…. It’s a fly….
I have to admit that, as flies go, the black-tailed bee fly (Bombylius major) is quite attractive — a hedgehog with wings. Admittedly, one has to get past its rather long and pointy proboscis. But that is a tool for sipping nectar, not causing harm. The flies hover like hummingbirds over flowers, their beating wings generating a high-pitched whining sound. Bee fly larvae parasitize the larvae of solitary bees and consume their food stores. The adult bee flies supposedly emerge from their underground bee burrows in early summer; this particular one seems to be a couple of months early.
After a couple days of on-again, off-again rain, skies are gradually clearing. Along Piney Woods Church Road, a low black wisp of cloud races across the sky.
Here are two more photographs from a rainy day walk along Piney Woods Church Road. The first is another water droplet beside the road; the second is yet another image of tulip poplar leaves opening. I can imagine an entire gallery space filled solely with images of tulip poplar buds and leaves in early springtime….
Walking Piney Woods Church Road in a light rain, I find the roadside trees and shrubs bedecked with jewels. Ah, but water droplets are frustratingly difficult to photograph!
Along Piney Woods Church Road, some tulip poplar saplings are continuing to burst their buds and fill out with leaves. I have never noticed the process before — how graceful the unfurling can be. I could fill my camera’s memory cards with photographs of buds and tiny leaves.
At last, I found a few tiny violets blooming along the side of the ditch where Piney Woods Church Road meets Hutcheson Ferry Road. In this photograph, a violet beams at me in the afternoon sunlight against a background of pure blue sky.
On my Piney Woods Church Road walk this morning, I found new growth everywhere I looked. These new leaves seem to glow from within with the vitality of springtime.
In the early morning, new leaves are aflame with color and light. I set out looking for frost, but I found fire instead.
Over the past three months, I have taken several dozen photographs of the thick, wiry vines of greenbrier, festooned with massive thorns and draping themselves along several of the tree trunks along Piney Woods Church Road. Today, when I had no intention of trying to do so, I caught an image of them that I find striking. If a jazz riff could be photographed, perhaps it would look something like this.
