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….
Jul 222014
Jul 212014
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.
Jul 212014
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….
Jul 212014
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.
Jul 202014
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.
Jul 202014
Late Sunday morning, under a fine drizzle, I explored the wonders of Piney Woods Church Road. I was drawn, invariably, to droplets of water. I have chosen two for today, because they go so well together. Both would, I think, make stunning earrings. Two watery worlds cling to the tips of vine branches, against a background of flowing colors. My familiar gravel road becomes a path through a museum of water, color, and muted light.
Jul 192014
A greenbrier thorn and tendril, somewhere along Piney Woods Church Road.
Jul 192014
From my post-rain walk down Piney Woods Church Road earlier this afternoon, here is a pair of water droplets, awaiting the Sun’s return.
Jul 192014
On this milestone day, I celebrate the utterly commonplace — a muscadine grape leaf framed against the summer sky, somewhere (practically anywhere) along Piney Woods Church Road. I am thankful for the miles I have traveled, and expectant and excited about the journey that still lies ahead.
Jul 182014
On an overcast early evening with just a hint of drizzle, I set out on my daily exploration of Piney Woods Church Road. I was not inspired by the diffuse lighting, no matter how often I have read that cloudy days are supposedly beloved by macro-photographers. And for a second time in two days, I found myself photographing ripening berries of a Chinese Privet shrub (Ligustrum sinense). They add splashes of red to the landscape, I grant that. But they also carry the progeny of what is among the worst invasive plant species in the Piedmont of Georgia. Each little berry is a future privet plant, choking out native vegetation wherever it grows, from road edge to the forest’s heart. While I was able to find some beauty in the privet flowers in the springtime, berries are another matter entirely.
A short distance down the road from the privet horde, several cherry saplings were partially covered in web tents. A number of skeletonized leaves hung like white veils, their life-force converted into the ever-growing bodies of Fall Webworms (Hyphantria cunea). Inside the tents, tiny pale yellow caterpillars with black spots were gathered — in places, clustered by the dozens, and in other spots, further apart. As their name suggests, Fall Webworms actually do most of their damage later in the season, when the caterpillars are much larger. Already, though, there are several tents on each of a half-dozen trees in the immediate vicinity, including a persimmon in our backyard. Fall Webworm tents get much bigger even than those of Eastern Tent Caterpillars, with which I was already familiar. Unchecked, they can even defoliate entire trees. Oh, well. At least they aren’t actually invasive….
For today’s post, I bring both images together. If there is anything that one might classify as evil in the local landscape, it is embodied in the Chinese Privet and the Fall Webworm. I am working hard on appreciating these two. After all, they are both quite common now, and I have resolved to celebrate the commonplace in nature. I haven’t gotten there yet, but I haven’t given up, either. I suspect that both the berries and the caterpillars provide food for songbirds of some kind, and that’s a start. And at least they also offer the prospect of bad puns….
