take 2

i love to let compositions sit off to the side somewhere for a week or two after i photograph them, and let time do some of my designing for me. this was originally a mid june fisheye of lush greenery. a month and a half later it is fragile and brittle and the color of dried oregano, and i love it just as much. thank you, time, for elapsing so helpfully.

circle of dried summer leaves

high summer

a hot day just gave way to an early evening cool front and the distant sound of thunder. the trees have started swaying. and an alarmed sounding green heron has just lifted off and flapped awkwardly, neck extended, across the cattails. it is high summer.

pink lily

journal pressings

i have been keeping artist journals since the year 2000.  i fill 1-2 journals each year. so, i now have about 30 of them. on occasion, i will rifle through old journals looking for something. most recently i was looking to gather up all the 5 year plans steve and i have written together in our 30 years of marriage. i want to take them to France with me in two weeks, and review them. see what i can learn from them. anyway, whenever i page through my journals like that, odd bits fall out. business cards. menus. napkin notes. illustrations by the kids. and, maybe most often, pressed botanicals. here is the “fallout” from today’s search. it’s pure chance that the textures and colors play so nicely together. a slightly faded glory. more glory than faded, i would say.

pressed leaves

diction

my husband the writer pays attention to diction–whether a word or phrase is “high” or “low.”  whether it is anglo saxon or latinate. in general the current thinking goes that good, simple anglo saxon words are more evocative and effective than long flowing fancy latinate words. so we should be weepy, not lachrymose. we should fight rather than altercate. we should shit rather than defecate. while i agree in principle, i have encountered the pine tree that these cones come from in both english and french. in english this is a scots pine. in french it is a pin sylvestre, after the latin pinus sylvestrus. i’m sorry, but i’m feeling rather latinate this time.

scots pine cones (Pinus sylvestris)

welcome to august

although i like to add some commentary most days, this is a visual blog. some days, and this is one of them, i just want to say, “can you believe how beautiful?” look at the pattern of the leaves along the branch. the pattern of the veins in the leaf. the pattern of the white specks among the veins. i mean. just look.

locust leaves