Foggy Morning in the Trees

For several reasons, including a football game (Geaux Saints!), I’m not ready to post the Sunday night journal, and won’t be until late tonight or sometime tomorrow. Since I haven’t posted anything since Friday I thought I’d post another picture from the same foggy morning as this one. It was taken from the road in front of our house, looking north toward a swampy wooded area. If you could zoom out further you’d see my house on the lower right, our new neighbors’ on the left.

I couldn’t decide whether I liked it better in color or black-and-white, so I’ll just give you both.

Foggy Morning on the Water

Dec. 15, 2009. A lot like others I’ve posted, but I never get tired of looking at things like this, or taking pictures of them.If you look closely you can see a bird, a small heron I think, on a post in the water—you might need to click through to the full-size image.

Christmas Associations

Winter as I remember it from growing up in north Alabama was brown pastures alternating with vast stretches of bare reddish-brown soil lying open to gray skies, and woods on the horizon. The picture below is not the view from the house I grew up in, but it’s very similar (it’s near a house belonging to my brother-in-law, where we stayed when we were there a few days ago). This is what I think of when I think of a December landscape—snow was rare.

And in contrast there was Christmas.

People who live in the northern hemisphere above a certain latitude have a great advantage in appreciating Christmas. Coming so near to the winter solstice, and being a thing of light and color, it brings home the significance of the coming of the Word of Light in an immediately sensual way not available to those living where there is no real winter, or where December brings the longest, not the shortest, day of the year. Where I live now is about as far south as you can go and still get much of that symbolism. There is a winter here, but it’s mild, and there’s still a lot of green. The area where I grew up is 350 miles (about 560km) north of here, and has something more akin to a real winter, though of course it’s pretty mild compared to the real north.

Christmas Lights at Spring Hill College

I may post nothing but pictures this week. I have a number of interesting ones, and I’d like to take a break from writing, maybe in hopes of getting some new project started after the turn of the year.

I really needed a tripod for this—it’s blurry, but still pretty, I thought.

A Christmas Gator

I was not very pleased to see this when I walked the dogs this morning. The picture is not very good (my camera didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything in particular), so it may not be obvious that the horizontal object in the water is an alligator. He’s maybe thirty or forty yards (roughly the same number of meters) away. I estimate he was 5-7 feet (1.5-2 meters) long. Big enough to think my little dog looks like a good meal. I’ve never seen one this big this far south in the bay, and he is not welcome. If he’s looking for warmer water, he’s headed in the wrong direction (south, toward the Gulf of Mexico). (I see I’ve picked up my wife’s habit of referring to any wild creature, especially a disgusting or dangerous one, as “he,” but of course I have no idea what sex it actually is.)

And as luck would have it some of my cousins chose this moment to have a morning swim. I didn’t try to warn them. That side of the family doesn’t usually want to have much to do with me, and frankly they’re not real bright anyway, though surely they have enough sense to stay well away from an alligator.

A Christmas Gardenia

This picture would not be at all strange except for the fact that it was taken last week. Even in south Alabama gardenias are supposed to be summer flowers, but I walked up the hill one night and saw this one, and one more on the same bush. The next morning I took my camera with me. It had been raining all night and was still sprinkling a bit.

It’s not precisely a rose e’er blooming, but it’ll do. It smelled wonderful. This morning I noticed it had gone the way of all earthly flowers and turned brown.

Ginkgo Leaves

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, autumn is pretty drab here in this sub-tropical climate. The ginkgo is one of the literal bright spots. There aren’t too many of them, but there’s one on the campus where I work. I missed getting a picture of it last year, and was determined to do it this year. Still, I almost missed it anyway, forgetting to bring my camera to work. The first picture was too early. The second two were almost too late. Most of the leaves had fallen, which is why there’s no picture of the whole tree.

By the way, I’m going to be out of town for the weekend, and may not be online again till Sunday night or so. So if any interesting conversations break out and you wonder why I’m not participating, that’s why.

Troubled Waters

Mobile Bay, as seen from the beach near my house on the eastern shore during tropical storm Ida: a few pictures taken about 7 this morning, as the storm was passing over. If it still had an eye, it must have been to the east, because the wind was out of the north.

Pelican and Heron In the Rain

This was taken a couple of weeks ago on a rainy Sunday morning. I didn’t plan for it to be black and white. I was experimenting with some settings on my camera that are supposed to give better results in low light, which this was, and one of the settings gave things a strong and unnatural blue cast. So after fruitlessly trying to manipulate the color to something close to the real thing, I gave up and made it black and white.

This one will give you an idea of what the colors ought to be: very muted, mostly grey and brown.

Magnolia Seeds Are Red

As a child I found these fascinating. They look like some kind of candy. It’s a wonder I never ate one.

Dragonfly

I’ve been trying to take a picture of one of these for some time. Usually they flit around so abruptly, and stay put for such a short time when they land, that I can’t get them in focus. But this one posed on this fence for several minutes, only moving from one picket to another, and staying still for a bit on each one. It isn’t as pretty as some, but at least it’s pretty much in focus. (You need to view the full-size image to really see it.) I have a number of very fuzzy pictures that I took last summer of a brilliant green one.

I was very surprised to discover (via the Wikpedia entry) that dragonflies are considered somewhat sinister in some parts of Europe. I’v always seen them as graceful and benign. I was even more surprised to discover the existence of an activity called oding, which is to dragonflies as birding is to birds.

Cat Among Books

This picture struck me not for any aesthetic merit but for the reflection provoked by the juxtaposition of the cat and these particular books. It was not arranged; Meme just happened to be sleeping there.

On one side of the cat, a novel by my favorite mystery writer (and one of my favorite writers, period), Ross Macdonald: an image of the problem of death. On the other side, a recent issue of Magnificat: an image of the answer to the problem of death. And in the middle, serenely indifferent to both, the animal.

And outside the picture, but responsible for creating it, and conscious of everything in it, mind working unceasingly on the questions they raise, the man.

Underneath the Magnificat, by the way, is a novel that very much belongs on that side of the picture, Elizabeth Goudge’s Pilgrim’s Inn, of which I plan to say more soon.

The Only Led Zeppelin Lyric I Ever Liked

There’s a feeling I get
When I look to the west...

This is what I saw from my front yard last Thursday evening.

The Last Guinness

All things must pass, but some need a memorial.

By the way, Guinness is not so expensive or so hard to find that I couldn’t have it more often. But I rather enjoy limiting it to special occasions.

Along with the beer itself, my wife gave me a pair of these glasses for Father’s Day. Which was very nice, and I like them, but the fact that there are two of them is troubling; it implies that I may be called upon to share. Fortunately she doesn’t especially like beer.

Whose Rake Is It, Anyway?

Mister Frog seems to think it’s his.

(Click for larger version.)

Ah! Sunflower (2)

This post is more than a year and a half overdue. It’s connected with this one from November 2007, which mentioned the little town, or alleged town, of Sunflower, Alabama. In the other post I noted that “its existence is noted only by one forlorn street sign that stands beside the highway, looking very weary of time.”

Well, here’s the sign. My gracious wife took this picture for me a few weeks after the first post, but, typically, my attention (what there is of it) moved to other things and I didn’t do it.

(Click for larger image, as usual.) The strange thing about this sign is that not only are there are no sunflowers, there doesn’t appear to be any town. (Non-U.S. readers: signs like this normally indicate the name of a place.) There’s something a little sad but also a little brave and hopeful about it. No, there aren’t any sunflowers, but maybe one day there will be.

An Easter Flower

This is another camellia. I had a picture of one back in February; at the time the plant was in a pot and the flower was a fallen one, but my wife has since planted the little bush and it bloomed again. Strictly speaking, this is not an Easter flower, as the picture is a couple of weeks old and this blossom, too, has since fallen, but it’s an appropriate picture for the occasion.

I’ve always liked the combination of white and dark green.

Morning Fog

I’ve had this picture on my home page for a couple of weeks now and am about to replace it. I like it, and several people have told me they like it, but that page gets much less traffic than the blog, so I’m posting it here for everybody else. Also, when I remove something from the home page it’s no longer available, but posting it here will keep it online.

This was taken several weeks ago one dark foggy morning, standing in the road that runs in front of my house.

This Is an Azalea

The other day when I posted a picture of the shy and modest spiderwort I mentioned that there are so many azaleas around here that I almost stop noticing them. Here’s what I was talking about.

Take that, Woodward.

I call the picture above “an azalea” because that seems to be the custom around here—people use the singular for the bush more than for the single flower, perhaps because you hardly ever see a single flower. That is not my azalea, by the way; I don’t know whose house that is. The only azaleas at our house currently are babies, planted six or eight weeks ago, and just a foot or two high with no more than a dozen or so blossoms. Last Sunday on the way home from Mass I asked my wife to take a few pictures of azaleas for my blog. The ones here just happened to be good specimens that we passed. I like the next one for its variety.

The azaleas usually start blooming in late February and early March, and are now beginning to wind down. We’ve had heavy rain for the last couple of days, and azalea flowers don’t handle that well; these bushes probably now look like they’re covered in wet toilet paper.

Spiderwort

There are so many azaleas blooming here at this time of year that I almost stop noticing them. Instead, it’s this little flower that represents the real arrival of spring to me. They pop up in the yard and close by, and I always try to avoid mowing until they’ve stopped blooming. This picture is a little larger than actual size, depending on your screen’s resolution—the blossoms are usually about an inch or so across (2-3cm).

Another sign that the real warm weather is here: when I went out for lunch my car was uncomfortably hot. We may get another brief cold spell, but it’s pretty much over now.

Pier in Fog

I haven’t posted many pictures recently, and the reason is that they never look very good as they come from the camera, and I spend a lot of time and drive myself a little crazy tinkering with them. For instance, it was quite foggy Monday morning, and I took a number of pictures when I walked the dog. But it was also rather dark, and things tend to come out dark from this camera anyway (I’m thinking of reading the instruction book). So none of them are post-worthy without adjusting the brightness, at least. And once I start adjusting I can’t make up my mind what looks best, and/or what looks most like what I actually saw.

So anyway...here’s one that comes close to the way things actually looked:

Camellia, or The Rose Above the Sky

(You really should click through to the larger image to get a better view of this.)

Some weeks ago my wife bought two little camellia bushes, one red and one white. They bloom through the winter here and even though these two haven’t been planted, but have been sitting on the patio in the containers in which they came from the nursery, they’ve continued to bloom through a couple of freezes. She had this blossom from the white one in a jar of water in the kitchen last week, and I was really struck by it.

“You should take a picture of that so I can put it on my blog,” I said. So she laid it on a red cloth and took this picture. She was playing with settings on the camera and isn’t sure exactly why or how that misty effect resulted.

Even though the flower is not a rose, the picture made me think of the great Bruce Cockburn song (not to be found on YouTube, unfortunately, or I would link to it), “The Rose Above the Sky”:

Till the rose above the sky
Opens
And the light behind the sun
Takes all.

Complete lyrics here, but of course you don’t really get it without the music.

The picture also reminds me of something from a David Lynch movie.

Other fun facts: the camellia is a member of the same family as the tea plant; it was named for a Jesuit; it’s the state flower of Alabama; “Camellia” was the first name of the girl on whom I had a crush in junior high school.

Lights

This Christmas my wife decided to put these big globes covered with tiny lights in the live oak tree in the front yard and in the vines over the swing. The effect was rather enchanting. I tried to take pictures of it but without a tripod I got a lot of blurring. Still...

Click through to the larger images for a better view.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

(Photo by my wife, Karen Horton. You’re welcome to copy it for use on another site but I would appreciate your acknowledging its source. Thanks.)

Google is mysterious sometimes. I’ve noticed for a week or so now that I’m getting a lot of hits from people doing Google searches for “fourth Sunday of Advent” or variations on that phrase. I discovered that this picture is one of the first few results returned for the phrase by a Google image search. However, searching for the other Sundays of Advent doesn’t bring you here, even though I have pictures like this one for every week of Advent.

Magnificat — December 2008

I really like this month’s cover picture, so much that I photographed the magazine so I could post it here (click for larger image).

For more info about Magnificat, go here.

The Third Sunday of Advent

(Photo by my wife, Karen Horton. You’re welcome to copy it for use on another site but I would appreciate your acknowledging its source. Thanks.)

The Second Sunday of Advent

(Photo by my wife, Karen Horton. You’re welcome to copy it for use on another site but I would appreciate your acknowledging its source. Thanks.)

The First Sunday of Advent

(Photo by my wife, Karen Horton. You’re welcome to copy it for use on another site but I would appreciate your acknowledging its source. Thanks.)

All Hallows’ Eve (2)

My wife’s handiwork.

The Prisoner

We have these green frogs all over the place where I live. This little fellow somehow found his way into the house a few days ago and was hopping weakly across the tile floor in the kitchen, which must have seemed like an endless expanse of stony desert to him (or her). I picked him (?) up to take him outside and he looked so amusing peering out of my grip that I took this picture.

 

I’m experimenting with Google’s Picasa picture editing program; it’s pretty cool—lets you post to your Blogger blog straight from the program. But without the preview feature, so I don’t actually know what this is going to look like.

Summer Afternoon

This hot-weather image is about out of season now, so I’ll go ahead and post it before it becomes even more so. Summer is over, astronomically speaking, but it takes a while to phase out here. I went outside a little while ago in my usual warm-weather off-work uniform of shorts and t-shirt and found the temperature almost cool enough to be uncomfortable, at least with a breeze blowing—somewhere in the low 60s (F, 16 or so C).

(Click for larger)

Demonic Peachdroid Menaces Interstate Travelers

Ok, I admit I’ve been taking pictures while driving again. This is from a few weeks ago when I made a trip up to north Alabama. (For the full effect, click through to the larger version.)

Up in Chilton county, 200 hundred miles or so from here (300 km or so), they grow really, really good peaches. And they are very proud of their peaches—so much so that they built and painted their water tower to look like a peach. I really wanted to get a picture of this rising out of the trees like the moon as I approached, but I missed it and didn’t want to go back. Next time...

Heron

I walked out the door one day last week and heard a repeated low buzzing sound that I’d never heard before. I finally realized that it was coming from this heron perched in a dead tree across the creek. The normal heron noise is loud and ugly—something like a crow’s call but lower in pitch and considerably louder (these are big birds, if you can’t tell from the picture—probably something like 5ft/1.5m in wingspan). It can be a little alarming if you get close to one without seeing it and it suddenly leaps screaming into the air. I don’t know what the low sound was about.

(Click for larger)

Now that I have a camera, I want a better one. I wanted to zoom in further than this, and the auto-focus is kind of unreliable—this really should have been sharper.

Coon Wars & Hummingbird

My wife recently developed an enthusiasm for feeding the local bird population and put up several feeders, two of which hung from lightweight steel poles. There followed a week or two of coon wars, in which raccoons came at night and pulled down the feeders, opened them up, and ate all the bird seed. Here’s a morning-after scene (click for larger images as usual):

She also put up a hummingbird feeder, and it has been a great success. While I was outside taking the above picture, a hummingbird kept flying around me—they make sort of a low buzzing sound, like a really big bug or a really small airplane. So I stood there for a while with the camera poised, and eventually got this lucky shot:

It’s fairly blurry but it may very well be the best I ever do, so I’m posting it. It really was just luck: since the camera has a fairly slow reaction time and the bird is in position and in flight only for an instant, I just pointed the camera at the feeder and snapped the picture as soon as I heard the buzz. This is the only one of a couple of dozen shots where he appeared at all.

The coon wars have been won, by the way: she bolted the poles to the deck of which you can see a corner in the picture.

Drop

I know, a picture of a drop of water is a cliche, but I like the way you can see the reflection of leaves on the tree (the live oak in our front yard) in it. You might have to click through to the slightly larger version to see that. Too bad it isn’t in better focus—there really wasn’t enough light.

(Yet More) Translucence

I thought this banana leaf picture was worth keeping, too.

(Click for larger)

Beach Houses in the Rain

From that day at the Gulf a couple of weeks ago.

(Click to enlarge)