Posts in Category: flowers
Desert Lily, Anzo Borrego
Desert Lily, Anzo Borrego Desert, Borrego Springs CA
It is a year for Desert Lilies in the Anzo Borrego Desert. The Desert Lily, according to my sources, is not a Lily at all…though it certainly looks like one…but is more closely related to the Agave. It does not bloom every year. The bulbs are up to 2 feet underground and it takes a deep soaking rain, or a series of deep soaking rains, to trigger growth and bloom. This year the conditions must have been just right because they are locally abundant at the end of De Giorgio Road in Borrego Springs and up Henderson Canyon toward the mountains on the west. This is an unusually tall specimen. Most bloom when the plant is only inches tall, so the flowers are practically on the ground. Interestingly most of the Lilies on Di Giorgio Road were tall, and most of the Lilies off the western extension of Henderson Canyon were short. ?? You see lots of Sand Verbina and California Evening Primrose in the background, as well as rain moving in the Laguna Mountains.
Sony HX90V. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Anzo Borrego in Bloom
Henderson Canyon Road, Borrego Springs CA
The bloom in Death Valley is a “once in a decade” bloom this year, but Death Valley is just too far from San Diego and the San Diego Birding Festival for me to make the trip. Anzo Borrego Desert, on the other hand is just 2 hours over the mountains. I put an extra day in my trip just in case the bloom was good. Late in the week, considering rain on Sunday and Monday, I reserved a room at the Borrego Springs Resort and Spa, checked out of my hotel in San Diego a day early, and drove from San Diego to Borrego Springs through a heavy snowstorm in the high country around Julian, inching around hairpin turns. But the reward was worth it. There is not a desert wide bloom…nothing like Death Valley…but there are pockets of very impressive wildflowers. This is mostly Desert Sunflower along the valley end of Henderson Canyon Road…one of the faithful spots of wildflower production most years when there are any. You can see the storms still in the mountains…they swept out and over the valley about once every two hours all day, and I did some of my photography from under an umbrella, but all it all it was an excellent day. I will post a gallery of individual wildflower shots when I get home to Maine later this week.
Nikon P610 in Landscape mode at 125mm equivalent field of view. 1/1000th @ ISO 100 @ f5. Processed in Lightroom.
Milkweed Time
Milkweed. Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
It is Milkweed season. As I mentioned yesterday, the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms in Wells Maine was one of the first facilities in our area to devote significant amounts of meadow to milkweed in an effort to ensure the survival of the Monarch Butterfly. On my last visit the Milkweed pods were getting ripe and popping…releasing seeds and the silky parachutes that carry them to new fields. This is a panel of 4 images which catches some of the wonder of that release. The wind was blowing and tugging the seeds and silk away from the plants.
Sony HX90V at various focal lengths for framing. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
A Praise of Blazing Star! Happy Sunday.
Northern Blazing Star. Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
You might remember that back in late July and early August I was tracking the bloom of the Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains and predicting one of the best years for the flower in recent memory. On August 5th I left for 2 weeks of travel and it rained for a few days when I got home…so it was yesterday before I got out to the Plains to see how the Blazing Star was doing. And it was certainly doing! I have not, in my more than 20 years of living in Southern Maine, seen the Blazing Star so dense or so extensive. To say that the Plains are purple with it is an understatement. This might be full bloom. I saw no unopened buds, and the oldest, topmost buds on each plant are fading…but, oh my, what a bloom!
Sony HX90V, in-camera HDR at 67mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
I sometimes think that mankind is unique among all God’s creation in the ability to praise the creator. We have the privilege, not only of being created, but of knowing that we are. And we know, if we know God at all, that we are created with love…lovingly created…and loved all life long. We respond to the greatness of that love with praise…thankfulness, awe, joy…we make a joyful noise before God…lifting hands and faces…bold in the awful presence of the Creator of all.
But then I see the Kennebunk Plains ablaze with the purple of Northern Blazing Star, and I am not so sure we are alone in our ability to praise. A plain full of Blazing Star in bloom looks a lot like praise to me…as though the earth itself lifted its face and hands and broke out in exalted song.
A praise of Blazing Star!
When we praise the creator of all, how can we not believe that all creation praises with us. And I, for one, can not look on the Plains ablaze with Blazing Star without praising… Happy Sunday!
NM Sunflower! Happy Sunday.
Sunflower, just over the NM border from OK.
There is a substantial stone sign to mark the border crossing between Oklahoma and New Mexico on Route 56, and a more subtle shift in the landscape from high plains to volcanic plateau, but the real difference, at least this year, is sunflowers. Evidently New Mexico distributed tons of sunflower seeds this spring, and sprayed them along roadsides all over what I have seen of the state so far this trip. And it has been a wet (by NM standards) summer…with enough rain so that the sunflowers, watered by runoff from the roads, have prospered. Big, bold, beautiful sunflowers provide a foreground for the volcanic uplands and mountains of this section of New Mexico. It is great! It is wonderful. It is an act, intentional or otherwise, of worship and praise…guaranteed to lift the spirits of everyone who lives in, or visits the state.
We had to stop a few miles into New Mexico at a little roadside rest to take in the view, and I was compelled to photograph a few of sunflowers. The glancing, high altitude light of late morning, with in-camera HDR to keep the shadows and highlights in range, contribute to image that makes me smile…and I hope it does you too. It is just so cheerful. And yet it is authentic. This is not a pampered garden sunflower. You can see the wear and tear of life on the roadside all over the plant…and the great green hairy fist of the new bud adds a contrasting element and another dose of reality. This is cheerfulness in the face of adversity. This is a great big simile despite the challenges. This is praise for the good life even when that life is not easy. It says to me: God is great. God is good. And nothing life can throw at me will change my mind.
All that from a sunflower on the roadside? Certainly! Happy Sunday! And may it be a sunflower day for you!
Blaze of Blazing Star
Northern Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
For the next two days I will be in a van with my daughter Sarah, helping her move from Pittsburgh to Santa Fe, NM, and then we move on from there to Tucson for a birding festival. It seems I am always traveling at the height of the Blazing Star bloom on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. This year I might have just caught the forward edge to of the peak. 🙂 It will not get much better than this, but it will get better. I shot this at a fairly long telephoto to compress the mass of blooms.
Sony HX90V at 520mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Day Lily Illustration Effect. Happy Sunday!
Day Lily, Kennebunk Light and Power, Factory Pasture Road, Kennebunk ME
Yesterday my wife asked me to take the electric payment to the office (we have a municipal power company that serves the town) on my way to the store. I was reluctant to do it, but she shamed me into it :). While I was dropping it off, I saw the mixed stand of Day Lilies at the corner of the parking lot. The Day Lilies all over town this year are spectacular. There must have been a town “beautification” project sponsored by someone that featured Day Lilies at a bargain, and these yellow lilies in particular…because there are plantings of them along the brick sidewalks, in the median of streets, around banks and other businesses…everywhere! I have been meaning to stop and photograph some of the more impressive spreads, and here was one right at hand in the electric company parking lot. And, of course, I had my Sony HX90V with me. Life is good.
This is not quite a photograph…or maybe rather, it is slightly more than a photograph. The HX90V has a range of Picture Effects built in. I have never been one for such “features”…I like my photography straight-up mostly…but I have been experimenting with a few of the HX90V’s effects. This is the Illustration effect…it attempts to turn the photo into a drawing…simplifying colors, emphasizing edges, etc so that the image looks like something drawn, perhaps with markers and bright inks, rather than a photograph. This is all done in-camera, before the image is saved to the card, so that when you first open it, it already looks like this. It can be very interesting with the right subject. As I say, not a photograph exactly, but an interesting image.
It worked particularly well here. The simplification of the yellow petals is striking, and the background has an artfully rendered look. I like it a lot. I think it is actually beautiful.
And there is a lot to work with in the image and the situation for The Generous Eye and the Sunday Thought. If I had remained stubbornly stingy when my wife asked me to run the errand, well…I never would have seen this Lily. The Generous Eye begins with a generosity of spirit that leaves you open to the needs of others…and to any and every adventure. Then there is the generosity of the town and their lily planting program that inspired me to look at lilies more closely this year. I equate The Generous Eye, at least in part, with “having vision”…in the sense of being able to visualize a better tomorrow and do something about it. Someone, or some group, in the town had to have “seen” with a generous eye what the town would look like this summer patterned with yellow lilies. And then there is the generosity of the Sony engineering team, who worked to include this effect in the camera’s software. I always wondered why they bothered. I am sure not many people use the Picture Effects at all…most who buy the camera will never discover that they are there…and yet a lot of time and energy must have gone into creating them, and refining them to work as well as they do. That was generous of Sony in both senses I have already highlighted. Finally there is an element of “willingness to try new things” in the Generous Eye. As I already suggested, an adventurous spirit is necessary for a generous eye. If I had stuck to my prejudices (stingy prejudices) then I would not have tried the Illustration effect…and missed this image.
Finally, I have to believe in The Generous Eye of the creator of all, who embodies generosity in all its forms and who loved every circumstance that lead to this image into existence. I am not who I am because I see God…I am who I am because God sees me…and God’s eye is always and all ways generous. Happy Sunday!
Northern Blazing Star on Goldenrod
Northern Blazing Star in the foreground, Goldenrod in the back. Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
As though the Northern Blazing Star were not purple enough already, I found spots on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area where it was growing in association with Goldenrod. I made several attempts to capture the effect. 🙂 The Blazing Star is, as predicted, doing well this year.
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at about 300mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
First Day Lilies
Day Lily, The Yard, Kennebunk ME
It is one of the mysteries of our life here on Brown Street in Kennebunk is that our Day Lilies bloom a good two weeks after Day Lilies both up and down the street from us. We might live in a tidal trough…just slightly depressed enough so that the tide blows and draws the breath of our cold sea, two miles downriver, right through our yard. And it might be the shade of our big maples and oaks, that make our yard, our whole neighborhood, look like unbroken forest from the air (easily verified with Google Earth). And it might be when they were planted, or the particular variety, or something in our soil, or…
Whatever it is, I have to wait patiently to photograph my own lilies weeks after they have appeared even 10 houses away. Sigh. 🙂
But when they do bloom, one whole side of the yard are double blooms. Instead of a single, simple, swirl of petals around the anthers, there are two…the outer fairly normal, and the inner smaller and more ornate. Again…who knows why? Close in like this, it looks almost like an abstract of itself.
Sony HX90V macro at about 35mm equivalent field of view. 1/160th @ ISO 80 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Early Northern Blazing Star. Happy Sunday!
Northern Blazing Star with Skipper, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
I have never seen the Kennebunk Plains so thick with Northern Blazing Star. The budded plants are everywhere, in thick stands this year. By the first week in August, the second at the latest, the Plains are going to be purple with Blazing Star. Right now, there are only a few plants here and there in bloom, but the promise is there, and barring any unnatural disaster, it is going to be a very good year for Blazing Star. Of course, the Kennebunk Plains are managed, at least in part, for Blazing Star, which is endangered in much of its historical range, and only has the one major foothold left in Maine. Blazing Star is fire dependent, and patterned and scheduled burns on the Plains keep the population healthy.
And, when the Blazing Star is in bloom, it draws its compliment of insects. Bees of several species, lots of Skippers (like the one captured above, which might be the Least Skipper), Hairstreaks (mostly Coral), Swallowtail and Monarch butterflies, and lots of orb weaver spiders. The Halloween Pennant dragonfly hunts among the the other bugs. And the insects draw the birds: Clay-collared and Grasshopper Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, (all at the limits of their range on the Plains), as well as Savannah and Song Sparrows. The Blazing Star is the base plant, or the most visible member, for a whole community of life…and because it is so beautiful, and so visible, protecting it has protected the whole community. This is good!
I feel privileged to live so close to the remnant population of Blazing Star…to track it year to year in my informal visits to the Plains, and to share it with you in my photos. Being on the Plains when the Northern Blazing Star is in bloom is, for me, a spiritual experience…a instance of natural, spontaneous, worship. Though the Plains buzz with life in August, and hundreds of people come to pick blueberries, for me there is always a hush…a reverence in the presence of the stands of this rare and beautiful plant. It is awesome in the literal sense of the word. I feel the awe, and can only give praise and thanks. Happy Sunday!