New England is having a particularly colorful season this year due to sufficient rain, and warm days combined with cold nights. Seen from a distance, fall colors can be spectacular. But individual leaves can also be worthy of our attention.
Below are examples that have caught my eye over many years of leaf peeping and I reserve the right to add to this opulence as the colors evolve and change in the coming weeks.
Unlike rocks, electronic photos of fungi, fall leaves and sunrises with their gorgeous colors and patterns have the advantage of not taking up much physical space.
Still, I am glad I decided to collect Morrisonite when it seemed likely that this jasper would becoming increasingly hard to find. Like many beginning collectors, I just collected what I liked without understanding much about what this special jasper is capable of doing. Now I find many examples from those early days of collecting to be quite charming.
An article I wrote, “King of Jaspers” includes photos of top quality examples from Philip Stephenson’s collection. The single source of this jasper in eastern Oregon is also quite spectacular.
Well not just any rock – the source was an absolutely spectacular slab of Morrisonite jasper from the outstanding collection of Philip Stephenson (his website). With Morrisonite it often makes more sense to leave the slab whole rather than to cut it into cabochons.
There was something about this particular slab – various sections of it might indeed stand out in a museum modern art exhibit. Below is the source slab and a variety of my cropping attempts, some more successful than others.
Source Slab Photo by Philip Stephenson
This year I decided not to take photos unless I came across a new type, or an arrangement that showed promise for a good composition. We will see how well I hold to that. I tend to find most “fun guy” to be irresistibly photogenic.
Some interesting examples popped up in the grass in my yard. Round puffballs spring up three times in succession near the entrance to Menotomy Rocks Park. Patches of Black Witches Butter and two different slime molds: tiny textured balls and white stars found a home in a large decaying tree trunk. And that reliable showoff, Chicken of the Woods, swelled forth in orange and yellow abundance with early September rains.
Some days I do not take any pictures. Others, I take pictures after every few steps. For better or worse, my sensing there is something worth capturing has become quite intuitive. This surely has as much to do with my mental state and receptivity as it has to do with how patches of sky, reflections, and plants dance together in the changing light as I walk around Hill’s Pond.
There are similarities, but also quite a few differences in the photos below taken during two separate pond walks this past spring. Nature has a way of quietly reminding us that there is also a positive aspect to the continual change that none of us can escape.
Day One:
Day Two:
By the time the Lily of the Valley is seducing bees with its scented white bells, this one has completed a remarkable progression from deep pink buds to white with pink dots. The first photo below shows the colorful midpoint. The others show the 12-day progression from start to finish.
The last photos shows how it looks most of the year.
It was quite cold this spring. After several years of very little snow, we had several inches for most of the winter and that took its time melting. Then we still had nights below freezing and cold days for quite a while. Still there were signs. The daffodils started blooming on schedule. There were buds here and there. And when we got a few warm days towards the end of the month it was catch up time.
Noticing an icy flower on the car’s roof when I looked out the front door on a chilly morning, I ran for my camera. The last time I saw such large ice crystals on that car was in late November, 2019. Fall and now spring – still, the conditions must have been just right for that to happen.
When the temperature is below 0°C (32°F) and supersaturated humid air flows over a textured surface, ice can be deposited directly without first going through a liquid phase. And as you can see, the results can be quite spectacular.
The snow had piled on snow this unusually cold winter. I wondered if I might find interesting patterns in the woods or at the pond now that it had finally started to melt.
Slick icy paths could be treacherous, but this year the inches-deep snow was mostly hard and crusty. I did not sink in as I added my prints to those left by dogs, people, rabbits and others.
In a recent talk I gave about Japanese gardens, I did not include many snow images – just the wonderful results of a very light light dusting, and moss peaking out from snow as it melted around a water basin.
Reviewing photos of my Japanese inspired tea garden, I found a variety of different effects from delicate “snow blossoms” to deep mounds of snow left by blizzards.
