Wildflower picture time!

The Greenin' o' th' Hills is alive and well here in western North Carolina. Here at 3775' the trees are flipping coins to see who goes first in the leafing department...always interesting to note how they stagger that output, and it's not necessarily by species, either. Got one Buckeye fully out, and another only starting. The wildflowers are out like gangbusters, thanks to our decent rains (winter snows!!!!) and finally some warming temperatures.

It looks like pics on here WILL enlarge when you click on them, but it is a slow process when I try it. Give it a shot...and enjoy!

Fiddle ferns unfurling

Smooth Yellow Violet

Wake Robin Trillim

Squirrel Corn

Dutchman's Breeches

Canadian Violet

Finger and Spring Beauty

Squirrel Corn and Molly

Bloodroot

More pics coming as the yellow Bellwort is out as well as the deep purple Dwarf Larkspur. And a new crop of flutes has bloomed with some of THE most wickedly beautful woods I've ever used...looks like a pic-filled week ahead! Stay tuned....

"In the Merry, Merry Month of May...."

"Our barks echo'd through the glen,
With blithe and joyful ring;
We dug our holes under mossy stones,
And we dabbled in the hillside spring."

Apologies to Stephen Foster, composer of "The Merry, Merry Month of May" way back in 1862. I altered a few words in the second verse to fit the lead-off pictures today...now that the inclement batch of heavy rains and storms is upon NC today, looks like a day to stay inside and look back on the the snaps I took this weekend.

(click on pics to enlarge)

The mellow Mercy doesn't bark, except when there's a raccoon, squirrel...or when Molly pesters her enough for a round of play. The lushness continues to unfold on the mountainside, thanks to all the moisture last winter.

Molly barks a-plenty...and loves to dig under mossy stones....and loves to get all kinds of muddy and wet knocking around the hillside spring...and stealing items not nailed down at the neighbor's house. I have noticed that ticks seem to be in good supply, a bit more than I remember for a spring.

The glades of Trillium really are a sight to behold, especially with the sprinkling of other colors...

...and I do generally prefer overcast conditions for photographing, as it is difficult in the best of times to maintain shadow/highlight definitions on bright, high-contrast days.

My little ol' warhorse Canon S2 continues to delight me with its macro capability, hand-held at that...its flip-out, rotating screen allows the camera to get in just an inch or two away while I save my back and knees from getting down to the picture at hand!

Two 'new' flowers making themselves seen are the Solomon's Seal above, with it's soon-to-be-flowers hanging down below the stem...

...to the very different flower (below) of False Solomon's Seal, a kissing cousin sans hanging bells below.

From above, the stalk and leaves look quite the same, but the False Solomon's Seal flower bunch at the tip of the stalk is the immediate give-away.

Violets of yellow, purple, and white are everywhere, including this brace of Canadian Violets.

From the land of Lilliput, so it would seem, is this diminutive of flowers now abounding, Star Chickweed, the bloom only as big as my pinkie fingernail.

Plenty of beauty in the non-flowering world, as well. Fiddlehead ferns are rosining up their frond bows; fern displays in general make a woodlands scene all the more verdant, eh?

Enjoy your day! Always good to bring a little nature into the walls of work-dom...

Things to do on rainy days...

Well, I thought of two things of the many you can do on rainy days....

The first is to take pictures of water droplets (click to enlarge)...

The second is to nap, and nap often...!

Just something that 'hit' me...

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Hope all y'all had a nice 4th...I prefer a more 'quiet' celebration, and Mercy was NOT disappointed! Earlier in the day, I was loading Mercy in the car for her morning walk...I just happened to look over at the raspberry and blackberry bushes and immediately something caught my eye...

Some things just jump out into my sensitive 'eye' that sees all kinds of different things...and this one leaf just happened to be in the unusual position to reveal a most intriguing photographic landscape. I did have my ol' trusty Canon S2 with me, took the above scene as a whole, then switched into macro mode and moved in for the shot below...

...and all I did was to slightly underexpose the scene to keep the highlights in check. Cool 'scape.

In walking Mercy I came upon a mama Mallard and her 7 ducklings...it was most interesting to watch the babies when mom would quack a simple command...they would all paddle in closer around mom, if but for a moment...

Too, with the morning showers on July 5th, the glass-topped deck table yielded a neat little mini-scape for another Canon S2 photo-op (below)...


All of this to urge any and all of you, whether you have a camera or not, to make sure you take the time to 'observe' small, beautiful vignettes that constantly occur all around us. This is far from the first time I've ever written this in my blog: stop and smell the roses, even if for a moment...

Hard to swallow...

Unless you are one....


(click on pics to enlarge)

Cute little bugger I captured, this Barn Swallow perching on metal pilings. Potential flute carving perhaps?....

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By virtue of knowing ahead of time I probably won't have enough time to tackle my weekly 'Fried Fridays' foray tomorrow, I'll pass this week and simply give the golden fryer award in advance to South Carolina governor Sanford...not for his affair coming out yesterday so much as for the 3-ring media circus his staffers and aides had to create in the spirit of a really bad Keystone Cops movie. Guess I can't blame them too much for confusing the Appalachian Trail with Buenos Aires, Argentina...

(cue the crickets chirping...)

And now with a follow-up to the summer art show scramble from the previous post...

Well, let's just say I made a particularly good move in emailing an artist I've never met whose website indicated she was really involved with regional shows in the mountains...lo and behold I got hooked up with a small, new, but apparently quality art show in Maggie Valley of all places...starting SATURDAY! YIKES! When I got in touch with the organizer she had received a vendor cancellation just 5 minutes before my phone call...a bit of serendipity, and with the very affordable fee I've got nothing to lose.

However, I now have EVERYthing to gather together quickly. Hence, I'm hitting the ground running today and trying to think ahead as much as possible. There is a boat-load of stuff to take care of beyond the tent, tables, tablecloths, and racks, especially with this being the first tented show this year. Weather looks fine if not downright hot for the mountains this weekend...near 90. I'm in space #10 which is nice and shaded...I'll take it!

Onward and upward. Lemonade from lemons. Flutes from sticks...hey, there's an idea!...

Mo' misty morning shots...

(click pics to enlarge)

I'm starting with another couple of Green Heron shots that I got after the first set in yesterday's blog...what I love about these, especially as I mull making a Green Heron closed-end flute, is that I have detailed pictures of the backside feathers...easy to get the side and front shots, but from behind and above is not so common.

Did watch this one jab and miss what was not a small fish before it decided to fly away...

A lone elderly woman was crossing this footbridge that I thought made for a serene shot...

...and a lone Mallard drake was doing the ol' one-legged nap pose against a desert of blue-gray...

Spiderwort is a gorgeous flower whose saturated purply-blue color was only intensified in the overcast skies...


As the sun broke through the overhanging mist, the light became better for some close-ups, like these dew drops (or rain drops) on a rose. I'm a big advocate of looking for the picture within a picture, hence not showing you the general 'pretty rose' shot.

And, lastly, a time to reflect...

...what is a set of dead branches sticking up out of the lake is momentarily transformed into a relflecting pool floating in space.

Again, all pics were taken with the ol' Canon S2 that has pleased me so through the past few years. As you go about your day and see something beautiful and neat, see if you can find your own 'pictures' deeper within...and stop to enjoy it!

"Oh there's a little Green Heron...."

"...doin' what it oughter,
a little Green Heron,
fishin' in the water..."

OK, so the song works better with the original 'little white duck'. But this feathered friend is much more interesting to look at...

(click on pics to enlarge)

As I headed out for a foggy morning walk around a nearby lake, I decided to grab my little silver Canon S2, the one with the long repair-shop stint last fall. I hadn't used it much lately, but figured it might come in handy.

Soon enough I happened upon this Green Heron fishing along a shallow section of shoreline and figured I'd see what the little super-zoom could do...and I was not disappointed. I've never taken pictures of a Green Heron before, and this one made for a very tolerant model, though I kept a good distance away.






Later, farther down the shoreline in the filtered sunshine of the morning, I did spy a Leashed Black Heron that was wading in the shallows, though apparently not interested in fishing at the moment...

I have other non-bird pics from the walk that I'll share in a later post. I said it earlier and I'll say it again: the repair center put in a new lens and motor, and this new generation lens is significantly sharper than the original one, which was none too shabby. Worth the wait, it was!

Happy Monday to all y'all! Starting Wednesday I'll pull 6 mornings straight at WSOC that may well wrap up my fill-in stint there. I've got an art show in Maggie Valley in July and need to tweak my growing flute stock, so look for pics of new flutes, including a raven-head walking cane branch flute. Lots of cool 'stuff' waiting in the wings...

'Glad' you like it....

(NOTE ~8am: I have some neat pics of raindrops on these glads I just took; I'll be editing them and posting them in their own post shortly, so check back!)

After I got home from my News 14 shift, I hit my usual 'wall' with lack of energy to start any ambitious flute (or other) project. Figured it was a good time to go shoot a few pictures of the two white gladiolas that have sprung forth in the yard. I have to stake them lest they fall over on their sides, and they have such pretty curves to them, blooming sequentially upward. Nothing more than pics you can click on to enlarge and just enjoy their beauty...







The daisies aren't far behind, and if you've never looked closely at a daisy before it opened, you're in luck!

Kinda sorta looks like some carnivorous plant getting ready to sink its fangs into something, eh?!


From the past couple of days I've also been watching a pile of sticks getting ready to bloom into branch flutes...

These I have debarked and trimmed so I can better assess their potential life as a flute, pondering where all the various parts of the flute would go over the course of days or weeks. The large pieces are Dogwood, and the smaller ones are Hickory, I think. Just dead sticks and trunks they were...nice little pile of Cracker Jack boxes for later!