Monthly Archives: August 2014
Enjoy the moon
Sunday night Katie and I camped in the back yard. We’d done that on Friday and Saturday nights as well, no rain fly on the tent, sleeping out under the stars. Last night’s huge moon hung over the yard all night.
Occasionally I’d wake and gaze up at it. The soft light that flooded the yard, and the tent, was lovely; I wish you’d all been there for the experience.
But it would have been a bit crowded in the tent, and Katie likes her space.
Don’t you know.
Loostrife
I enjoy reading Judy’s blog – she’s a full time RVer and a volunteer this summer at Tamarac Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota. This week she and another volunteer are assigned driving the back roads of the refuge looking for purple loosestrife. It’s an invasive plant that spreads quickly and chokes out the native plants in low lying, swampy areas.
If you live around here you’ve seen a lot of it. Judy says she and her volunteer partner didn’t see any this time, and I told her we had it everywhere over here in Michigan. So when Katie and I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and we saw all the loosestrife we thought of Judy. We decided you need to see this too.
Wetlands being taken over.
The first glimpse we had was from the overlook. Down near the water you can see the purple sheen in the late afternoon sun. Looks pretty doesn’t it. And it is pretty, that’s probably part of the problem. When I drive home from work and the sun hits that purple I can’t help but smile.
Closer view.
Then I remember that what is beautiful is also deadly to everything native that used to live there.
Katie and I found more of it, up close this time near the pond where people fish.
Spreading.
Spreading across the hillside above the water.
Pretty, isn’t it?
The park people have planted other wildflowers there that are just as pretty and not invasive.
Also pretty.
Katie and I spent a long time in the lingering sun photographing the beauty.
Makes you smile, doesn’t it!
In hindsight I should have pulled up that loosestrife along the pond after I was finished photographing it.
Dangerous
WordPress Photo Challenge: Texture
Wordless Wednesday
Zigzag
Zigzag. I thought it would be hard to find a photo to represent the concept. I didn’t think I’d find it in nature. I thought of a few places to go where I might find something, commercial locations, man-made places. I thought maybe I’d skip this photo challenge because I didn’t have time to go anywhere in search of zigzag.
Then I got out of the car this evening after a long day of work and saw that the hibiscus plant is in bud. And on the still tightly furled buds were…
…zigzagging veins.
Proof once again that if you just slow down and take a moment you can find just about anything.
Right there in front of you.
You can see other zigzags here, here, here, and here. And of course the classic zigzag. Or stop by the original blog entry and look at all the comments with their photos!
Change Is Hard 