Category: nature

While out walking on Tuesday, one of those wonderful, warm, deep-blue-sky days, I took a few pictures of the beautiful, big tree in front of the local elementary school. Looking out the window now, you would never suspect such a day. Now just snowing and blowing—more like February in Iowa! You don’t see much of the magnificence of the tree in this cropped photo, but just enough to cradle the sky.

Beautiful grasses turning in fall. Here is a close-up look.

I was happy to see a neighbor along my neighborhood walking path growing a few milkweed plants for the monarchs, but sad to see this pod that had fallen (or been chewed) off onto the sidewalk. I walked past at first, but then decided to pick it up and take a photo of it once back home. So here’s a daily jane for a busy week. I’m going to try to eke out one more next week, then take August off (at least officially–I hope to still do some creating!).

We were out looking at our garden area over the weekend, and a very healthy bluebell plant is growing alongside our raspberry patch (far away from our normal bluebell bed)! This plant was so vigorous and beautiful, I decided to take some photos for my daily art. Because these “dailies” are more intermittent this year, I was going to stop including photos. But these bluebells are so sublime (and hopefully the composition is artful), that I’m telling myself it’s okay.

Here is another photo from the backyard woods last weekend. The insect paths are grooved into the entire now-fallen tree, including up and around this gnarl. I thought it looked kinda cool. Groovy. Gnarly.

I took this photo during a backyard woods photo shoot last weekend. Lots of cool looking lichen on the fallen, rotting trees out there, especially when you get up close.

I took lots of photos of these insect channels in a tree that fell during the big windstorms this past week. I’m not even sure this is my favorite, but I’ve picked it for today. You may see more of these in the days ahead! The designs look so cool, but they also tell the tale of why the tree didn’t survive upright.

Today would have been my dad’s 88th birthday; he died more than 27 years ago. He studied weather while in the Army and would tell us what type of clouds we were seeing in the sky. I took this photo yesterday morning as I was heading out to the store. It doesn’t quite capture the cool factor of the clouds, but good enough. And no, I don’t know what type of clouds these are! I should have listened better, but I guess at that time I was more interested in what images I could see forming in the clouds rather than their technical names.

This is another gourd photo I took yesterday. I love the texture and colors of this one especially.