Portrait of a Neighborhood

I'm starting with this image because it is so out of proportion.  It is a long, bigger-than-life panorama. The majority of my photos concentrate on the little details around me. This, in contrast, is a 200 degree view of a beaver dam.  It runs parallel with one of the small bridges located by the lake near Meg's house in MD.  The dam itself isn't what really amazes me--the fact that there are beavers living and maintaining their self-styled habitat in the middle of a huge metropolitan area--THAT is what amazes me. 

It is what Meg and her family love about living in a tiny townhouse with no backyard, front yard or privacy . . . which would drive Brent and me crazy.  She knows just about everyone in the area she can access easily by walking.  When I am there, she introduces me to everyone by name--then tells me interesting things about them after they have passed by: how many children they have, how long they've lived there, if they are outgoing or reserved, and even the food allergies of those on her block.  She regularly makes things or drops off fresh baked bread to her neighbors.  They frequently reciprocate. (In contrast, I do not even know the names of the neighbors on either side of me or across the street--and I would be hard-pressed to pick them out of a line up.)

Last year she decided that they would sell ice cream cones in August to raise money so that their family could buy a cow for someone in a foreign country through Heifer International.  Long after the ice cream cone sale, neighbors would stop and ask how much they made and then make a donation so that Meg's idea could come closer to fruition.

It has just occurred to me that I should have stepped back so that the railing (visible on the left and the right edges of the photo) would have been complete--giving the viewer a continuous frame of reference.  In this photograph, I have to look carefully to realize that it is an image visible from the railing of a bridge . . . next time I'm in MD . . .

On the corner across the street from Meg's, the power company cut down a diseased sapwood tree.  The trunk diameter was easily four feet across.  I would have had trouble putting my arms all the way around it. 

What fascinated me, though, was the uneven growth of the outer rings.  The living vascular cambium layer bulges out, then dips in toward the heartwood of the tree.  In school the tree trunks in the diagrams are always concentric circles--some layers smaller and some bigger than they actually are in relation to the other layers of the trunk so that they can be more easily identified.  On this sapwood tree, the heartwood layers of the tree are even--but as the tree got older, the outer layers became more uneven.  

This ragged outer edge caught my imagination.  I took pictures and then, then I saw how difficult it was to make out the rings in the photograph, I walked back across the street and got a pail full of water and a broom from Meg's house.  I rinsed off the tree stump and then scrubbed at it with the broom bristles.  The photographed image wasn't perfect after I finished, but it was much easier to see each ring.  

As I was dousing the tree trunk with water and scrubbing it down, a car stopped.  There was a stop sign on the corner beside me, so I didn't notice the car at first.  Then, when it didn't move--I looked over and the driver was waiting, watching me.  

"What are you doing?  Why are you washing that?"

I explained that I wanted to get a clearer image of the tree rings.  

"Why?"

I then added that my daughter home schooled her children and that the picture of the tree rings would be a great teaching tool when they were studying plants.

"Is you daughter from around here?"

I told him that she lived across the street, and that she had two children.

"You mean the woman with the little boy and girl?"

"Yes."

"I know them! Have fun! Good bye!"

This conversation was repeated several times, except that some of the people were walking by instead of driving, and others, when I mentioned that my daughter lived across the street added:

"Do you mean Megan Rytting?  Are you her mother?"

. . . .

Small town feeling in a huge metro area.

This photograph is one of my best.  It was across the street from where I spent time swinging (see previous post "I Guess We're Stuck With You . . .").  The dark night and the glow from the street light fit my mood.  I like how the photo is framed.  If I were to sell my work--this would be one that I would use.

I think I may have published this--or one like this--before.  While with Meg, I went to Cosco and found these bigger than softball, perfectly formed and evenly coloured pomegranates.  There were four of them--two of which I immediately pulled apart to eat.  Meg wanted to save two of them to give to friends who had food allergies.  But she never got around to it . . . instead she had a baby. Since she didn't get time to deliver them, I eventually also pulled the seeds out of the other two.  By then the fruit had begun to go bad in spots and so there wasn't quite so many of the seeds to eat.  

What I loved about this section of inner pith was the pure white of the flesh and the startling red of the two remaining seeds--and then I noticed a tiny, albino seed.  Like a tear, it quietly remained behind to mourn the destruction of its home.  

Not really, but it did look like a large tear--one that an anime character would have drawn coming down her face to illustrate her anguished cry of frustration and sorrow.

On of my days in MD, I went on a long walk in a wild wooded area and found this tree.  

There are paved tracks around the nearby lake and other paved pathways between the houses and the backyards of homeowners' yards that lead from one end of the neighborhood to the community center--a youth  center and gymnasium, artists' studio, a large co-op store, an indoor pool (an outdoor pool that was closed for the winter) and a small number of bistros and cafes that served odd (it seemed to me, anyway) kinds of foods.  

This part of the forest had no paved pathways, only a deer trail that lead along a small creek--too wide to get across without getting wet.  I followed the river bank, sure that if I stayed next to the river I could not get lost.  (THAT was stupid of me--she who can get lost going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.)  As I waundered about, trying to return to Meg's house, I eventually got to an area that, at one time, had been sectioned off as government property with a giant chain link fence topped by lines of barbed wire stretching as far as I could see.  

Now, though, there was no attention paid to keeping the area secured from trespassers.  The barbed wire had snapped and hung uselessly along the inside of the fence line.  The chain link was rusted--in some places laying, limp, next to the ground.  

And there was this tree, not too many years from being a sapling, that had grown up and through the fence.  I feel a deep sense of loss when I observe a tree trunk or thick branch from a bush that has been deformed by a section of fence.  What should have been able to flourish and grow freely, has, instead, been deformed, hindered from what should have been a clear path to the sky.   

It is also a warning of who and what I allow to become part of my life.  The tree above, when the fence falls down, or is replaced by new chain link, has no option but to die.  Its life is already shortened and its ability to produce seeds and reproduce has been seriously, if not totally, compromised.  

It all comes across as over-dramatic--but I feel the same emotion  as if I found a wild creature that had been caught in a trap and maimed for the remainder of its life.  

There was, for almost two years, a sandhill crane that frequented our area--and that came daily to eat crushed corn and seeds that I provided.  I carried the feed out of the garage in a white milk carton with the bottom cut off so that it worked as a scoop.  The stark white colour made it stand out against the continual green of our landscape--and when cranes saw it, they would hurry (as much as cranes ever hurry) to come and eat from my hand.  This one crane had gotten a strip of plastic jammed high onto its upper beak--almost completely closing off its nostrils.  To breath it had to open its mouth, which meant that it became dehydrated more easily.  She never was able to find a mate--always coming by herself to feed.  I know that she didn't consciously think "If only I could breath better, I'd be able to keep a mate and have chicks."  But I'm sure that, at some level, she felt lonely.

Here are two trees that grew right next to each other--probably seeds from the same tree that landed together and then sprouted.   One is much bigger than the other and the smaller one shows a bole--the effect of insects infesting or a mold infecting the tree and causing a huge, round outgrowth, covered with rough bark. Because the two trees are so close together, the burl grew to connect them.  Not sure how I interpret this image--rather the smaller tree was supported by the larger or the smaller tree weakened to the point that it became susceptible to insect or mold.

It is striking, though.

I had a hard time finding what kind of fungus this might be.  There are two that are listed as common to the area:  Fairy Fingers (Clavaria fragilis) and Coral Fungi (Ramariopsis kunzel).   As I look at it more carefully here, I think that this is the Clavaria--the white stalactites are straight--rather than interconnected to look like a coral.  Either way, it is an amazing thing to see this bright, white fringe hanging under a dead log fragment.  It was startling enough to catch my attention from half a mile away.  I didn't realize that it was edible--and I know that Meg and her family would have found it a wonderful treat to taste something that grew wild just a few miles from their home.

  

The closing image of this entry is an oblique angle shot of the front of Meg's home.  It reminds me of the perspective I get when looking at railroad tracks converge as they disappear into the distance.  I like it very much.