Chance of a Lifetime

Since moving to Florida, I have felt myself in a wonderland (without any Queen of Hearts or beheadings).  Flowers that died every winter in the North grew to huge masses and had to be cut back once or twice a year.  There were areas where the scrub was drab olive with very sharp edges, sharp enough to slice skin through jeans and venomous enough to send a fellow student to the hospital after being impaled by an end spine.  

The most incredible gift that I discovered were the birds.  There are tiny finches--the size of hummingbirds--that flutter about in an ephemeral cloud--reminding me of honeybees massing to follow a queen to form a new hive.  There are also raptors--lady hawks, falcons and even, by the rivers, golden eagles--which account for the dearth of squirrels and scarcity of marsh rabbits in our neighborhood.

Anhingas cut through through the dark canal waters like seals and then waddle up along the edges to a high spot where they point their faces into the sun and spread sparse wings to catch the breeze and dry.  Also in the deep canals you see tall, elegant, snowy white egrets, wading up past their knees, heads cocked and frozen until I the split second when they punch the water and suddenly appear tossing a fish down their long, thin throats.  

The biggest surprise was the sandhill cranes.  Almost able to look me straight in the eye, we have come to an agreement--they do not help me dig up the gardens, I supply daily amounts of cracked corn, milo and other assorted seeds from a scoop made out of a plastic milk jug. Many of these cranes have visited year after year and when their chicks are the same size (sometimes bigger) and mobile enough to keep up with them, these new birds arrive with their parents to glean from the offered food.  

Twice I have seen parents with chicks . . . It's has been the only chance I've had to record in photographs a family so recently cormpleted.

Magic.

Heard at Church this morning:

"You can't bless yourself with the  priesthood but you can bless others."

                                                                                     John Smarinsky--Stuart Florida Stake Presidency

Inspiration and a Push

This Wednesday and the Wednesday before that, I took lessons from John Lopinot--professional photographer--and dad of the young woman who makes my one acre look like  million bucks.  The reality of his coming--like a deadline in a college class--made me dig back through the boat-load of photographs I've taken over the last seven years. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Nathan spotted these ducklings near the edge of the lake.  I love the spikes of green, the ripples coming away from them as they move--and the focus of light on the lead duckling.

This was one of my first photos of the barn my sister managed in Minnesota.  If I were a painter, I would have painted a sky like this, the diagonals of grass cut lines with the road, and the red square above the round steel bin.

I was visiting my daughter and her family near D.C. and we went to the Smithsonian.  I caught her as she walked from the window and across the hall through the frame of a modern sculpture.  This is such a good portrait of her--she is an artist herself, utterly unconcerned with fashion trends. When we were planning her wedding, she wanted to wear white overalls . . .

Were I to prep this for a print, I would crop off the left, emptier side where the scissors are.  I like the movement of the burnished kitchen faucet handle, meeting the line of the leaves at a 90 degree angle--leading the eye from the top rose to spiral around under the two red roses--and then back to the center rose, tipped with red from the low lighting and long exposure.

This is technically not a good photograph.  I am shooting from dark to dark, lit behind by bright sunlight.  The details of the cranes' eyes, beaks and feathers are difficult to make out.  I do like the story of the picture, though--male watches over the pregnant female while she rests during the heat of the day.

I know that many people do not like squirrels.  My own husband has a violent dislike for them ever since they tried to eat the wood shingle roof of our Kansas City, MO home.  Unfortunately for him, I quite like them--they are quick and curious and will come close to me if they trust . . . and I have raw peanuts to offer.  For this shot, I laid down on the sidewalk in front of the subject.  It was late afternoon and the shadows in the photograph make it one of my favorites.

For some reason I cannot fathom, this wild marsh rabbit (native to Florida) came to live in our yard one summer and would sit still and watch me as I sat still and photographed him.  I have miniature rabbits in the house as pets--they are sweet, but not the same as this wild gift of tolerance.

Mushrooms pop up all over our yard--it is wet here and the wind blows in some pretty amazing fungi.  This group reminded me of standing in line--everyone crushing forward to find out what they were standing in line to see.

Excellent Ixora: The Humble Umbel

Ixora casei--in bloom now all over Southern Florida

As I was driving into the parking lot of one of my doctor's, I came around the long driveway--and was ushered towards the office entrance by this expansive line of Ixora bushes.  Even though I've lived here for the last 8 years, the sight took my breath away.

 

These are like a handful of firecrackers to my eyes.

I love the almost waxy look of the flowers and the leaves.  In a hot humidity that makes most flowers wilt just a few minutes after they are picked--these flower-lets are the same pristine shape for days after I pull them off the stem.  

Years ago, before I knew the name of the Ixora, (I love that name!) I pulled handfuls of the four-petaled florets and slipped them inside a book.  A month later I found the book (having forgotten the flowers I'd pressed between the pages), and opened it.  A shower of salmon-red, "four leaf clovers" rained down into my lap.

The flower is part of the Rubiaceae family.  I was reading another blog and discovered that they are one of the plants known as "umbelifers."  Each individual flower is held together with others on a single stem.

The individual florets before they bloom.

Side view of a full-blown umbel.

I got this from the notes of an on-line Botany 115 class. The next photo refers to the flower stalk--the pedicel. 

Individual floret:  in my clumsy way, I've knocked one of the stamens loose to sit below the ring on my hand.

Sometimes when I try to pull just one of the florets away from the bunch, I can feel the pistil slip out of the pedicel so all that's left is a long, hollow tube.

Closed flowers spike above open ones--almost like a tiara atop the head of a prom queen.

One of my professors once commented that when I take pictures of plants, I do so showing all the parts that I can.  Usually my aim in photographing plants "in the field" is to find an image that will help me to identify it even when there are no flowers or fruits showing.  Most plants bloom only during one season of the year.  When I am waundering about with a horticulture class, the purpose is to be able to ID the plants we see.  Most often, we're looking when blooms have already fallen or haven't yet come out.  Leaves are all there is to see . . . and ornamental (or "landscape") bushes or shrubs are kept so closely trimmed that they don't get a chance to produce blooms.

Leaves!  Look at the leaves!  Take what you can get . . . still got to figure out what plant's in front of me.

For me, this would be a great ID photo to have:  leaves, undeveloped and full-blown umbels. 

I leave you with this last image:  a handful of Ixora casei:  soft, effulgent pink-red florets.

DELICIOUS!

   

  

Golden Beetle and a Story

Iridescent Gold. A phrase that comes from the Greek and tells a story in just two words.

  

In the Grecian language, "iris" means "rainbow"; which is linked to the goddess Iris--the embodiment of the sky-bound colour spectrum that the Judeo-Christian tradition remembers as a sign of the message from God promising never to flood the world again. 

Like the Biblical rainbow, Isis was also a message-bringer:  messenger of the gods.  As such, Isis traveled at the speed of the wind, heedless of time or element.  Back and forth she flew between worlds, linking the gods to mortal men. 

(I say "men" since I rather think that women are meant to be smarter, and able to stand on their own two feet--without depending upon the prognostications of reclusive, forest hermits.  Also, women get the short shrift in just about every mythology. Take Arkhe for example . . .) She could reach into the deepest seas and furtherest reaches of the underworld.

  

Isis had golden wings.  Her twin sister, Arkhe, was winged with iridescent ones.  She did not keep them, though.  They were torn from her by Zeus and given as a wedding gift to Nereid Thetis on the day of her marriage.  The gift passed to Nereid's son, Achilles.  He wore them on his heals, becoming the FTD icon (also called by the Greeks "Podarkhes"--which meant "wing-footed with Arkhe's wings.")and a personage on one the tests in my 6th grade English class.

Kudos for the source of information: WikiAnswers' Word and Phrase Origins Supervisor (There is a photo portrait of her on the site, but whose real name remains a mystery to me.).  Who knew there could be such an intriguing job? 

In Front of the Light

I'm still remembering last night's swim.  Nathan took this of me in front of the in-pool light.  It mirrors the way I feel when I'm in the water--no noise, no gravity, no clear vision.  It is a dream that I can jump into whenever I choose.  

Just knowing that makes everything else much easier to take.  

Sometimes I don't even change into my swim suit--which grosses Nathan out . . . all that dirt from my clothes.

When we first got here, my favorite thing to do was to put on a pair of my most-worn long shorts and a too-big shirt.  I'd go out on the acre of land that surrounded our house and pull weeds, plant flowers, fertilize the tomato plant that hadn't died yet, thin the ferns and cut out the weed trees.  Since it was always hot and humid (no matter what time of year it was), when I got really overheated I would jump into the pool.  When I wasn't sweating anymore, I would hop back out of the pool and go back to work.

Magic.  Water.  Pool.  Perfect.

Change: Interlopers and Natives

Northern Peeper

I discovered that the silvery brown-eyed frogs that I find tucked into all sorts of places around here are not "exotic" but indigenous to Florida.  I understand that Florida is second only to Hawaii in the number of invasive species that have taken up residence--many times pushing out the original insects, plants, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, trees, bushes . . . 

Actually, Hawaii has one of the highest (if not the highest) number of species that have become extinct since 1900 . . . not much room in the first place, too many people want to live there and they bring with them (on purpose and by accident) things that changed the island forever.

Every moment things change.  My three toddlers grew into adults.  We moved from Utah to Iowa to Texas to Florida to Texas to Argentina to Texas to Missouri to Florida.  My mother died. My dad retired and started his own company--which now produces the most popular tongue cleaner in the entire world. I gained 30 pounds and lost 40.  I cut my hair off and it is long again.  I bought a mare in Argentina and we brought her back to the United States with us--I was going to ride her until we both grew too old. My body got too old too fast and I have not been able to ride any horse for over a dozen years.  We bought a home that had fruit trees: orange, lime, pink grapefruit and avocado . . . and they are all gone now.  I got a Master's degree in English--and now I take classes in horticulture and calculus.  

But some things have not changed yet.  Northern Peeper frogs continue show up in all sorts of surprising places.  I still have three children--and gained two grandchildren.  I live in a house that I love with a man whom I love even more.  He says that he loves me and cherishes me more and more each year.  I still want to ride horses.  I have always loved to swim--and that is still true.

Someday I will have a perfected, resurrected body and I will not have time rush me forward through each change.  I will ride horses.  I will be in love even more with my husband.  I will understand water and air and space and how the eternities progress. 

Swimming tonight with two of my children who are now all grown up.

For now I will continue to grow old and to plant new trees and be with my children--who are adults but will always be my children.  I will work at learning how to capture the world that is changing all around me through the lens of my camera.  

I will write about the things that change and the things that stay the same.

I will find Northern Peepers tucked into odd and unexpected places.  

Backyard Hotel

Wild Allamanda

Common Allamanda houses a Pine Woods Treefrog (Hyla femoralls)

   

A place for everyone and everyone in his place.

Firebush branches

Hamilia patens

I can only imagine a newborn frog nestled inside one of these.  I shall keep looking.