with my face pressed up to the glass, wanting you
beautiful, you’re beautiful, as beautiful as the sky
wonderful, it’s wonderful, to know that you’re just like I
and i’m sure you know me well, as i’m sure you don’t
but you just can’t tell who’ll you love
and who you won’t
– smashing pumkins

I spend a good amount of time in the absence of others.  It starts in the morning when for whatever reason I’m usually awake and chomping at the bit to get on with my day by 5am, sometimes earlier.  The dogs will come join me around 6am, the rest of the house.. 7, or 8am. Sometimes… like yesterday for instance, I’ll head out of doors as soon as the sun comes up and putter around our tiny 3/4 an acre yard.  I’ll weed gardens while the leaves are still wet with morning dew, prune a tree branch I keep seeing in the more active part of the day when I’m in the middle of doing something else, or maybe just stroll around with my coffee in one hand and my camera in the other..

In some sense it’s a challenge to roam your yard looking for images to capture, it’s also a bit like a treasure hunt.  It’s said that forcing yourself to take photos repeatedly in a limited or not particular photogenic place is good practice.  It certainly does make you look a bit more closely at the world around you.   I found this nest in the front lawn.  That orange color is real enough.  I thought the bits of white stuff looked like clouds on the edge of a hurricane.

Television antennas beg for black and white “film”.  At the moment the one on my roof keeps catching my eye because I just put it up there a week ago.  It represents a minor victory in that I overcame the dizziness I feel at heights to put it there.  It’s also a bit of an albatross. After the work, the expense, and overcoming vertigo there’s nothing that I really want to watch.  Television sucks, just like I remember it.  I keep wondering what got into my crazy head to put it up there in the first place.. oh, that’s right.. football.  Men!

I attacked this shot with Photoshop.  I didn’t mean to plant cherry tomatoes last spring.  This one is on the lamb.  It escaped the green house disguised as a Brandy wine.  “It’s the salad tongs for you, rascal!”.  (Only really old people say “rascal” by the way.)

If you live in the middle of a field in the great white north, you plant pine trees along your western & northern borders to protect your home from the winter winds. It’s said you can cut your heating costs by up to 30%.  I love the darkness of  pine trees.  You just have to plant a bit of white birch to add contrast.

My camera always finds happiness in the little collection of stuff that seems to gather on the top of an old stump. It’s a veritable museum of tiny overlooked life; pine needles, seeds, shriveled leaves, nut shells, barky bits… mouse droppings.

I finally gathered the hundreds of unedible apples up into a great big pile.  The morning sun rose over the horizon and cast it’s light upon Mount Macintosh rising high above the dry grass of the back lawn.

In the states at least, farmers go through great efforts to remove every tree from their fence lines.  Well, that line where there would be a fence if they needed one.   Occasionally for what ever reason, they will leave one lone tree to greedily suck up all the extra sunshine.  I always wonder why they leave one tree.  I mean if you’re going to clear cut!? Maybe it’s an appeasement to Mother Nature.  That’s hard to believe isn’t it? I could ponder it for hours.  It defies logic. It vexes me… nice tree though.

Leaves are beginning to fall now.  It’s not a flood mind you, just a occasional drip-drop that suggests a coming torrent.  Right now most of the world is still green.  A few trees however, have simply had enough.

It’s about time we start gathering up all the tins & tools collecting by the old wooden bench in the kitchen garden. I doubt we’ll need this watering can again for instance.  It just gets blown back off the bench each time the wind kicks up.  Not sure why we don’t just put it someplace out of the wind.  Funny that.

Related Posts:

1. december fog
2. Where it Comes From
3. A parable
4. Jack in the Green
5. Ghosts of Spring