An Embarrassment of Riches

  

After this past weekend I have an embarrassment of photographic riches. The season is so beautiful. There is so much to photograph, so little time to share it with you until the next curtain rises on more of spring. It’s a visual feast!


If I were a painter, I believe I would choose impressionism as my genre. This choice probably originated with my mother (who was a painter) and her love of Renoir and Monet. There are fragments of my mother’s joy (at least in my mind) which “inform” the photos I took Saturday and Sunday. And, there is always the elastic debate between “realism” and “impressionism” which also has a way of “informing” every photograph. We choose our own realities, don’t we? So, what is “real’ for one, becomes “impression” for another.

I cannot possibly begin to show you all the photos I took! Nor am I able to share with you the multitude of fragrances that enveloped me as I walked over the land, each particular one dizzying by itself, but taken all together, completely intoxicating!

So, instead of words, let’s take a virtual mini-hike, today, with only a few of the photos I “found”…each one for me, worth a thousand words! Let’s begin on the cowpath leading east out here JOTOLR.

 Cowpaths are the easiest of trails to follow. The cows have a way of knowing where to walk with the least effort. The Shawnee followed the buffalo trails here in the Appalachians as they made their way south from Ohio and then, back north again on their annual hunting expeditions. These were their "cow" paths. We are walking toward what I call the East Field.  Beyond the cow-groomed pasture, the wildness takes over.  Of course, "Progressive Farmers" are instructed (informed) to cut all vagrant brush, poison the rampant multi-flora rose, Tartarian Honeysuckle and the tire-puncturing wild Crab Apple.  We are not "progressive" out here JOTOLR...at least in the farming sense! So, the "despicable" Russian Olive, the Flowering Wild Crab Apple with its thorns the multi-flora and the honeysuckle, all remain sources of amazing perfume!  Here are, without comment, some other "impressions..."

Now, we're on our way to the pond where I found too many photos! One was this tiny, delicate Crested Dwarf Iris and my always-appealing cattails. 

The Scarlet Oak is the Chartreuse Oak right now.  It held its scarlet leaves late into the winter.  I'm amazed that it's ready to begin again so soon!  Below is a Catalpa sprout.

And then...the clouds!  Oh my!  What a show!  I could not keep that shutter still!  Right up to the doorstep!  How fortunate I am to live in

this paradise!