Category: flowers

flowers, photography

Rondo con Chiaroscuro

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
With less dynamic range than my eye, my camera exaggerated the chiaroscuro in the images posted here.  But not too much.  With a nod to a common way to describe tempo in musical scores, I began drafting this post with the title [Chiaroscuro Ma Non Troppo].  Then I noticed a closer connection to music.  My sequence of images is a visual rondo.

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flowers, haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Mountain Laurel

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
IMG_6661_crop_erase_bright-8_840x841

Coming soon:
pink nectar chalice,
bumblebee.

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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Start the day with a triple espresso?  The bee did but I didn’t.  While shooting laurel blooms in soft light, I was distracted by the hyperkinetic bee.  Neglected to force quick shutter speeds when tracking it.  (The camera chose 1/200 of a second.)  Got one shot with blurred legs but an in-focus tongue, just as the bee was landing.  Otherwise, a blurry bee was mooning me.  That’s life.  Enjoy the good stuff and cope with the rest.

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flowers, growing old, history, photography

Never Give Up — Continued

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Consciously, I had nothing to add when I posted a photo recently.  But the pot always simmers.  I brooded on the word “victory” in a comment by Sue Ranscht.  I recalled the epic journey across northern Norway in World War 2 by Jan Baalsrud, the sole survivor of a commando force betrayed by a Nazi collaborator.  I seized another day of magical light and found there was more to show and to say.

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flowers, haiga, haiku, photography, tanka

Sharing

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

Slow shutter needed.
Daffodil and tulip share
early morning light.
~ ~ ~ ~
There is enough for us all,
if we take less than we want.

 
 

I considered posting my photo wordlessly, with the post’s title as a hint that I have something beyond a nice image in mind.  Too subtle.  Compulsively explicit, I wrote a haiku.  Then I expanded the haiku to a tanka.

I hesitated.  The tanka’s last 2 lines might be too preachy.  Then I read the Gandhi quote in a great collection of images and quotes: Our Beautiful, Broken World (curated by Mitch Teemley).

Thanks, Mitch.  The time for subtlety is long gone.

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flowers, haiga, haiku, photography

Haiga with Several Time Scales

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Haiku poems commonly deal with events on short time scales.  In a split second, the frog jumps into the pond.  In minutes, the sunset fades.  In days, the cherry blossoms fall.  How about decades?  How about millennia?  They can show up too, along with the split second that a camera’s shutter is open.
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mums-rock_840x674

Sunlit Moment
|Mums are good silk fakes.
|Rock is real and will outlast
|both mums and viewer.

I dithered over whether to respond to

Scale ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #268

with the material above.  With small differences in format, it was posted 2020-04-17.  Tho usually reluctant to repeat myself, I’ve noticed that bloggers I respect sometimes do repost things they feel are still relevant.  I’ve also noticed that 11 months is quite a while on a cyberspace time scale.

Oh well.  It’s rare that I settle on a combination of angle and settings that I really like before the light fades or shifts.  Seize the moment.

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flowers, haiga, haiku, photography, seasons

Snow Fall

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Carpe Diem Haiku Kai has the theme “autumn leaves” for November of 2020 and the subtheme “colors of life” for the CDHK episode posted 2020-11-17.  Where I live, snow rarely falls before the leaves do.  When it does, the resulting colors may foretell the colors of awakening life in the coming spring.
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Carpe Diem #1839 colors of life

SnowBurningBush_840x718

Snow Fall
|Bright white and strong pink:
|early snow on burning bush
|predicts apple blooms.

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birds, flowers, haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Ozzie Had His Head on Straight

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
David Eppley’s photo of a bald eagle named Ozzie was among the fan favorites in the Weather Channel’s 2016 Photo Contest.  The same excellent photo inspired a haiku that can respond to a CDHK challenge about daffodils.  Really.
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Carpe Diem #1832 Narcissus (Daffodils)

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© David Eppley

Mythornithology
|When we saw himself,
|Narcissus forgot to drink.
|Eagle had more sense.

daffodils-close
Click here to see more images and read interesting facts about flowers in the genus Narcissus (AKA daffodils).

Click here to see more images from the Weather Channel’s 2016 Photo Contest.

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flowers, history, photography, politics

Memorial Day 2020

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Originally a day to remember and honor the fallen in the American Civil War, Memorial Day expanded to include later wars.  Now it should expand beyond the military.  In the COVID-19 pandemic, essential workers risk their lives and sometimes die, defending the rest of us from the disease itself and the societal collapse it could cause.
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In wartime, ignorant and impulsive pols can somehow make horrendous situations even worse.  So it is with the pandemic.  Medical workers (including EMT-s and hospital support staff as well as doctors and nurses) have been sent into battle with inadequate personal protective equipment for themselves and inadequate intensive care facilities for their patients.  Stockpiling such stuff would cost money.  Might even need to raise taxes on those who can work from home, if they need to work at all.  And so on.

It’s so much easier to claim that all is well until all Hell breaks loose, then claim that all will be well when the weather warms up, if we just go back to work and drink a little bleach.

The governors of some states have stepped up.  Learning from each other and from countries (like New Zealand and South Korea) that took the threat seriously, they made tough decisions.  They include a few Republicans (like Hogan in Maryland and DeWine in Ohio) and more Democrats.  It is too early to be sure, but they just might have saved the USA from criminal incompetence in the White House.  Federalism works.

The doctor in Wuhan who first sounded the alarm about COVID-19 was punished for “spreading rumors” and later died of the disease.  Remember him also today, along with our essential civilian workers and those who serve in our military.  Remember that dark money and gerrymandering and vote suppression have sickened American democracy but not yet killed it.

Remember in November.

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flowers, humor, photography, seasons

Nothing Needed

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Long ago, I bought some dwarf tulip bulbs and went thru the forcing rigamarole to get indoor blooming before planting the bulbs.  Nothing but leaves came up.  Feh.  Tossed the bulbs out back.  Guess what happened about a year later.

Nothing ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #231

Yes, the bulbs survived and put out leaves.  And flower stalks.  Which bloomed.

Year after year, the discarded tulips bloom in spring, while I do nothing for them.  Maybe they are old Yankees like me: compulsively self-reliant.

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