A January of Small Stones 25

Flash of movement

in stark, still landscape

dry leaf scampers

over the snow

like a brown mouse

seeking shelter.

January 25, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 21

chill eiderdown blanket

covers imperfections,

creates unity in white and black.

January 21, 2014

sgreerpitt

early morning sights in late September

feral cats on the back stoop waiting for food in the faint light...
brilliant green katydid on the front railing like a leaf with legs...
Hickory tussock moth caterpillar all fuzzy white and black on the siding (don't touch!)...
a thriving clump of Pennsylvania smartweed with its tiny pink flowers...
towering joe-pye weed beginning to bow from its own weight...
dozens of dew encrusted spiderwebs between the telephone cables lining the road...
a neighbor's rooster, red combed and strutting his two plume like tail feathers swaying proudly...

a carpet of violets

This afternoon my husband got the lawnmower out for the first time and tamed the wild jungle inside our fenced yard where the dogs play (and do their business). It looks lovely, all trimmed and neat. But I'm secretly pleased that he did not have time (or energy) to turn the mower on the front yard yet. Two thirds of our huge front yard has been taken over by the velvety purple of tiny violets and their shiny green heart-shaped leaves. It looks like a faerie carpet, ready for spritely dances by gossamer winged creatures.

a year of small stones - 011

more intricate than finest
Belgian laces
winter forest filigree
frames evening sky.

sgreerpitt
Saturday January 15, 2011

"small stone 011" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

virgin's bower

Yesterday I did my big "shop" over the hill into Virginia. For ten miles, from the Kentucky border to Wise, VA, the steep banks on either side of the road were laden in creamy vanilla virgin's bower (Clematis virginiana) my favorite late summer wildflower. The photos above and below are from our own yard, where virgin's bower has taken over portions of both the front and back banks. It's a very opportunistic vine, and will twine itself over bushes, trees, and other vines (like blackberry).

the early bird catches the fog

Today was back to work day, the first day of in-service meetings for faculty and staff, which began with a breakfast at 8:30 AM. The breakfast was held at a location near our main campus, more than an hour's drive from my home. The trip takes me over Pine Mountain, a huge, ancient block thrust fault that separates the Cumberland Plateau of southeast Kentucky (visible in the photos) from the folded corrugated mountains and valleys of southwest Virginia.


Many of my friends have taken spectacular photos of morning fog from this vantage point on Pine Mountain's northern face (just below the summit), but I'd never had the favorable coincidence of time and fog and a camera on hand before.

The photos sweep from northeast to north to northwest from top to below. Tiny Whitesburg is hidden under the fluffy white folds of the center photo.

white clouds of fragrance

Four weeks ago when I drove to Harlan for a faculty meeting, eastern Kentucky's roadsides were highlighted in the pale violets of redbud, lilac and wisteria. Yesterday, I made the same drive, this time to graduation, and was treated to forty miles of roadsides banked in garlands of fragrant white: blackberries and wild roses. These two climbing vines are found together everywhere, including my yard. (Blackberry vine above and wild roses below).

Sweet baby blue eyes

Here are the kittens at two weeks and two days old.

No genders or names yet.

The little feller with the raised head is the most active of the bunch.

No one has climbed out of the little bed yet. I'm sure that will happen soon.

cloud mountains

I don't think that I'd ever really noticed that I could see the ridge of Pine Mountain from my office window, but there it is, still frozen in the brilliant, brittle sunshine of the day, floating like a low cloud in the blue sky above the town of Whitesburg.

on driving home at sunset

sunset clouds of rosy hue
part for brilliant beams
that kindle fire
on wooded hills
a golden blaze all light.

©sgreerpitt
January 16, 2010

The lines came to me while driving home yesterday. The photos come from a month ago. The lower photo is out of focus, but it captured the color so much better than the ones that were in focus! I'm an artist so damn the rules.

spying on the porch feeder

Finally found a way to get some photographs without disturbing the birds. Melted a small area of the thick ice on the storm door, then sat just behind a crack in the door and shot pictures through the cleared area -- hence the streaks.

Today's visitors are mostly cardinals and finches. I've long debated whether these are purple finches or house finches. Their bodies are more like house finches, but their beaks are more like purple finches. If there is anyone out there with the definitive answer I'd love to know.




There's also been a few chickadees and tufted tit-mice.

"once in a very blue moon"

A few of my blogger/Facebook friends Deborah Godin and Beth Patterson, alerted me to the fact that there will be a "blue moon" tomorrow December 31, 2010. These days a "blue moon" is defined as the second full moon that occurs in a calendar month. These are pretty rare.

NASA has a great piece on the origin of the phrase "once in a blue moon" and the more recent association of it with the astronomical phenomenon of two full-moons in a single calendar month.

My favorite piece of music about a blue moon, is performed by Nanci Griffith and is called "Once in a very blue moon" a song which she co-wrote with folk singer Patrick Alger.

dangerous beauty

Just before the power went out at 8 AM Saturday December 19, I spent an hour tromping around documenting the snow fall. Notice how much snow is on the telephone and power lines!

This is the most snow we gotten since we've lived in eastern Kentucky (now 13 years). And its the second major snow before Christmas -- a highly unusual occurrence. For those in the know, this is just another example of the weather weirding that results form over all global warming. Here's the explanation:

The unprecedented melting of arctic sea ice the past two summers has undoubtedly had a significant impact on the early winter weather over the Northern Hemisphere. Several modeling studies presented at the December AGU meeting showed that sea ice melt on this scale is capable of injecting enough heat into the atmosphere to result in a major shift in the jet stream. Dr. Overland [Jim Overland of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory] remarked that the early cold winter over North America this winter, and the exceptionally cold and snowy early winter in China last winter, were likely related to arctic sea ice loss. The sea ice loss induced a strong poleward flow of warm air over eastern Siberia, and a return flow of cold air from the Pole developed to compensate. Thus regions on either side of eastern Siberia--China and North America--have gotten unusually cold and snowy winters as a result. Source: Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Not all signs of global warming are warmer days, instead what we see are important shifts and changes in the weather patterns.

seeing beauty versus photographing it

I live in a beautiful place. There is certainly some ugliness -- mostly in the form of strip-mines, but also a lot of litter on the road sides -- but overall this is a beautiful place. Hills and mountains close in around the narrow valleys and hollers, where communities form like Christmas lights strung along the creeks and streams, and narrow ribbons of asphalt thread among the houses.

Every day, as I drive to and from work, or go out to run errands and go shopping, I see beautiful, inspiring scenes that make my heart sing with joy. Yet when I contemplate photographing this beauty I run up against rarely discussed, yet nonetheless existing "rules" about what makes a beautiful photograph.

For example, electrical wires, light poles, transformers, and other such things are not suppose to "mar" a beautiful photograph of nature. Yet, almost every view I have of the mountains, forest and sky has such things within it. Over the last several years, as I've done more and more photography, I've thought a lot about this.



The human eye in daily life, looks past things like wires and poles, street lights and traffic, and is inspired by the natural landscape beyond them. In our minds we edit out these things, they do not distract us from the view. But the literal eye of the camera locks these trappings of modern industrial society into view, creating images that do not conform to social conventions of natural beauty.

Some man-made objects are acceptable in nature photographs -- the older the better! Old barns, old fences (at least wooden ones), old houses, antique cars (not your old rusted clunker on cinder blocks), old wagons, old tools hand tools (not old rusting mining equipment!). But the kinds of man-made structures (untidy utility poles, trailers and double-wides, pick-up trucks, gas stations and Dollar General Stores) that often end up in one's view around here don't qualify as acceptable backdrops or foregrounds for nature photography.

The biggest problem with this disparity between people's daily experience of nature, and social standards for natural beauty as represented by nature photography, is that it can lead to degradation of the environment. Places like this are often viewed by those with the power to make such decisions as not beautiful or scenic enough to be worth saving.

Between 1976 and 1982 as I did the research for my masters thesis and doctoral dissertation in the nearby mountains of southwest Virginia, I observed a distressing scenario unfold. The United States Forest Service was developing the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and had selected the theme "Rural Americana" for their development. To achieve the idyllic rural vistas that the Forest Service desired for tourists, they decided it was necessary to obliterate several existing rural communities, such as Fairwood, condemning property through eminent domain and bull-dozing homes and outbuildings. Real rural Americans were not "rural" enough for the Forest Service.

It is this type of mindset that also leads decision-makers to say, "what's one more strip-mine?" in eastern Kentucky? How can it matter to anyone whether yet another mountain top gets denuded of forest and turned into rubble. But it does matter.

I live in a beautiful place -- for now.