Today's Flowers

Megan and I are back from Maine. We had a great thanksgiving and Maine is always a fantastic place to spend it. Look for images of Little Pond in the upcoming days. This week over at my photography blog, I'm participating in the Today's Flower's Meme. Here is my contribution.



I took this shot on September 16 in our backyard here in Worthington, Ohio. We have a small clone of Canada goldenrod along our wooden fence, and for two weeks in September, it was heaven to bees. I am excited to slowly add native plants to the back yard that will hopefully attract insects throughout the growing season. Even though the back yard is fairly devoid of anything except grass and a giant oak tree, there still are thousands of interesting photographic opportunities to be had, and I look forward to discovering everything in our back yard in the years to come.

Tom

Happy Thanksgiving

Megan and I saw these turkeys last October at Slate Run Metropark. These guys (or girls) have probably long since been eaten!

Saying Goodbye to Autumn

Megan and I finished up the major raking today of our yard. Most of the Bur Oak leaves are piled on our devil's strip (aka tree lawn) waiting to be sucked up by the giant Worthington leaf machine. It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is near, and Megan and I will be traveling to little pond Maine once again. It was only five weeks ago that we were there to witness the blaze of glory that is the north woods in fall. I took these series of images on the afternoon that we left. The light was muted by a thick layer of clouds, allowing the colors in the leaves, no longer shrouded by chlorophyll, to shine.

The yellow leaves of the fall-flowering witch-hazel against the appropriately named red maple.

Witch-hazel above, red oak below.

A pair of red maple leaves.

The leaf of a fallen red maple, with fronds of bracken and white pine needles.

Red maple, with American beech below.

American beech.

Huckleberry

And finally, a view across the pond, showing the yellow tamaracks (a deciduous member of the pine family) that grow in the bog that rings Little Pond.

Tom

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Camera Critters- The Dogs of Little Pond

I purposefully try to exclude pictures of things not natural on this blog- although I have plenty of farm and agricultural pictures. A subject that I don't typically photograph is dogs. But during our October trip to Maine, I just couldn't help photographing the Wood family chocolate labs- Dublin (red collar) and Murphy (blue collar) as they frolicked in and around the pond and bog of Little Pond.










Tom

Sky Watch Friday- A Fleeting Sunrise

Minutes can often make the difference between a visually interesting and a lifeless, dull image.


Shooting Date/Time 11/19/2008 7:17:43 AM



Shooting Date/Time 11/19/2008 7:25:27 AM
See more at Sky Watch.

Tom

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Revealed

Megan guessed correctly, although she definitely had an insider's advantage. The mystery image is the fringe from a Bur Oak Acorn. Here you can see the full image of the acorn, and the acorn in in relation to the leaves of the bur oak. What is most fascinating about Bur Oaks is that the cap of the acorn almost completely covers the seed. The fringe is quite fascinating, isn't it? Thanks to Nina for reminding me about the fringe- I had taken these pictures this summer to share, but her comment on my sunset picture of the bur oak sparked my memory. This past winter I wrote a two part series on the Oak Trees of Ohio for the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves' "Natural Ohio" newsletter. For more information about bur oak, check out my article on Ohio's White Oaks in the fall 2007 issue.

What is it?

Fishing Guy (Tom from Kent)is the inspiration for Today's Post. He often shows closeups of objects and has people try to guess what exactly he has photographed. Here is a closeup, taken here in the Columbus area, for you to ponder.



What do you think?

Tom

The No-Eyed, "Holy" Cicada

Cicadas are supposed to look like this, complete with no holes and perfect eyes.


However, this past August, I found this poor Cicada (which is not a dog day cicada [Tibicen canicularis] as pictured above, it is perhaps a swamp cicada [Tibicen tibicen], but I'm not positive), whose eyes had been picked out and its thorax had a large, cavernous hole revealing the inside pinkish flesh. What could be more gross than a mortally wounded insect? This guy was still living when I snapped these images, a testament to the survivability of these creatures.










Our yard was loaded with dog day cicadas this year, but I only observed this one swamp cicada. I'm sure Cicada larva feast on the roots of our stately bur oak, and I'm glad that they do. While some may consider them gross, cicadas are great insects to photograph. One, they are big, so you get very nice images even without a dedicated macro lens, and second, they are slow and not apt to fly away once you've captured one. Fore more cicada images, check out Cicada Mania, a site I originally learned about after my first cicada post this summer, to which Cicada Mania linked.

For more animal images, see Misty Dawn's meme Camera Critters.

Summer Favorites

Ok, you're right, it is Veteran's Day, and fall is almost over. Every so often I like to look back at my images and pick ones that may have slipped through the cracks and have never made it to the blog. And share some that I think are worthy of another look. So here you have it, my favorite images from June, July, and August, 2008.