The air was quite clear today, post cool front pushing the heat from the Southern Appalachians for a while.Here were two views from Mt. Mitchell today.Click to see the larger images!Posted with Blo...
Mt. Mitchell view
Monday, 29 June 2015
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Trees in sunset light
The late evening light illuminated the ravine forest in sunset. Neither of my cameras (iPhone 6 or venerable Nikon D100) did it justice -- not surprisingly.They were surprisingly equivalent in the flattened light that they captured. This is a photoshopped version of the iPhone image.Still...
Friday, 26 June 2015
More fireflies
They're flashing from ground level to canopy again this evening. Magical.I poked around to see if I could find a decent image to share, with no luck (either highly enhanced images or not very good ones). Certainly my camera(s) can't do justice to the biological flashing in the dark, programmed by...
Thursday, 25 June 2015
A pop-up flower shop
My garden group (an eclectic federated garden club) recently had a meeting where we created flower arrangements to go to a local hospice care facility.One of our members is a nurse there, and a couple (that are new members) suggested the program.It was delightful.We all brought flowers and foliage from...
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
Fireflies
It's not easy to get photos of fireflies, but just imagine their flashing from ground level to canopy.We've been treated to evening displays for days now. Lovely, and unexpected.Normally, we'd have sucessional waves, from ground to canopy over weeks, not days - so it's a treat to see the night sky...
Saturday, 20 June 2015
Sunset at Beaver Lake
A favorite morning walk (at Beaver Lake in North Asheville) is also a wonderful evening stroll. The light and clouds were exceptional this evening, with Woody on a post-dinner wa...
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Another bear saunters by
Eating dinner out on the deck this evening brought another bear sighting. This fellow was larger, with an ear tag, so wasn't the younger fellow of a couple of days ago.He checked out (the empty) bird feeder, poked around a bit, and headed up the ravine (towards town). I hope he turned around and headed back down, towards more woods and the larger neighborhood...So this is the 4th bear sighting...
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
A young bear helping himself
A morning fuss from Woody (our Golden retriever) had me looking from the deck (what was he barking so vigorously about?)It turned out to be a young (presumably) male black bear, quite small, who was helping himself to the black oil sunflower seeds in the feeder.According to our neighborhood list-serve,...
Tuesday, 16 June 2015
The power of water: Niagara Falls
We'd never visited Niagara Falls before.It always sounded touristy; years ago, driving from Maryland to Toronto, I skirted the falls, avoiding what I thought would be tacky tourist stuff (the edges of town at that time were downtrodden, to be sure).But traveling this time, from Western North Carolina...
Monday, 15 June 2015
Toronto Music Garden: a remarkable garden experience
I was reminded while visiting one of North America's great cities recently (Toronto) how easily many city dwellers can become disconnected from nature. Opportunities to experience nature become both more precious as well as perhaps more important, too.A luminous visit to the Toronto Music Garden,...
Sunday, 14 June 2015
Summertime, summertime...
Is it spring or fall?Several years ago, I purchased this native fall-blooming aster, but each year it has bloomed in both the late spring and early fall. Its breaking of bud dormancy may be caused by the same length of day as its correct blooming time. Whatever its problem, we do enjoy its surprise...
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Sedums at Toronto Botanical Garden
These were delightful mixes of sedums and their friends in carefully planted boxes along the path.They're largely the sort that need to be brought in over winter; glorious, never the le...
Wednesday, 10 June 2015
Don sculpture, Don watershed, Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Toronto Evergreen Brickworks, urban landscapes
A luminous sculpture (of the Don watershed)
There's no way that my photographs can convey how magical this (living and dripping) sculpture was (at the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto -- a reclaimed old brickworks space that was a wonderful and inspirational place to visit).The sculpture depicted the Don River watershed in pipes, water, and plants...
Monday, 1 June 2015
Serviceberries
I've really enjoyed foraging serviceberries (Amelanchier spp.) that have been planted as ornamentals around our mountain town. They hadn't been on our radar before, but the nearby visitor center has lots of trees (planted for their spring flowering interest), but often loaded with berries in June.I...