Wordless Winter Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday…milkweed

Let there be light!

This weekend, we ended Daylight Savings time.  Of course, the total number of light hours didn’t change, but they were certainly redistributed!  Now we have sunset at 4:46 pm, much earlier than I’d like.  Winter would be much more fun if there were more light hours in the day.  There’s something about cold AND dark that makes me feel much colder than the same temperature with light.

I’m usually taking my walk in the early morning hours, greeting “the dawn’s early light.”  Today I was enjoying the unseasonably warm weather in mid-afternoon.   The light is very different then.  But it still has the ability to lift my spirits even as it creates an entirely different look in nature.

A Facebook photo group I’m in is featuring light this week.  So I’m going to pull a few of my photos featuring light to share, hoping that they light your week while bringing pleasure to your soul.

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Nature…a trio of mornings

Every morning in the park is an adventure and none more so that seeing what the sky will look like when I come around the first bend to the open prairie part of the park. Since “Nature” is our theme today, I’d like to share three very different morning views. Feel free to tell me which you prefer.

Wordless Wednesday….grass

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Nature…fuzzy grasses

I took this photo a few days before the Parks Department mowed down all these lovely, fuzzy grasses.  I got down at grass level to shoot this and I love the almost Impressionistic look that resulted.  I hope you like it, too.  I edged the photo in two different ways.  Do you have a preference?

Photo101 Rehab: Dawn

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav’n,
and strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.
~Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.
~Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost, New Hampshire

Wordless Wednesday…Sunrise

Photo Rehab…I see dead people.

Probably the best kept secret in the history of movies was the ending to “The Sixth Sense.”  Once you knew that the boy saw dead people, everything you thought you knew turned on its head and the movie was completely different.

I see dead plants…or at least I see the beauty in them.  Here are a few of the end-of-season beauties I’ve come across on recent walks in the park.  Considering that in the northern hemisphere, today is the first of autumn, I think it’s appropriate time to post them.  Perhaps they’ll get you thinking differently about dead people…er, plants.  But one of the exciting things these plants, as you can see, most of them contain the seeds of next year’s life.  The cycle of life.

Photo101 Rehab…A river runs through it

Midway through my walk through the park, I always stop by the river to see whether I can spot any birds.  This day there were no birds, but a series of tiny “plops” when I cautiously approached indicated there might be other life nearby. I scanned the bank and the water, finally spotting this cutie.  He and I both remained motionless for many minutes.

There were any number of things floating slowly on the river, all headed inexorably for the spillway, but beautiful as they floated.