“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Wordsworth studied himself and found the subject astonishing. Actually what he studied was his relationship to the harmonies and also the discords of the natural world. That’s what created the excitement….
“One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people — a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes. Hello Tom, hello Andy. Hello Archibald Violet, and Clarissa Bluebell. Hello Lilian Willow, and Noah, the oak tree I have hugged and kissed every first day of spring for the last thirty years. And in reply its thousands of leaves tremble! What a life is ours!
“Doesn’t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the middle of the night and sing?“
“No matter how closely you watch for the snowdrops, you never quite catch them on the way. One day the ground is bare, and the next time you look, the nodding buds are ready to open!“
“English snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), called Candlemas bells, or Mary’s tapers, are the emblem of hope. They are not often seen hereabouts, as their place is taken by the snowflake, which grows so much better with us, but I have had them in my garden by the second of February or before….
“One of the stories of the garden of Eden is that it was snowing when Adam and Eve were driven out, and the Angel, touching the flakes, turned them to flowers as a sign that spring would come.“
Below are five views of a snowdrop I found growing in the filtered light provided by a large maple tree, at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. I couldn’t decide if I liked the partially darkened background (in the last three shots) better than the others … so I included all five photos.
I took the photos below in the same area, thinking they, too, were a kind of snowdrop … yet imagine my surprise to discover that they aren’t.
I’ve mentioned before here that I often use a site called Plantnet Identify to help me figure out the names of various plants and flowers that I photograph. I typically use the site as a research-starter, since it takes a picture you upload and returns the names and images of possible matches, which I then chase down some googly rabbit-holes to see if I can confirm the plant’s identity. I uploaded one of the three pictures below, and here’s what Plantnet said:
Loddon-lily? Spring snowflake? — what? not a snowdrop?
Turns out many people (!!) get confused by these two plants, enough that there are articles describing how they’re different. See, for example: What is the difference between snowdrops and snowflakes? Or just remember this: snowdrop flowers have petals that look like helicopter blades with only one flower on a stem; snowflakes look like tiny bells and will often produce multiple flowers, clustered near each other, at the tip of each stem.
If you would like to learn more about the differences between these two plants, see Galanthus (the snowdrop’s plant family) and Leucojum (the snowflake’s plant family). The history and cultural references for the snowdrop, in particular, are interesting to read.
Here are the first three snowflake photos:
Here are three more snowflakes, produced with a little more grain in the images because they were nestled in a very shady spot so I used I higher ISO — which rendered the images a lot softer in focus, but not entirely unpleasant to look at. 🙂
Here are five views of one of the early daffodils I found, one of the few hardy enough to produce two large flowers during these late-winter, early-spring days. The five views were taken at decreasing focal lengths; and for the last two, I used a shallower depth of field to blur the backgrounds more but retain some of the surrounding purple, gold, and blue colors highlighted by a bit of reflected sunlight. The background colors in all five photos come from pine bark and leaves that fell around the hibernating daffodils during late fall and early winter.
Sometimes nature just likes to surprise me with its deceptively simple yet elegant forms. Here’s a batch of tulip leaves, just a few inches high, soaking in some mid-day sunlight, probably waiting a few more days to send up some blooms.
When I began in youth’s delightful prime To yield myself to Nature, when that strong And holy passion overcame me first, Nor day or night, evening or morn, was free From its oppression. But, O Power Supreme!
Without Whose call this world would cease to breathe, Who from the fountain of Thy grace dost fill The veins that branch through every frame of life, Making man what he is, creature divine….
While the tree these branches hung from was winter-stripped — and just beginning to create new leaves for spring — I had an autumn version of the same tree (see the first gallery here: Autumn in Atlanta: Photo Mash-up #2) and was able to use those photos to identify it as Cercidiphyllum japonicum, or, more pronounceably, Japanese Katsura.
If I could make up my own names for plants (I sometimes do!), I would have called these Reindeer Hooves. Take a closer look at any of the images — especially the fifth one — to see what I mean. 🙂
Here’s a wider view of the branch I took the closeups from. When we move a bit later into spring, I’ll go back and see how this beauty is progressing. Is it weird to be fascinated by sticks?
This giant oak or elm grows not far from the entrance to Oakland Cemetery; and it’s one of the widest and tallest on the property. Here you are seeing only the top half of the tree, because (without a wide-angle lens, and perhaps not even then) there is no vantage point on the property from which the camera can capture the entire tree. It seems even more impressive with no leaves, and if you would like to see the intricate branch detail, select the image, then select “View Full Size” … or click here.
I got photo-bombed by a jet while taking snaps of the tree; select either image to see the “tiny” plane.
Here’s a variation I had fun with, by removing most of the blue color and adding saturation to purple and magenta. Or, this is a picture of the tree dreaming it was in a snowstorm….
