Late Autumn. October 19, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: autumn colors, birches, golden beeches, pine forests, yellow poplars
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Well, it’s that time of the season.
The Leaves are losing, The Wind is winning.
Locally, the maples have given it up, the ashes are skeletal and the oaks have gone brow.
Thank Gawd for the poplars in their yellow finery, dancing beneath a skyline of pines:
That sky benefitted from the sun being at just the right angle for a polarizing filter to work its magic.
Roadside brush filtering the sun’s afternoon energy:
This was one of the few reds in evidence; the sugars which turn sugar maples crimson were one of the casualties of this summer’s inconsistent weather.
Yellows, though, survived the strangeness. Besides the poplars and birches, beeches go yellow ranging to a burnt ochre:
…which is startling against a deep blue sky.
I turned off the open (and sunlit) road to get into the forest, and in a stand of pines I got this image:
I got well along into this drive before the road was blocked by a fallen tree, and I had to turn around.
I may go back there with a chain-saw and a big iron bar, but I’m not promising anything.
Stormy Weather. May 15, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: agrarian scenes, birches, clouds, cumulus clouds, farms, landscapes, storm clouds
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We’re having a run of “inclement weather” here in the Northeast, which is to say, we’re getting some much needed rain.
I’m not complaining, even if I have to time my garden activities to coincide with the breaks. No rain, no garden, no business for the rafting companies which constitute a significant part of the tax base in my little town. And most disturbingly, lower reservoirs, drier swamps and wetlands and reduced levels in our water wells.
Anyway, life is good when it rains. And during the breaks, I find views of tumultuous skies over a bucolic countryside:
Late-day cumulobimbos wading across the sky yesterday afternoon.
More to come, if the forecast can be believed. 🙂
A White Thanksgiving. November 25, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: birches, high meadow, ice storm, spruce bog, Windsor
4 comments
Firstly, let me wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving day, filled with family and friends. We all have so much to be thankful for, regardless of the mountains of crap we’ll have to get back to shoveling tomorrow.
But that’s tomorrow. Today (or most likely “tonight” as you read this,) is a day to relax with a belly full of tryptophan and a house full of friends.
For me, that will happen tomorrow when my younger daughter Ursula will be in from Boston for a big hug and some of her favorite stuffing. It’s my favorite too, so it’s never a chore to make it for her. 😉
So I had the world to myself today, and spent some time up in Windsor, where I was delighted to find snow and ice. Delighted because so far this year we’ve had a white Halloween, a white Veterans’ Day, and now this:
Above a certain elevation, the wet woods were encased in ice. The last of the untended apples wore it well:
…shedding their crystaline sheaths as the day warmed:
I found those shots on the way up to the high meadows where routes 9 and 8A meet. It’s an expanse of meadow thrust into a wide open sky, and catches lots of weather. I’ve taken some of my favorite photos there over the last few years, and always expect to find something worth photographing.
Today it was a wintry view, with the low meadow scrub sheathed in ice:
Rushes and grasses stood stiffly in the wind:
This spot is un-Massachusetts-like, and offers me a cheap alternative to a vacation.
Aside from the meadows, the area is primarily a spruce bog:
It was cool to see this suspended animation of water in the wild woods, as in these birch leaves caught in a crystal cascade:
So, a “White Thanksgiving” it was, at least up in the hills. Tomorrow we’ll do the turkey thing. Tonight I’m just going to wish you the best.
G’night,
Ralph
Spring On The Farm. April 12, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: birches, calf, cow, farms, llama, Scottish Highlanders, sheep, Spring
5 comments
Springtime is busy on our local farms. Maple sugaring is winding down, and attention turns to livestock:
Dim-witted sheep stand around shorn and shivering in their barnyard Johnnies, having just been swindled out of their warm winter coats:
…yeah, I’m talkin ’bout you!
…while their distant cousins remain aloof and above it all:
Most of the farm ponds have iced out, though the grass is still just vaguely green:
…and somebody has been using the barbed wire fence for a scratching spot:
…perhaps this Scottish Highlander and her calf?
I mean, I’m totally ok with that, Yes Ma’am, no problems here…
All in all, a nice time of year in these parts:
I’m still in JPEG mode, so pardon any appreciable lack of photo quality.
They’re calling for rain the next few days, so I was glad to snag these shots today.
Weekend Roundup. May 9, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: 40 Ford, birches, black and white, clouds, orchard, stone wall
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Here’s where all the shots go which seem worth saving but don’t seem to fit anywhere else.
White birches from last week’s walk with Frau B.:
Happy clouds over an orchard in Colrain:
A lively stone wall on the way to Susan’s house, shot here on a rainy morning:
…and another of Mel’s restorations, this one a ’40 Ford which he and his wife take to Florida every year:
I think he said he put a Chevy 302 in it, and that it got around 18 MPG on the highway if he kept it to 65, but that it didn’t want to go that way, so he paid a bit more to get there a lot sooner.
That one’s another of Elliot’s interpretations of proportion, yielding what seems to me to be a sense of surging forward while standing still. 🙂
So goes the roundup.
Sleet On Birches. January 21, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Uncategorized.Tags: birches, butt ugly, sleet
2 comments
Hey, it’s butt-ugly, but that’s what there was:
Sorry.
Little Bang Theory 