Category: photos

3 more leaves

Yup, I’m definitely not done with leaves. Here are 3 very different leaves that caught my eye this fall.


This bright leaf found its trip to the ground interrupted by the grating of a large bird cage. I loved the bold sections of contrasting color, and the way the leaf glowed in the sunlight.


While it doesn’t have vibrant colors, I found the curl of this dry leaf to be quite appealing.


This brightly painted leaf was all the more appealing for having landed itself on a swirling canvas of floating algae.

happiness is not a potato

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise. (Charlotte Bronte, Villette)


Happiness is not a potato.

Close to 2 years ago, I was preparing to roast some vegetables for dinner. I washed a potato, and started to cut out some of the eyes that looked like they would be a bit tough, when, to my surprise, I had the impression that the potato was looking back at me. Yes, we all know that potatoes have eyes, but they don’t usually have mournful eyes. Further, I realized that the “eye” I was cutting into with the point of my knife was actually more like the potato’s nostril. Filled with remorse, I stopped to take some photos of my sad, sad potato. (And then I continued to cut it up and put it in a roasting pan.)
Some days later, I came across the quote above, by Charlotte Bronte. Indeed, happiness is not a potato, and I had the photographic proof.

If anything, as far as I can tell, sadness is a potato.

Sad potato is sad.¹

While perhaps not with the same frequency as my sharing of leaves, this is far from the first time I’ve shared vegetables with faces. In fact, 3 years ago, a butternut squash and I declared November 21st to be International Day of the Odd Vegetable.² Together, the squash and I reminisced about an eggplant we once knew.

How about you? Have you come across any produce with personality?

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¹ That’s what I was imagining I’d call a post about this potato.
² Alternately, The Day of Peculiar Produce.

rust blossoms

I’ve said before that I love the patterns produced by rust and weathered paint. The bold compositions produced by the elements working away at metal surfaces covered in their flimsy dressing of paint can rival those of some of the most venerated abstract expressionists. These canvases, however, are not so much the kind you find in museums, but rather on dumpsters, storage containers, parking lot barriers and such. Here are several examples of compositions of rust and weathered pain that caught my eye, several for producing patterns that were almost floral in appearance. (I realize that what these also look like are inkblots. What do you see in the pictures?)


The base of a lamp post in a parking lot in Providence, RI.


This was in Dublin. I think it was some sort of a garage door.


A parking lot barrier post in New York.


A parking lot post of some sort. In Massachusetts.


Some sort of wall at the Völklingen Ironworks, in Germany.

last leaf

I really can’t promise that this leaf is the last one I’ll post here. Actually, I can more easily promise that this is not the last leaf I’ll post here. This just happens to be the last leaf photo that I’ve taken. (As in the most recent. Definitely not the final leaf photo that I expect to be taking.)

transplants

Here is a collection of misplaced leaves and flowers that caught my eye over recent years.

A leaf caught in a flower and a ray of sunshine.

A magnolia petal pining for the pines.

An oak leaf hanging out with the big guys and trying to blend in.

This little periwinkle bloom looks right at home in these fronds of hosta.

A cheery maple leaf resting on a subdued bed of ivy.

autumnal odds and ends

These are a few photos I took one afternoon last week while the kids played in the woods by our house. The riotous color of October foliage have given way to the muted browns and grays, with occasional splashes of bright leaves.


Unidentified yellow leaf on a thorny green stem.


Stump with lichen and leaves.


Young maple, stubborn leaves.

(It won’t be long before even these scraps of color will give way to white on white.)