As we head into late November, there are fewer leaves still clinging to their branches. I do enjoy the splashes of color offered by these stubborn holdouts.
While I tend to think of buds as signs of spring, some shrubs form their buds in the fall. These colorful rhododendron leaves and buds caught my eye a few mornings ago as they caught some rays of the morning sun.
This is how I felt much of this past winter.
That door is alarmed, you say? Well, this guardrail is downright dismayed.
This campus sculpture is distressed.
And this leaf is appalled.
Yesterday, I posted a set of photos of happy faces. This seemed like a reasonable follow-up, since some days, you just don’t want to put on a happy face. (You see them too, right? This is not the first time I’ve shared found faces. If you’ve been visiting for a while, you may even recognize the little leafy guy in the bottom photo.)
Sometimes when life is overwhelming, it helps to put on a happy face. Apparently some choose to put their happy faces on other surfaces.
Here are some happy faces that people have put on in various places I’ve been over the last few years.
Alley wall face in Beijing, China.
Rock face in rural Massachusetts.
Cement ball faces in a park in Barcelona, Spain.
Snowy rock smiley face in rural Massachusetts.
Parking lot smiley face in Boston.
So remember, if you can’t manage to bring yourself to smile, you can still put on a happy face. On something.
This week’s friday foto finder theme was “parcel,” and it turned out to be a theme that left me stumped. Since I can’t seem to come up with any photos of parcels tonight, instead I’ll offer photos of stumps.
A stump in Nara, Japan, 2004. (Yes, I know where I saw this stump.)
A stump in Beulah, Colorado in 2005 (I had help from my metadata to remember this stump.)
This one’s from 2011, according to my photo library metadata. I believe it is in New York state.
This stump is from Oakland, California from 2012. (Again, I remembered the location of this stump, if not the date.) (Also, if I had more images like it, I could make another post along the lines of these two.)
This one was from Massachusetts, later in 2012. It reminds me a bit of a volcano.
This one was from New York state as well, at a sculpture garden. (I confess I did not remember where I saw this stump, at least without checking back for other photos taken that day. Maybe there is some hope left for me.)
This one’s really more of a gnarled root than a stump. (From the Marin Highlands, in Sausalito, CA, 2014).
So there are a whole bunch of stumps. Indeed, one could say that I have presented a parcel of stumps. (If one were so inclined…) To see a parcel of potentially more parcel-like parcels, pay a visit to the fff blog.
I live in a part of Massachusetts that is heavily wooded. The rural roads cut through the woods, winding through the pillars of tree trunks. The branches of the towering trees arch overhead, often forming what look like tunnels of trees.
Here are a few photos I’ve taken over the years of the roads winding through the arching trees, in the fall, the winter and the spring.
Here are 4 tunnels that have caught my eye in recent years.
Boston.
Boston.
San Francisco.
Chicago.
Here a bunch of photos that I took at different times, in different places. (Do you see what I see?)
A road in rural Colorado. 2004.
Rusty rebar in some cement barriers, Massachusetts. 2010.
Stick shadows on some logs, Massachusetts. 2013.
A path in Nara, Japan. 2004.
Waterways as seen from above when approaching San Francisco airport, California. 2014.
(And in case you don’t see what I see, yesterday’s post is a hint.)
I do enjoy when I spot letters around that weren’t necessarily intended to be letters. (Punctuation marks, too.) Here are a number of exes I’ve spotted in the wild in recent years.
Hydrant.
Barn doors.
Fallen trees.
Library building.
Tree roots.
Tree branches making an X and a Y.
Yesterday’s photo of a wake, and the sailing going on in that wake, reminded me of some photos I took several years ago. One fine spring day in 2012, I went for a walk with a good friend along a path by the Charles River in Boston. I had my camera along with me, and ended up with quite a few photos that I liked. (I’m not sure why I never got around to posting any of them. Probably due to my general hoarding tendencies.)
collecting tokens 