Back to Autumn

 I have had enough of snow, of this monochrome world. I'm going back to autumn, November 11, to be exact, when most trees were bare but the sun coughed, rose briefly in its deathbed and gave up one last fervent seventy-degree day. On a weekend, no less. Ahhh. Let's go, kids.

Let's go to Dean's Fork and ride our bikes over the ruts and puddles and through the crackly leaves.

 Let's admire the old house that's leaning into the hill, the house that became a barn that became a corral

and now is home to nothing but mice and phoebes and snakes.

Let's marvel at the cerulean sky and what's left of the fiery leaves. Park our bikes and walk awhile.

Let's look at the light of this hour.

We'll sit in the road that nobody much uses and compose. We'll make poems and pictures with scattered light, sticks and trails through the leaves.

We'll compose pictures around a giant foreground dog.

Who suddenly sits to scratch his eye with a deft toenail. Kuff kuff kuff kuff kuff. How does he do it?

You'll walk in and out of the pictures, not guessing your bear-brown outfit is perfect for the setting.

And you'll sit and breathe and soak up the last of the November sun. Your sunglasses, simply criminal, for they hide your ice-gray eyes.

But you like them, and I can't tell you anything any more.

You, young boy, will run to find a stick to tempt your doggie;

hold it above his head in the universal invitation to play.

You'll whirl and laugh and he will, too.

Until the swift chop when he takes it and breaks it.

Then asks for another. He promises not to break this one but you know he lies.

A day so perfect, we must go back

Sharing the light, the log, the dog, the sun and the Snap Pea Crisps

and a happiness so simple and pure that it might flit right by unappreciated, like a small yellow butterfly

on the last warm day in November


Unless we noticed.

Happy New Year. Resolution: To make my own weather in 2011.

Sycamores, Limosins and Eastern Wahoo

Sycamore bark, with its camo-patterns of gray, green, ghost white and cocoa brown, enchants me. I'd love to wear a dress of sycamore bark, if I wouldn't be mistaken for a deer hunter.

We planted a sycamore in our side yard, watched it grow to pyrimidal young prince, only to have its top break out in a dreadful fall windstorm in September '10. I know it will recover, but it's upsetting to see our proud giant beheaded. I'm looking forward to seeing it send up a new leader, to see it grow up with a kink in its trunk.

Today Bill removed the last of its broken branches, making the aspect less upsetting. Now, to wait. A man once told my dad he wasn't going to plant fruit trees because it takes too long for them to bear. My dad replied, "Might as well plant them. You're waiting anyway."

Dad's been popping up in my thoughts a lot lately. The wisdom he gave me, I pass on to my children. He never knew them, but he informs their thoughts. And so he lives on.

A nurseryman in Yellow Springs told me that sycamores are very good at compartmentalizing injuries. I liked that term, compartmentalizing. It means sending out lusty ridges and laval flows of scar tissue around the wound, going on, after a brief pause, with their tree-ey lives. Here's to scar tissue. Scar tissue keeps us moving forward, growing upward. We compartmentalize the injury, pad it with a healing ridge, and pick ourselves up to move on. It can take years, but we wrestle our minds around and most of us manage to do it. And so do the trees. Scars give us character, empathy, tolerance, grace, and a certain beauty.

Some Limosin cattle were peeking shyly out at us from behind their hay rack. The sun lit their ear fringes, giving them an enchanting rim of light. I love Limosins almost like I love Jerseys.

 

Soon we would come upon a little stand of one of my favorite fall plants--the eastern wahoo, Euonymus atropurpureus. Native Americans used it medicinally--it has compounds that work like Digitalis, a heart regulator that comes from foxgloves. They also used its super-straight tough stems as arrow shafts. I love its stripey green bark, and especially its fall fruit. Not to eat, just to admire.

I really like getting land and sky in my botanical photos. The Canon G-11 is really good at that. The photos have an almost surreal quality, as you make out details of trees hundreds of yards away even as you're getting a closeup of the plant in question. Of course, to accomplish this, you often have to drop to your knees. That's OK. I do a lot of that anyway in the course of my Science Chimping.

The fruits have a wonderful spongy pink capsule that bursts open and shows the red pericarp to great advantage. I'm guessing they're trying to attract birds as dispersal agents with all this color. I imagine waxwings, hovering. Mmmmm. Bluebirds, too.

Winged Wahoo is a common yard shrub; this is its wild, native Southeastern cousin. Another name for it is Burning Bush. Later its leaves will burst into orange flame. Altogether a lovely plant, and a welcome reminder of my Virginia childhood.

It's warm enough on this early winter day to make Chet Baker pant. He runs circles around me as I walk, always staying in earshot and racing back at my call, as a good dog will.

The grass is too inviting, so he stops to graze awhile. This is his grass-eating face, with his muzzlepuffs all pulled up and out of the way. He's being a Holstein for a moment. The world's smallest Holstein, with grass. Without milk.

I walk a little farther and find a Little Yellow butterfly, Eurema lisa. I'd found it in Virginia, but never before seen it in Ohio. This year I've seen two--one in my yard, and one here on Dean's Fork. They're irregular vagrants, coming up from the south in the fall. Much more common near the coast than inland--I'm lucky to see them here at all. I love butterflying in part for that element of uncertainty. Turns out it was a big year for Little Yellows in Ohio and elsewhere. I learned that on Facebook, from Kenn Kaufman. Facebook can be good.

That dull brownish spot on the rear margin of its hindwing, its tiny size, and its furiously rapid low flight render it instantly identifiable, if not photographable! Count this a pretty good shot of a Little Yellow.

I give a little whoop of joy and walk on.

Thanks for everything, you good old road. Long may you run.

A Little Horse Story

Dean's Fork is where I go to forget and remember, to mull and think and talk out loud to myself and feel the world back away.  On this day, a little horse story was unfolding. I always love to talk with this beautiful little Appaloosa mare and her companion, a red roan gelding. But today the mare was alone, and she was letting the world know she was unhappy about it. Her whinnies rang up and down the holler.

 

Excuse me, ma'am, do you know where my friend is? If you see him, could you tell him to come back?

He's been gone for hours. Or at least it seems like that. It's very rude of him.

                                                                         I worry.

Sweetheart, wait here. I will look for him and see if I can send him back to you. Hang on.

So Chet and I walked on up and sure enough, there he was. Having jumped the fence, he was ankle-deep in some very nice grass, and deaf to the pleas of the mare to come back to her.

You are a very bad boy. You hear her calling you, and you don't even nicker back. Naughty, naughty horse.

That's her problem. If she misses me, she should jump the fence and come after me.

I'll head back when I'm ready.

Just then, a truck came along and out jumped my neighbor Kathy, who owns the animals. And I got the story. The red roan gelding is named Rocky, and he's a Virginia Highlander, a very young breed of gaited horses that have a little of everything in them--Arab, Tennessee Walker, Morgan,  and Welsh pony to name just a few! I knew I liked his looks and build. Virginia Highlanders have amazingly smooth gaits and are excellent jumpers, which means it's very hard to keep Rocky in any fence. Luckily there's not much traffic on the Fork.

The Appaloosa's name is Hannah, and she was rescued from an abusive situation. She was being ridden at the tender age of 1 1/2, being very badly treated. It took months for the filly to even let Kathy approach her, so badly was she abused. Kathy's patience and gentleness shine through now--Hannah hurries up to the fence for hugs. Kathy brought out her inner sweetheart. As far as riding goes, Hannah's a work in progress. Kathy may come and work her out in our meadow, with no cars or distractions to spook her. She's welcome here.

Kathy gathered Rocky up and brought him back to Hannah. When we left, he was already eyeing the fence...boys will be boys.

I sure like getting to know my neighbors. Getting myself out on a regular basis is the best way to do that. Running into someone is a natural way to connect. And there are stories everywhere I stop to chat. Thanks for this one, Kathy. These are two of the luckiest horses in Ohio, living on Dean's Fork, in beauty and with love. They punctuate my walks and bring me joy.

Refuge on a Country Road

Messing about with the world's greatest point and shoot: the Canon G-11 (now G-12, but who's counting?)

Above: Low Contrast setting, which opens up the shadows, and below, Normal Setting.

The shadows on the old barns are so deep that Low Contrast works to open them up and show more detail, which I like. Especially if I ever intend to paint these scenes.
 Boy, could I see a watercolor of this scene.  Here's the Normal Contrast setting.

 And here's Low Contrast. See how the detail pops out? It lets me see what's going on in the darkest darks on the bank and barn.  So I can use both shots as reference.

                                                                               


I hold the Canon G-11 an inch or so from the rusted hinge and shoot away, marveling at the razor-sharp detail it captures. From landscapes to macro views of wood and hinges, this little workhorse does it all. And on Automatic setting, it decides when I've gone all macro on it, and adjusts accordingly. It's like there's a little brain in there.

I keep walking and shoot back at the old barn before it disappears. I won't see it bathed in such beauty for another year.

How I wish I could conjure these leaves, this sky, for today, when the clouds hang low and weepy. But we've busied ourselves readying the yard for winter birds who will help keep our spirits up when the cold clamps down. Bill built a brushpile to shelter them from the wind and snow, and we put up three more feeders and scattered corn and seed all over the yard. A little thank-you note showed up--the first fox sparrow of fall, scratching about under the brand-new brushpile!

I'm always impressed by the haunting quality of sepiatone photos. In one push of a button, we rocket back 200 years...
and the best part is when you select an effect, such as sepiatone, from the Canon G-11 menu, it shows you what your photo will look like on the screen before you take it! I think back on the days of film, when such options were in post-processing only, when everything was a crapshoot and an expensive one at that, and can only marvel. I've been set free by the digital age. At least in a photographic sense.

Here we are on Tobacco Road.

with our antique barns and little antique doggeh. For a painter, these photos are very useful--they allow me to see relative values of dark and light without the confusion of hue.

I've photographed this little sign dozens of times, with its buckshot holes and its stenciled letters.

Let's get a closeup of those holes.

So many compositions in one small area of an old tired barn. I find such freedom in composing with a camera; it is so effortless compared to composing with a pencil, which I do all day these days. But I'm whistling down the wire on my new book, counting down the paintings left to do. Imagine having almost 160 works of art to do, and finally being down in the 30's. That feels good. Almost as good as walking slowly up Dean's Fork with your best dog.

Who's your best dog?

                                                                     You, Chet Baker. You.