Minutes in the Meadow

It’s the time of year that schools start again – and I’m more of that with the classes for Howard County Conservancy volunteers. I got to Mt Pleasant a little early for one of them to give myself time to spend a few minutes in the meadow. I didn’t have time to go very far but there were plenty of subjects for photography. The dew was still evident on the flowers. Chicory flowers always seem a darker blue before they completely open. I had not notices the little fibers on the calyx before; they catch dew.

Sometimes the chaos of an unfurling flower is what catches my eye. This one was so low to the grown that I almost missed it.

And then I saw some movement in the mass of meadow plants and, with some difficulty, managed to find it and zoomed in enough to figure out what it was. A grasshopper or a Queen Anne’s Lace fruit cluster!

I glanced down near the edge of the path and saw what looked like thorn on a blade of grass. I backed up enough for the zoom on the camera to focus on it. Another grasshopper! I ended up zooming out to get the antennae in the picture. They were very long!

I was pleased to see so much in such a short period of time and in a relatively small area of the meadow.

Queen Anne’s Lace in the Fall

Many of the Queen Anne’s Lace plants at Centennial Park are finished flowering and in the fruit cluster stage. I find the clusters as attractive as the flowers. There is still a lot of visual complexity. Some of the clusters are green.

Looking closer you can see the oval fruits beginning to form.

Later they will turn brown….and early harbinger of fall color.

This one has some fruits that are still green…others that are reddish brown.

Feathers in the Park

Earlier this week, I accompanied my husband to Centennial Park. We got one of the last parking spaces in the lot closest to the concession area (south area of the park). He did his normal walk around the lake and I enjoyed some photography along the path primarily from the boat ramp toward the dam. The morning was very humid and I was thrilled to find three very different feathers in the wet grass --- good targets for some photography. The first one was black and white. The water droplets on its surface appealed to me…as did the curves of the lower part of the feather than are obviously no longer repelling water.

The second feather was in better shape – and probably not from the same bird even though it was not very far away from the first feather.

I zoomed in for a closer look. The water droplets are very tiny on the part of the feather closest to the rib.

The third feather looked quite different that then other two. It was a feather that looked like it would blow away at the slightest breeze. The white part would have been closest to the body and looked like down.

I zoomed in to get better view of the structure.

Then I looked at the feather from a different angle and saw that it too has many water droplets.

The dew droplets almost looked like an encrustation of tiny globules of glass…on both the white and brownish part of the feather.

I’ll have some other posts from this visit to Centennial Park over the next week or so; it was a photogenic morning.