Lotus Curves

Kenilworth Gardens is full of blooming lotus ponds in July. We enjoyed our second trip of the year to the place last week. I realized that the curves of the flowers…the leaves…the flower parts (everything about the plant seems to be graceful curves) are what makes them so attractive and maybe why they became ‘sacred.’  There is something calming about curves. As I was taking pictures for the slideshow below I realized that the insects act as a punctuation for the curves because they interrupt the flow. I think my favorite images are of petals freshly fallen into the bowls of the very green leaves. There is something very appealing about the creamy white – often with a hint of pink – on the green background veined from the center of the bowl. Enjoy the slide show!

Nature Photography with Belmont Summer Camp – Part 1

This is my third summer to lead a summer camp nature photography session for the Howard County Conservancy’s Summer Camp. Every year is different. This year the weather was perfect on photo shoot day. I am illustrating this post with pictures I took – the children took many more than I did and pushed the abilities of the camera’s they were using to the brink. There were two groups of campers. The younger group was the first to head out and elected to go the fastest route to the woods. Almost everyone took a picture of the path into the trees.

Looking up I noticed some spider webs high in a tree.

I took one picture since none of the cameras the children were using had enough zoom…but quickly moved on to things they could take: the root end of a fallen tree,

A tree that had fallen across a small stream and was too rotten to use as a bridge, 

Curls of grass as we headed back to the meadow, and

Caterpillars.

As we were heading back to the Nature Center we realized that the path through the cut grass contained a lot of ticks. It was tick-check time as soon as we got back to the Nature Center!

Tulips at Brookside Gardens

The tulip beds at Brookside Gardens are full of flowers. When I walked around last weekend, many of them seemed to be in full bloom but then I notices some beds that were still mostly buds. The signs in some beds still indicated ‘tulips sleeping’ were clearly old – and not accurate.  The mesh that covered the beds all winter must have worked since the beds seemed almost overflowing with flowers.

I like to take pictures with the sunlight coming through the petals – make the flowers glow. Often the flowers that seem red at first glance have more orange and even yellow with looked at in brighter sun.

My favorite color combination might be red – orange – yellow…reminiscent of sunrise (or sunset) colors.

There are so many varieties of tulips – some with just a simple cup and others will significantly more petals. Most of the time I like the ones with fewer petals because they curve outward as they flower ages…I like the wayward curls!

My ‘art picture’ for the day was a peach colored tulip with a yellow center…a glowing world, half hidden.

Centennial Park – January 2017

Late last week there was a sunny day…and I accompanied my husband to Centennial Park. He walked all the way around…I was busy taking pictures! The first subject was a red tailed hawk high in a tulip poplar tree. The angle wasn’t great – but the reddish tail feathers were a little visible in one of the pictures and the fluffing of the breast feathers was a good clue to how cold the day was.

There were Canadian Geese of course. They are always at Centennial. I experimented with different angles…reflections, near silhouettes, the awkwardness of the bird on land.

There were two types of diving ducks. Both are winter birds in Maryland. They are a challenge to photograph because the go completely under the water then pop back to the top for few seconds. The Buffleheads were on the other side of the lake from where I was…but the white on their heads make them easy to identify even in a blurred picture. The one on the left is a male; the right is a female….not enough of a side view to tell the one in the middle.

The other diving ducks on the lake were female ruddy ducks. Their tails are a stiff fan. I didn’t see any flipped upward but these ducks were actively feeding…only staying on top of the water for short periods of time.

I decided it was a little chilly to stay out longer so headed back to the car. Along the way, I tried a ‘looking up’ shot of small cones. I like the sharpness of the lines within the cones – light and shadow.

There is always something to photograph at Centennial Park!

Skunk Cabbage in January!

I walked down to the swampy areas on the other side of Mt Pleasant Farm when I was there earlier this week (away from either Construction Zone) and looked at a couple of places I knew Skunk Cabbage grows. The first – closer – place was still like winter – no sunk cabbage coming up in the muck. But the second place had lots of new shoots of the plant coming up!

Once I saw the a few plants – I started seeing even more of them. We’ve been having a warmer than usual January so the plants may be coming up a bit earlier than usual. They are some of the earliest flowers of spring. The early insects (including bees) are attracted to their not-pleasant-to-us smell. They often show up when snow is still on the ground but this year it hasn’t been necessary so far.

One of the shoots has been cut (by a mower?) so the structure of the coiled up leave is obvious.  The structure coming up next to it might be a flower.

As I walked back along the small stream (East Branch), I spotted two green shoots in a relatively narrow and rocky part of the stream bed…probably a new stand of skunk cabbage from seeds produced in the large stand a little upstream.

It will be interesting to observe what happens to these plants if we do have some very cold weather. After all – it’s only January…still some winter left to go.