Winter? What Winter?

 

"Color doesn't just add something to a certain something. It gives it life."

~Anthony T. Hincks 

We have had a series of winter storms come through the last few days, so the sky has been dark, and the trees are now merely skeletons, but with the few leaves hanging on, there is color that encourages me to keep looking up. This Sumac tree, in Lincoln Center, continues to surprise me with it's will to live on, and not let go of autumn! Winter? What winter? What is this winter you speak of?  *wink*

Late Autumn's Hummingbird

 

"Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral, blur."

~Mira Bartock

The Memory Place

I see a hummingbird, sitting at the very top of a certain branch, of a certain tree, every time I visit Cull Canyon Park, in Castro Valley, no matter what season I visit. I have no idea if it's the same one every time, or if this type of tree is just perfect for hummingbirds, but it's always a Anna's Hummingbird, and it loves to pose for me! Anna's Hummingbirds have been a real challenge for me to photograph, most of the time I have had trouble getting their colors, that bright or pink under their chins, or sometimes their bright green coat on their backs. It's difficult from any distance! But for some reason, I seem to do better with them in late autumn. Maybe it's because I am more relaxed, or is it really the autumn sun that brings the color? I don't know which, all I know is I am grateful for it. These birds are absolutely gorgeous, and they make life beautiful!

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #78

 

"God has designed the world in a way that illustrates 'yet'; the green leaves lose their colour, but reveal one true color that's been there all along."

~Rachael Newham, 

And Yet: Finding Joy In Lament

Just A Bird In Autumn Leaves

 

"I can hear a new story in each leaf that falls."

~Isabelle Izzie Meditates Baker

This gorgeous bird is an Audubon's warbler, but he looks very much like the Yellow-rumped warbler. You have to look closely, and know the differences to be sure. For me, the main difference is that Audubon's warbler has a bright, beautiful patch of yellow under his beak. That splash of yellow is a very much welcome sight, as we head into the dark days of autumn. Oh my, I am apparently already grieving autumn's death. I'm trying to take heart, because I have more beauty to share, like my sugar maple in the front yard, which will hit full autumn glory in a few days. What would I do, if I didn't have my birds, my maple tree and so much color, to look forward to?

The world's best husband, and the kitties are pretty nifty too!

A Sunset, In 5 Acts

 

“The first stab of love is like a sunset,

 a blaze of color -- oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples...” 

~Anna Godbersen,

  The Luxe

 

This is all one sunset, just taken over 30 minutes or so, and from different angles throughout the Cosumnes River Preserve in Galt, California. A beautiful winter sunset in the valley, there is nothing quite like it!

 

B/W 2024 #4

 

“Your desire to be near to window is your desire to be close to life!” 

~Mehmet Murat ildan 

Color or Black/White?

I can't decide. But windows, and window treatments have been on my mind a lot lately, because I am decorating the spare room, and not one set of my curtains has looked good. I have about 35 sets of curtains, that were for 3 different homes, but somehow the windows in my condo are demanding something different! Unfortunately, what it is wanting is absolutely eluding me! Anyway. here is a color and black and white window. I suppose with the natural color version, a nice warm cream color would look good, maybe in Damask. With the black and white, you can let your mind wander, personally for that I see a nice mid-century look, maybe Atomic Cat. I think I will photograph more windows for inspiration, as my quest continues! Is it me, or wasn't the curtains in my living room lovely? You couldn't beat the light that came through those windows! Autumn light was especially pretty! I smiled a lot in that room!

My office curtains as we were packing to move.

Orange On A November Day

“November is usually such a disagreeable month...as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully...just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights.” 

~L.M. Montgomery,

  Anne of Avonlea

 

The colors of leaves are so beautiful right now, and it has inspired me  to take a real look at each one. Not just each leaf, but each color. It all started with a particularly vibrant rainbow I saw last Saturday. I don't know, maybe it's because daylight hours decrease in autumn, but I can never quite get enough of the way the autumn sun makes everything look. Everything looks so vibrant and full of pure life. I never can fully explain my love for this season, but it begins with colors like this...

 

 

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #34

 

 

“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”

 
~Rainbow Rowell

   Attachments

 

 

Monologue? Purple Gladiola? Cornflower?

“Cushions and rugs, goblets and trays and half-full decanters cover every surface- all of them in a riot of colors: vermilion and umber, peacock blue and bottle green, gold and damson plum.”

 
~Holly Black,

  The Queen of Nothing

 

Here's my project. We bought the condo in February, but we moved in, officially, October 6th, 2021. Due to various dramas, it has taken this long, almost 2 years, to fully unpack, and purge myself of useless clothes and material objects. But we are almost there, and that space you see, is about to be my new office! It was my office when we first moved in, but I was a little freaked out, and wasn't appreciating it very much, so I moved all my stuff downstairs. To say I didn't appreciate the room, or the condo for that matter isn't right. I HATED THE PLACE! I WANTED THE PLACE TO DIE. I, IN FACT, HATED THE WHOLE SITUATION SO MUCH, THAT I TOLD MY HUSBAND TO NOT BOTHER TO UNPACK, BECAUSE WE WERE LEAVING IN A YEAR, SO WHY MAKE WORK FOR OURSELVES1

 

LOL. A year has more than come and gone, and we are not only still here, we are the proud owners. It's home, good, bad or otherwise. Mostly it's been good, except for the occasional package being stolen off the porch. That happens everywhere now. And recently we took proactive steps to try and keep that from happening in the future. We installed a back up security system with RING. I feel safer now, and much more comfortable. So, life marches on. I hope to have my office painted by October, but that might be unrealistic, as we are working on several projects around the house, and it's almost time for the birds to start migrating again. I am moving along with this project, but at a pace as slow as molasses. Why so slow? Partly because I am tired. Partly because I don't want to exhaust dear hubby over it, and partly because I want the to room to speak to me about how it wants to look.

 

When we decorated the kitchen, the walls screamed, PAINT ME WITH A HAPPY COLOR, YELLOW WOULD BE NICE! So we chose a vibrant shade of yellow. Squash Blossom. It makes the kitchen feel inviting. It makes cooking fun. Now it says, GOOD MORNING whenever we walk in there. The living Room is done in dark colors of black and rust tones, and this fall we are painting one wall a beautiful BEHR color called, Colorful Leaves. I don't know which way I will go when it comes to a color for my office, there are so many choices, and I have A TON of curtains to choose from as accessories. sometimes I take a look at all the curtains I have accumulated over the years and I am so grateful I have them, but OMG (eye roll) how many damn curtains does one woman need? Oh well, like I said, I am grateful I have them because the curtains, my candles, my owl baskets and my earth tone pillows will pull it all together. 

 

This project is good for me. 

 

 

 

I kinda want to use the Monologue I bought a while back. It's such a lovely light shade of lavender, but the color I had in my office last time, Purple Gladiola, was an amazing medium color of purple, that was not at all blinding, but rather deep and calming. Like lavender does for the senses, that color relaxes me. But on the other hand, so did Monologue. Oh my, I am just not sure yet which way to go with it. There is a lot to still figure out.Which, believe me, is a good thing right now. On a happy note, the other morning I was in bed, it was around 6:30 am, and I heard the sound of ducks, or perhaps, geese, flying over the house. I was a beautiful sound. It was the sound of autumn.

 

Leaving Heaven Behind

 

"The beauty as mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion... open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony."

 

~Orhan Pamuk

My Name Is Read 

 

Leaves. It's not quite time for autumn, but the colors began almost three weeks ago. Summer gave up this year. Fine. I am ready to be on with it too. Lets get the past, present, and future on it's merry way. The only thing I want to see last is autumn. I am going to need this time of healing. I am grateful that leaving Heaven behind, begins at the end of the summer of 2021.

 

 

~Me

September 12th 2021

Stockton, California

 

I Hear Him In The Whispering Leaves

 

 

"I needed a long lingering autumn, 

a tenure with which to ease into another state of being."

~Ruchika Tomar

A Prayer For Travelers

Sometimes I think autumn talks to me. Autumn Leaves whispering, everything will be fine. Of course they could be lying, or perhaps mistaken... right? Maybe it's a ghost. Maybe it's my dad. He died in August of 1995. He disliked summer almost as much as I do. His birthday was October 5th, so naturally I think of him in October, and how much he enjoyed this month. Halloween was a big deal in our house, in fact, it was probably the happiest of all the holidays. We had a lot of challenges as a family, but we got Halloween and politics right. Well, right for us. Talking politics, and carving pumpkins are some of my best memories with dad.

He'd ask me, after he carved the pumpkin, and while I was scooping the guts out, about my life, and if I had anything concerning me. Had some dumb guy hurt me, or was I worried about anything, and I would share. We talked about everything from the Vietnam war, to my mother's open heart surgery, to the 6 months that I was a registered Republican. He advised me with that one that I'd change my mind, and six months later, I did! I miss those talks, but I still feel him around when I am scared, and completely out of control with they ability to do anything about it. Even he couldn't fix it, he would find the right words to make it make sense. I sure miss him, but sometimes I can almost hear him whispering through the rustling leaves, "It's okay. It's autumn." Which didn't really help, but it did make me smile.

Thanks Dad.

~Carly

October 24th 2020

Stockton, California

Reality Of The Same Intensity

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality

 but to create reality of the same intensity."

-Alberto Giacometti

I had been wanting to photograph this old motel for a long time. The first time I spotted it, was five years ago, when I moved to Stockton. I was on the freeway, on my way to my new house, from the motel I had been living in, in Turlock. Man, it was the longest summer in that Turlock motel, waiting for the condo to built, and then when that situation blew up, it was even longer while house hunting, but we eventually found our home and our community. It was scary, but having a brand new canvas of possibilities was good. New sights and sounds. New things to photograph. New histories to learn.Too bad I just wasn't in the right head space to embrace it, but still, that didn't stop me from taking a visual note of that great sign, so that when I was ready, I would know where to go for inspiration.

I edited two versions, color and black/white. Frankly, I am not sure which I like best. The color shows it's original funky mid-century style of not just the lines, but the overuse of that hideous orange color. Funny how folks felt about color back then. Orange and turquoise? And yet I have seen more than one building, from that era, that had that exact color scheme. Stockton is full of it, and for some inexplicable reason, it's growing on me. The black and white is really great because it's like I had to step into an old movie to accomplish the photo. Both are great. Maybe I will leave it up to Twitter to decide.

 Feel free to leave me your thoughts. 

Carly
August 25th 2020
Nikon

A Central Valley Sunset In Two Acts

"You are my soul on a cold dark night, my muse during the light of the day and the one wish my soul would make."

~Grace Willows

I love that quote. I find myself daydreaming more in winter than I do in summer. I am not sure why. Although, now that I think about it, it might be because I find it so much more difficult to carry a coherent thought in summer, than in winter. Anyway, I saw this gorgeous tree on the way to Ione last night, and was lucky enough to get a good shot of it was we drove by it. It's now one of my "not bad for out of a moving car" portraits. I played a bit with lighting and color, and came away not being able to decide if I preferred it warmer or cooler. The sunset going on behind it was a great big fussy golden/red winter angry sky, which may be why I created and alternate universe of cool blue to enjoy it. Cold. Winter. They go together, but on the other hand, the sky in gold and red could have been a metaphor for a romantic cozy fire on a cold winter's night.  

Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

Mood: Happy

Me  :)

Etheral Substances

"To hear never heard sounds

To see never seen colors and shapes

To try to understand the imperceptible

Power pervading the world;

To fly and find pure ethereal substances

That are not of matter

But of that invisible soul pervading reality. 

To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;

To be a lantern in the darkness

Or an umbrella in a stormy day;

To feel much more than know.

To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;

To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;

To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;

To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;

To be an insignifican pedestrian on the strees

Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.

To be a smile on the face of a woman.

And shine in her memory

As a moment saved without planning."

~Dejan Stojanovk

For the most part, I prefer to photograph my autumn leaves where they fall. I do some editing, and I try to show them through my eyes, because sometimes I see beyond what's really there, to the painting I would do, if I were a painter, and not a photographer. My impressionist view.  But sometimes there is so much to admire, that there is simply no way to capture all of them individually. So here are the leaf collections, I didn't touch or disturb, while I was searching for just the right leaf to highlight as part of my, Leaf Of The Day, collections. It just seemed like a shame, to not let them have their day too! They worked all year to become the beautiful leaves they are!

And Now The Leaf Of The Day...

#74 Leaf Of The Day

December 4th 2018

Photographed November 11th 2018

Stockton, California

Samsung

~Mood: Happy
~Me :)