Western Pondhawk

 

"Chasing dragonflies, like buying good books or eating gourmet food, can be a curiously addicting."

~Cindy Crosby

Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural and Personal History

If I have ever seen this particular dragonfly before, I never saw it this green or this beautiful! It's the, Western Pondhawk dragonfly, and I found it at the Cosumnes River Preserve. We were just walking along and then suddenly there it was. It was so beautiful! I love discovering new things, or at least seeing them in a new light!

Breathe, Love, Meditate

 

Video Taken On One Of My Recent Walks

Cosumnes River Preserve Wetlands Walk

Galt, California

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature,

 he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

~John Muir

Breathe in, breath out. 

Meditate.

Breathe in nature. Know your worth. Live in love.

Meditate.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Meditate.

Scenes from Cosumnes River Preserve

March 19th, 2026

Greater White-fronted Geese

And A Little Soft Jazz

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #52

 

Gathering Leaves

Spades that up leaves

No better that spoons

And bags a full of leaves

Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise

Of rustling all day

Like a rabbit and deer

Running away.

Again and again

Till I fill the whole shed

And what have I then

Next to nothing for weight

And since they grew duller

From contact with earth

Next to nothing for color.

Next to see for use

But a crop is crop

And who's to say where

The harvest shall stop?

By

Robert Frost

The Greens Of Autumn

 

“He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.”

 
~Michael Montoure,

  Slices

 

 I know that these are green trees left over from summer, but it was three weeks into autumn, in Yosemite, and summer had been gone, officially, for three weeks, so I gave them to autumn. I love Yosemite. It's just there for the fantasy of it.

 

 

 

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #29

 “Change is coming, she whispered to the bugs bouncing off her window. 

You can’t escape it.” 

 
~A. Lynn,

 Itsy's Ugly

 

Yosemite was just beginning to turn, but there is a lot of beauty all the same. Just wait until early November, the leave should be breathtaking! I hope the Republican shutdown will be over by

  then!

 

 

 

 

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #44

 

"The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens and the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars."

 

 ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Autumn Leaf Of The Day #38

 

"Autumn dresses up in gold, the richest season."

 

~Angie Weiland Crosby

 

 

Canada Geese, Late In The Day. Plus Leaf #5

 

"If, of all the seasons, there is a season in which a person completely forgets himself and constantly watches the magical environment, it is undoubtedly autumn!"

 

~Mehmet Murat ildan

 

 That old familiar song... honk... honk honk. I am not completely sure what the geese are saying, but it sure sounds like, I love autumn, to me!

 

 

~Me

 

Life Paraphrased Part One

 

"Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man

 and requires the least of him."

 

~Hal Borland

 

And so it begins. This pretty leaf is a neighborhood leaf, with just a hint of red, but who knows this could be an orange year. A little hint of red doesn't mean much right now. Also, the Central Valley color is very different from the color in the Bay Area. Weather I guess. I hope to visit my favorite tree in the Bay Area soon, to track the colors there. Before autumn begins anyway. Things are so busy with the move, and now with our first buyer having backed of the deal, I doubt seriously that I will be moved before autumn begins. But as I have said many times, autumn is the great healer, and I believe that, so I am keeping the faith. And who knows, we got an offer yesterday, and Rosalie will let us know about it later today, so that's a good thing. Also, American Horror Story comes back tomorrow night, after being gone two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, so things are coming together. As my Twitter pal Mark says, things happen for a reason, and in their own time. Paraphrased.

 

~Me

 

Mischieveous Autumn Love

"I would like to hold your hand as it holds this green leaf, yellowed, that fell early from it's tree, this autumn. And I would like to imagine that it feels your careful care, for your eyes are warmed by your heart, and I would let you sadly nestle into me as a bird folds into its nest, resigning itself to a storm. For my heart is as large as a city, and it glows with the fire that, with the right mischievous love, shall serve to inspire thousands upon thousands."

~Waylon H. Lewis

Things I Would Like To Do With You

I'm fighting my annual December cold. And I'm stressed out. But on the plus side, I ordered a small fruitcake, and all is right with the world! Hopefully, this weekend I will get out for the last autumn leaf hunt for the year, well officially anyway. I will continue to photograph the leaves as long as I can find them. I will keep looking, and hoping I see them well into spring, but if I don't find them, I will find other treasures of nature. Birds. Flowers. I snowflake. It's all waiting right outside the door! 

 #82 Leaf Of The Day

December 13th 2019

Nevada City, California

Nikon

~Mood: Happy

~Me   :)

Walking With Autumn Thoughts

"There's something to walking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that."

~Hermann Hesse

 Demian. Die Geschgichte von emil Sinclairs Jugend

More from my visit to the Stockton Rural Cemetery last month. The leaves were still reluctant to show their colors, well, most of them anyway, but across the way, in the very far corner there was a beautiful tree in full autumn bloom. It was gorgeous! Isn't it strange when one tree out of many seems to think for itself? Oh I know, it has more to do with the amount of sun, and moisture and all, but it's nice to imagine that they have the will to shine and it be about determination, rather than natural order. Shrug. I have no idea how things work, I just live on this planet.

#50 Leaf Of The Day

November 11th 2019

Photographed October 10th 2019

Berkeley, California

Nikon

~Mood: Quiet

~Me  

Raindrops On Safflower Clover

"Yellow is the color of the sun.

Blue is the color of the sky.

Green is the color of grass.

Brown is the color of your eyes.

Black is the color of the night.

Orange is the color of truth.

Red is the color of love.

And...

Rainbow is the color of you."

~Anthony T. Hincks 

It's a new year, but you already know that. But I am going to stress it again, because it applies to my struggle to find inspiration, after autumn dies each year. Winter is difficult, especially in that I can't get out to do photos as much as I would like to. My Fibromyalgia, with the seasonal migraines, and the body aches tend to be worse in cold weather. My mind is happy, but my body is weak. Sometimes it's a matter of pushing though, sometimes there is just no way to make it happen.

But all is not lost. I downloaded a few self guided public art tours. And I have some ambitious plans for the coming weeks. There is actually a lot to photograph in my area, like the awesome art scene, and movie locations, it's just a matter of working on the logistics of the day out. It will happen. I am already much more enthusiastic than in recent years, so I am not going to push, I am just going to let the muse take me where she will. 

Like the photo above. There was an amazing winter storm rolling in from out in the Pacific. I feel like my beloved Bay Area was sending me a lifeline. It is also pushing through to the Sierra. It's so strong, that it will be a blizzard by daybreak. That will mean some great opportunities to visit some snow in the Western Slope of the Sierra, or perhaps as far as Lake Tahoe. I will just have to check the road closures, and hope for the best. But for yesterday, I decided to photograph some pretty Clover grass, with raindrops on them.

It's a start.

~Mood: Inspired

~Me

A Year of Sumac And Red

"Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn... that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness... that season which has drawn every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling."

~Jane Austen

Persuasion 

I love that green leaf! Unfortunately, the photograph was taken late last summer, long before the year turned autumn, so I couldn't include it in my project. But it's so pretty, I thought it needed to be seen. It's not perfect, but the green is so striking, that it just popped! That's the one thing about the leaves of autumn, there are very few examples of the color green, although I did find a couple of nice deep green leaves, but it wasn't many!

Sometimes, as I am preparing for the coming colors of autumn, I go to some of my favorite locations, and study which colors are making an early appearance. It helps me with the practice of different settings on my camera, especially when I haven't picked the camera up for a while. It also helps me decide which trees will provide me with as many different colors as possible, to balance out the collection. 

This autumn it was all about the color red! Red is difficult for me. It can be harsh, and especially so, when the sun is shining through the leaf. When I saw I'd be working with a lot of red this year, I was really happy because I knew it would be a challenge, and it was. With my Fibromyalgia, I get headaches easy, and this year the normally bad headaches turned into migraines. Fun. I think it's because of the air pressure in the Central Valley, but that's just a guess, anyway, the color red, in the leaves, seems to give me headaches! 

Weird, right? I am going to have to check with others who deal with my condition and see if they have an intolerance to light, and certain colors. Life is a challenge, right? But it feels good to be continuing to learn about my condition, my photography, the natural world around me, and even weather conditions, and what causes them to affect my body. I like this hobby, and the fact that I can get out of my own head for a little while, and be in nature.

 No two leaves are the same, and when a single leaf is gone, you will never see it again. They are the fingerprints of a year gone by, and after this past year, I can understand red being the predominate color. What do suppose will be the predominate color for 2019? Personally, I am hoping for a deep lavender. Or maybe yellow. Yellow is a bright sunny color, that is invigorating, and not painful to me at all. I am hoping for yellow, but I am kind of thinking that 2019 seems like it will be most likely be red. Red in day to day life, and in leaves.

I'm happy with this years collection.

  I hope you have enjoyed it too!

#83 Leaf Of The Day

December 13th 2018

Photographed December 9th 2018

Stockton, California

Samsung

~Mood: Happy

~Me

Happy St. Patrick's Day

When after the winter alarmin',

The spring steps in so charmin',

So fresh and arch

In the middle of March,

With her had St. Patrick's arm on

~Alfred Percival Graves

May the Irish hills caress you.

May her lakes and rivers bless you.

May the luck of the Irish enfold you.

May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

~Irish Blessing

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Mood: Festive

~Me :)

A Preview Of Spring And Happy Hanukkah!

"Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair... "

~Susan Polis Schutz

Can you believe all that color? I cam upon these gorgeous purple flowers, while photographing leaves at the Brazil Room in Tilden Park, here in Berkeley. I couldn't resist taking a photo. They were so vibrant, and so lovely, that they were distracting me from the leaves, which almost never happens. As seasons go, I find spring to be my least inspiring. It's such an easy season to find beauty, that there is nothing very challenging about it, but still, when I come across something as beautiful as this flower, especially on a cold, rainy, almost winter day, I begin to look forward to the possibilities of spring. 

It will be here soon enough.

:)

The Leaf Of The Day

Mood: Happy

~Me :)

Come Into My Parlor, Said The Spider To The Fly...

"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly,

 "Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy."

~Mary Horwitt

~The Spider And The Fly: A Fable

I am not big fan of spiders, mind you, but I kinda loved this pretty little green spider I spotted on a white flower in Golden Gate Park. 

Don't you just love it's shape?

The Spider And The Fly: A Fable

"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;

"Tis the prettiest little parlor what ever you did spy.

The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,

And I have many pretty things to show when you are there."

"O no, no," said the little fly, "To as me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;

Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the spider to the fly.

"There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin,

And if you rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in."

"O no, no," said the little fly, "for I've often heard it said, 

They NEVER, NEVER WAKE again who sleep upon YOUR bed."

Said the cunning spider to the fly, "Dear friend, what shall I do, 

To prove the warn affection I've always felt for you?

I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice;

I'm sure you're very welcome; will you please to take a slice?"

"O no, no," said the little fly, "kind sir, that cannot be;

I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see."

"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise,

How handsome are your gauzy wings, how  brilliant are your eyes!

I have a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf,

If you'll step in one moment dear, you shall behold yourself."

"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,

And bidding you good-morning NOW, I'll call ANOTHER day."

The spider turned him round about, and went into his den,

For well he knew the silly fly would soon be back again:

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly, 

And set his table ready to dine upon the fly.

Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing, 

"Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing:

Your robes are green and purple; there's a crest upon your head;

Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead."

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little fly,

Hearing his wily flattering words, came slowly flitting by.

With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,

Thinking only of her crested head - POOR FOOLISH THING! At last.

Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast.

He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,

Within his little parlor; but she ne'er came out again!

And now, dear little children, who may this story read, 

To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed;

Unto an evil counselor close heart, and ear, and eye, 

And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly.

 

Mood: Content

~Me :)

Oh, Okay, So That's Why That Happens!

I580 Angel 
Spring 2005

"When you wake up with a song stuck in your head, it means an angel sang you to sleep."

~Denise Baer

I love music! Almost all genres of music, except country. I have never much cared for country, however there are some country songs I have always enjoyed, and certain country artists as well. So now that I think about it, do I really dislike country music, or is it just way down on the list of types of music I enjoy? Hmmm?

Sometimes music makes an otherwise sucky day, so much better! Who doesn't love turning up the music, super loud, and singing along with a song that makes you feel really good inside? I do it all the time! But usually only when I am in my car, because my singing usually scares the cats! Well, mostly Hendrix, who does his best to comfort me. Dylan merely stares at me in annoyance. It's a hazard of naming your cats after musicians.

The worst time spent with music is when you get a song stuck in your head, and can't get it to go away! I once spent 27 weeks of my life with Take The Long Way Home by Supertramp, going around and around in my head like it was hopelessly stuck on a turntable! Don't get me wrong, I love the song, but really, one can only take so much!

Hey, looking on the bright side, at least it was a song I really love! It could have very easily have been a song I loathe like MacArthur Park or My Ding-A-Ling. LOL. Yes, Take The Long Way Home was much better! A couple months ago I had This Old Man in my head... why? Shrug... I have NO idea, but there it was! And it was playing LOUDLY! What the HELL was that about?

But see, the quote above has finally solved the mystery! We are all at the mercy of angels, who apparently have very strange sense of what is soothing... or very strange sense of humor! Personally, I think mine has a strange sense of humor! That makes sense, I just know God, who also has a strange sense of humor, would pair me with a silly angel!

Not that I am complaining! It's better than an angel who only listens to country music! Or 1960's television theme songs. Can you imagine getting the theme to Petticoat Junction hopelessly stuck in your head?

No, lets not do that! At least Supertramp's Breakfast In America was my favorite album ever! :)

Take The Long Way Home...
Supertramp from the Breakfast In America album.


:)

Mood: Quiet But Content

Me :)

Seeker Of Light

"No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around."

~Paulo Coelho

I have been thinking about my friend Steven lately. I am not sure exactly why, maybe because we are in the middle of winter, and I know he would already be anxious for spring. He loved the color green, but he loved it when flowers burst forth with every color imaginable. He liked to photograph flowers, and butterflies, and he was amazing at it! His photos could absolutely take your breath away! I remember once, not long after we began our friendship, I told him that I was going to have to stop leaving comments on his blog, because I had ran out of adjectives.

He laughed.

And I, of course, continued to leave comments that never really conveyed just how impressed I was with his photography. 

I can't quite believe that it's been nearly 2 years since I learned of his passing. He died in October of 2009, just a week or so after his birthday, but I hadn't learned about it until 3 years later. People on the Internet come and go out of your life for a million different reasons. Some get tired of blogging and one day find themselves with nothing more to say. Some have busy lives, and make the decision to let real life lead them. Some, like my friend, pass away. 

I still think about Frank. What a force of nature he was. We didn't know each other long, but he made a big impression on me. He was so funny. So easy to talk to. Nice. He was a nice man. I still wish he would have listened to us and gone to the doctor! Pam. She died of lung cancer at 50. Well, she turned 50 just a week earlier. She was a great lady. She took time to help you if she needed it. She never made me feel unwelcome. She liked to cook, and she only used lower case i's because she said she didn't care enough to correct them! LOL. She had a way with the camera as well. Her death hit me hard, I think because we were close in age. Or maybe because she was my friend. Not sure which really. Maybe both.

Anyway, I don't mean to be maudlin. I am not sad really, in fact I was thinking the other day how much I have to thank Steven for, when it comes to my photography. His feedback and gentle guidance made me a much better photographer. I still have the hardest time remembering that he won't send me an email of encouragement out of the blue. He used to do that. Just out of the blue. I remember one day, back in the AOL Journals days, we in the community asked others to write a description of our blogs, from their point of view. Steven wrote mine.

 "Through the lens of Carly; wordsmith, photographer, and seeker of light."  

-Steven

I used that description on my AOL Journal header for a long time. Well, until AOL closed that service back in 2005. I used it here for a long time as well, and then one day I decided to change things up a bit. I know he would have wanted me to move on. Still, the other day I was thinking about how much closer I tend to look at the backgrounds on my photographs, and how attracted I am to the natural light. I know it was because of him. His love a light lives on when I see something softly illuminated, or I see movement in butterfly wings. Sometimes, all I have to do is see the color green, especially the first real green you see when the earth has begun to have enough of all the darkness winter demands we endure. 

It's that first green that helps me seek the light.




Mood: Quiet But Grateful

~Me