The Days of Summer - Day Seventeen through Day Twenty-three

This part three of my Days of Summer photo project.  To learn more about the inspiration for this project and to see the photos from part one and part two click on the following links:

     The Days of Summer - Day One through Day Nine
     The Days of Summer - Day Ten through Day Sixteen

 Day 17 (07 July 2018) - Snowberry Clearwing Moth

We normally think of moths as nocturnal insects, but many are adapted to daytime living.  This includes a group of sphinx moths known as Clearwings.  In North America, there are four species in the genus Hemaris.  All fly by day.  They mimic the appearance of bumblebees and the feeding behavior of hummingbirds - thus they are often known as Bumblebee Moths or Hummingbird Moths.  This one is specifically known as the Snowberry Clearwing Moth (Hemaris diffinis) after a favorite larval host plant.  This photo was taken at Forest Hill Nature Area.  This probably not the best image from the day, but I cannot resist the subject.

Day 18 (08 July 2018) - Japanese Maple

This image of Japanese Maple leaves was taken in front of our house.  I like the silhouette of the red leaves against the blue sky and the details of the delicate veins in the central leaf.

Day 19 (09 July 2018) - Impression, Michigan Lily

If the previous photo was all about details.  This one is all about impressions.  This Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganense) was photographed at Mission Creek Woodland Park.  This photo reminds me of an Impressionist painting with only the blooms pistil and one or two stamen in sharp focus.  The rest of the flower is clearly visible but much softer.  It's all about the light!

The name given to this photo was inspired by the painting that Impressionism was named after:  Impression, soleil levant (Impression, sunrise) by Claude Monet.

Day 20 (10 July 2018) - Sunlight and Basswood

The photo for Day Twenty is also all about the light.  In this image sunlight filters down through the canopy, shedding light on American Basswood (Tilia americana) leaves.  The sun itself bursts through a gap in the upper right of the image. This image was taken in Mt. Pleasant at Mill Pond Park.

Day 21 (11 July 2018) - Waves of grass

I am constantly drawn to subjects that show pattern and texture.  Choosing a photo for July 11th was difficult.  I traveled north along US 127 to North Higgins Lake State Park for a late afternoon meeting.  Before my meeting I spent a little time exploring the park and came away with images of the lake, pine trees, lichens, etc.  Most of these images focused on pattern and texture.  In the end, I selected this image because of the suggested wavelike motion of the grasses.  I could have easily selected three or four other pictures from the day,

Day 22 (12 July 2018) - Blue Vervain

This photo of Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) was taken along the Chippewa River at Chipp-A-Waters Park in Mt. Pleasant.  The individual flowers are small, but each plant can have hundreds of blooms over the course of several weeks in mid- to late-summer.  The sheer abundance of blooms makes this an important nectar source for native bees.  Although none appear in this picture, there were dozens buzzing around this colony of plants.

Day 23 (13 July 2018) - White Water Lily with native bee

My final picture of the week shows a native bee collecting pollen from a White Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata).  I took about two dozen of pictures of this exact flower at the beginning of a walk through Mill Pond Park this morning.  I came back near the end of my walk and there was a bee on the flower.  One picture and the bee was gone...

A walk in the park (20 December 2017)

Tuesday was my last classroom program before schools went on break for the holidays.  With that freedom of schedule, I managed to get outdoors yesterday (20 December) for a short visit to Mill Pond Park. 

Here are some of the photos that came from that trip.

This small creek remains flowing through a swamp.

Shallow roots and waterlogged soils mean fallen trees.

 

Air bubbles captured in ice in a puddle in the woods

Fertile fronds of Sensitive Fern poke up through the snow.

Oak and maple leaves

Cattails, cattails, and more cattails!

Sedges and leaves frozen in the ice

Rushes and frozen pancakes of ice

These patterns in the ice remind me of waves in Japanese woodblock prints, fabrics, and pottery.  

Art in Nature - Cinnamon Fern

This photo of a Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) is officially in the running as my favorite photo of the year.  I took this picture in the swamp at Mission Creek Woodland Park and I just really like how it looks, especially the interlocking leaves on the left, the red fertile frond running through the center of the image and the diagonal lines of the stems.

Native Pollinator Garden at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum (08 June 2017)

Last week I shared some photos of the Native Pollinator Garden at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy.  This is one of four gardens that we have helped establish and maintain since 2011.  I also stopped at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum garden last week.  This is the youngest of the four gardens.  It was planted in July 2013 so this will be its fourth full growing season.  As a relatively young garden  it is still maturing and changing every year.

Here is a photo from last week.

Just for comparison here are pair of pictures from June 2014 and June 2015 taken from roughly the same vantage point.

Mt Pleasant Discovery Museum native pollinator garden - June 2014

Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum native pollinator garden - June 2015

Here's another picture from last week and the same view from 2014 and 2015.

08 June 2017

June 2014

 

June 2015

It's pretty amazing to see how much the garden has filled in in the past few years.  There is still a lot of open space, but it is rapidly filling up with self-seeded plants.  The ultimate goal is that the entire surface of the garden will be filled with live plants.  Once that happens, the garden will no longer need to be mulched and it will naturally exclude almost almost all weeds due to a lack of space.

That's enough comparison with the past.  The remaining few photos were all taken last week.  Enjoy!

Ohio Spiderwort

Coreopsis shadow on a Prairie Dock leaf

Lanceleaf Coreopsis

Texture

Part of my day Saturday (04 February) was spent wandering the woods at Mill Pond Park and Mission Creek Park.  The day was kind of dreary, with a dull flat light.  So even though I took over 150 photographs, I was not happy with most of them.  My favorite pictures of the day had a common feature - texture.  Texture is something that I find myself photographing over and over again.  I have even written one post specifically about the subject.

Here are three photos showing some of the textural variety that I encountered on Saturday.

The rings on this wood are decaying at an uneven rate, resulting in the grooves seen here.

 A closer view of a section of ice on Mission Creek

This fallen log is covered with a layer of yellow fungus.

What is it?

I photographed this last week.  What does this look like to you?

Favorite Photos of 2015

For each of the past two years I have shared my favorite photos from the year.  Here is the 2015 edition.  Enjoy.


Most of the photos that I take fall in one of two categories.  I am either trying to take a "pretty" picture or I am trying to document something (and don't care if the photo is "pretty").  A smaller portion of my photos fall into a third category - abstract.  These pictures show unique details or patterns (rock, bark, leaves, etc.).  This first image was taken on January 14th and shows broken shards of ice, refrozen into a new pattern, crossed over by animal tracks.  Is it "pretty"?  Maybe, but it's definitely unique.

I love photographing clouds and "bad" weather.  Dark clouds add so much drama to a landscape and their brooding nature can take a hum-drum image and make it something special.  This photo was taken at the Forest Hill Nature Area on March 26th.

Pattern and Detail

I have been very busy this school year.  In October alone I presented fifty-two classroom programs.  Unfortunately, being this busy teaching about the outdoors means that I have a lot less time to explore the outdoors than I would like.  So instead of sharing new photographs I am exploring some of my old images, searching for patterns and details.