bird break, time for spring flowers

post #482
          More visiting birds next week, but today spring is wanting a turn.  I have some photos from this week, and several friends and family have sent me photos as well. So here are some of these. In a truly difficult time of "never before" we can be warmed by the always happening, this year, next year and again.

in my yard

in Tom and Molly's yard

I remember the house that 40 years ago was at the top of these steps. Now, every year,  these beauties are what happens.  My name for this photo, with George Ella Lyon's help, is LEGACY.  It's located on the way to town; it's a tradition.

             Three photos from my daughter, Rebecca:

peonies rushing to push back out of the earth

Maybe every dogwood tree deserves an actual companion dog....

        Friends Leatha and Will took a drive today to go see the blooms in the Lexington Cemetery, and they were kind to share some of its loveliness.

      Now a spring photo from England, by Sarah Fletcher, who shared this photo on Instagram today. I love the front sheep, posing, and the back steeple, with all that munching going on in between!  Always good to see so much blue sky over there,....

Saintbury Church in Willersey

Though these also aren't flowers, this photo continues to intrigue me. It's a drive-by on my way home from the grocery store. I call this the neighborhood deli, with four smart ass diners....

     
          To end today's hiatus, I'd like to give a shout-out to our wet-behind-the-ears governor who has been so impressive as he manages to set a tone of compassion and caring and perseverance to all Kentuckians, regardless of their politics. He is truthful, reliable, sensible, and direct about why he has made decisions that might at first seem daunting to his constituents.  Every day at 5 pm he has been showing what real leadership can be. It has been awhile since we've experienced that, so many of us are particularly grateful for his presence.  Thank you Gov. Andy Beshear!!!

still more note cards, chapter 4: some favorites!

post #265
       It may be a New Year, but I have not yet finished sharing some of my cards. I have been saving a few more favorites for this post, chapter 4, as a way to celebrate bringing good things forward into a new year. I am not necessarily a fan of clean slates and resolutions.
      Many of the images are chosen for their titles.  When I showed the first one to a friend and neighbor -- in the country sense -- he said "Oh, groundhogs boiling coffee." What? Where did that come from?? I loved the expression, and I trusted that he wasn't making it up on the spot, though he could have. Even so, I did ask around to find out if others knew that expession as well. Many did! I felt enriched by learning such an evocative phrase through one of my photos.

        This next image happens every spring. These steps are located halfway between my home and "town" so I never forget them. I even remember the house that used to sit on the top of the hill and watched it be left alone and then taken down a few years later.
       I talked over possible titles with my friend George Ella, and she came up with "legacy," one word that describes so much. Yes!

      The power of the words is somewhat different for the following photo of some other friends and neighbors. The title "stripping tobacco" can't really describe the poignancy of what is happening. This job was something they had been doing together every December for ages; this year (2010) was the last year. The end. No more tobacco. I have always been grateful to them for letting me know their plan -- and grateful the counter didn't collapse when I stood on it to take the photo!

Hard to explain, but this next image is one I imagine I love for personal reasons. It is our creek, it is spring, I got the greens and the water to look like they really do look, and it doesn't look like this every day. But I was there for this day. I call it, simply, our creek in spring, or sometimes just spring creek.  Since I handwrite my titles on each card, I don't always have to say the same thing. I can therefore forget and redo or simply revise as I go along, an advantage of the extra work hand writing the titles takes.  

field, fog, and fence

      These two mourning doves never fail to fascinate, even though I made this photo with a slide early in my career when I was the photo-illustrator for George Ella's Counting on the Woods (DK Ink, 1998).  For the card's title, I use the words from the page they are on in the book: two birds, daybreak's words. I took it out my bedroom window, on a cloudy day (of which there were many during that long, cool spring). Doves, bless their hearts, actually LIKE to hang out together; I needed birds that would do that. Again, thank you, George Ella.

       There is not time to show all my cards, but I can't neglect to show the next two, both requiring the cooperation of animals. In one, showing off helped, and, in the other, take a look at the ears.  The showing off image is one of my most well known. It also sells well as a card.

Big Wheel

ear-winking mule

      For those of you who like the photos from other places, my most popular one is this street scene in Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. I have used many variations in the title, since I am never sure how much information to give without detracting from the image itself. If anyone wants to give title making a try, please feel free to let me know one for this image. Click on Comment, and sign in as Anonymous. That usually works. Thanks! (Now that I think of it, maybe simply "hanging in England" will work?)

 

        As soon as possible, I will add some samples of my cards with their colored paper choice.  I meant to do it weeks ago, though I have not yet done so. But for now I need to take a break from this fun time I give myself every week and do some actual real-life stuff. "Busy Day."
 

tobacco as art, part 1

post #52

Welcome to the coming of fall -- which means our black walnuts have begun to fall onto the deck!  There is random clunking heard day or night; all will have fallen by the first frost.

        Fall, however, is just one of many seasons for TOBACCO, the crop I have photographed over the years because it is so much of this place and so interesting. I am lucky to be allergic to smoke, so I have never smoked. In fact, I disparage smoking.  But for many years we had a tobacco base.  That means we were allotted and allowed to grow so many pounds of tobacco per year.  We didn't grow it ourselves -- we leased it to our neighbor --and we never earned very much, but for a long time having a base that was used yearly made a farm such as ours more valuable if we ever wanted to sell.  Turns out we've stayed here so long that by now the way tobacco is grown, if at all, has completely changed.  

planting tobacco plants that have been grown in a covered bed (the seeds are minuscule.)  Notice a plant being  placed into a kind of chute while the tractor moves slowly down each row.  Several parts of the process are going on at one time.  In earlier times, they were all done by hand!

    Changing economic times, however, are another story, for some other time.  For now, I mostly want to share some of the many photos of tobacco that I have taken over the years, in different fields, with different neighbors, and during different seasons.  Today images are mostly from the months of May, June and early July.

first plowing, in 1997, ammonium nitrate on the field, rare view of 
how things were done "in the olden days"

 

way back in the woods, an unexpected field of early tobacco

Two years ago I was invited to take photos of this team of mules since it would be their last time doing this annual job.  The spring had been so wet that the tobacco was farther along than usual for this first plowing.  The mules are 21 years old.

side view

back view

"teen-aged"  tobacco plants

reality moment in the tobacco field --  what it is all about...

        Speaking of reality, a mention here of the national upheaval this weekend while the world observes the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I am clearly sorry for so much loss of lives.  I am also sorry for the way this tragedy seems to make it even harder for too many people to think with nuance.  Instead there is a rush to an either/or, good/bad, right/wrong way of thinking.  That's when sound bites have way more power than they deserve, as we give up our right to figure things out for ourselves.  Democracy's challenge and strength is to be inclusive, which requires we use our brains and facts to be informed and therefore to keep it strong.   

       

     Next week I will share some more tobacco photos --for now, two more, taken last week, with my new little waterproof camera which I am trying to learn to use correctly.  The first shows a field (and a bit of a barn) waiting for the rain to stop before getting cut, and the other a recently cut field with some of the cut tobacco visible hanging in the barn.  
     Tobacco is still happening here, but each year there is less and less grown.

Elliott County

Morgan County (still learning about my new camera settings...)  Here the plants have been cut, and stacked in the barn.  The section of the side of the barn is open, as well as the barn doors, to give more air for the drying of the plants.  Too much rain can produce mold on the plants.  Tobacco requires day by day tending.

     I feel this is a good example of holding two truths at once....I hate smoking and all that it does to people I love, but it has provided an on-going honest and honored living to many families I know.  For small farmers, it requires hard work every month of the year.    However, I can't resist a final clarification: I took many of these photos BECAUSE they show something unusual or interesting or disappearing, but NOT because I believe in the big profits corporations have been making off of the addictions caused by the cigarettes they produce.  Stay well everyone, and thanks again for reading to the end!