Bird's Eye Speedwell

The first wildflower of the season. These flowers are so tiny.

Sun dog

I saw this sundog this afternoon. A sundog is a reflection of the sun in the ice crystals in the clouds. If you look carefully, there is a complete ring around the sun, but often there are only a few places in the ring that reflects the light due to the thickness of the ice crystals. In this case, there was another sundog on the other side of the sun but it wasn't nearly as dramatic.

Ooops, my ancient photo program - Micrografix Picture Publisher - can't save 12.5 megabyte JPEG files. I have to reduce them to something it can handle. I haven't figured out what the max it can handle is. Time for more experimentation.

Happy New Year to whomever is reading this

Wow. I hadn't realized it has been over a year since my last post.

I got a new camera for Christmas - a Nikon S570, a neat little camera. 12 Mega-pixels and more options than I can figure out, but I am experimenting with them.

Now I have to remember how to use this blog.

I took this picture this afternoon (1/1/10). There is still snow from the 2 feet of stuff that landed 12 days ago, plus another 2 inches (12/30/09).

Here is another picture. I love the starkness of bare trees and dried grasses along with the contrast with the snow on the ground.

More fall pictures

More Witch Hazel. I am fascinated with this shrub.




Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Highway. Notice the farm in the lower left/center. I wonder what the story is about the isolated trees in the middle of his farm.




I enjoy taking close-up pictures of flowers.

Some pictures of this fall

Here are some photos of this fall. Most have been taken on top of the Blue Ridge Turnpike between Blue Ridge, VA and Buchanan, VA.











Witch-hazel. This is a neat flower because it only blooms in October through December. If you scratch the bark, it smells just like the stuff you can (could?) get from the pharmacy. While I was taking this picture, another car parked beside me and two couples went to the open area that had a view of the valley. One of the men came back to the car as I was collapsing the tripod and asked what I was taking pictures of. I told him that if he wanted to impress the ladies, he should point out the witch-hazel, which I showed him.



Why are fall flowers either white or purple-ish? This looks like Japanese knotweed to me.












There are lots of very healthy looking lichen this year in spite of the drought. The mountains must be stubbing the toes of the clouds and getting more rain than we are in the valleys.

Identify this tree!

Here is an interesting tree that I found in California, there were several surrounding the hotel/motel where I was staying. It would certainly deter people from climbing them. The tree was about 30 feet high with all these nasty protrusions. And the thorns were very strong - I tried to detach one one so that I could examine it more thoroughly - I needed a stronger implement than my pen or fingers. My pocket knife (with a 1 1/2 inch blade) was confiscated in Roanoke.

No-one would slide down them either, trying to avoid paying for a room.

Those thorns were very sharp.

Oooh, I have a blog!

Well, this will probably be boring. At least I can publish one of my favorite photos.

















This is a picture of a bloodroot flower that I took about 100 feet from my house.

These flowers are so delicate and only last about a week. The sap in the stem and roots is blood colored.