Reason enough to get up

The sunrise this morning was beautiful. I took pictures of the clouds through my windshield while driving down St. Augustine Road, doubtless endangering my life and my dog's, but I couldn't help myself. And the only other people on the road are early garage sale shoppers. Those people are nuts.

And then, toward the end of our run in the preserve I looked up and realized that I was forgetting to enjoy the tops of the trees. I'm always so focused on what's going on at eye level and sometimes really lovely things are happening right over my head.

Everything has gone to seed

I like how all the flowers have put on their fall finery. It's poofy white hats and clouds of seed dresses. Or something like that. The rows of white puffs look like snow drifts to me.

Fog

I love foggy mornings. It's quieter, for one thing. Does mist act like a sound buffer? And I love how you can just see the silhouettes of things in the distance.

Moon is up

I love this time of year and this time of morning. The sun is just hitting the tops of the trees and the moon is still out. Just me and the dog and the birds and other, hidden critters. It's lovely and crisp and quiet.

Lost in the pickers

At least, that's what I call them. Here they're known as sand spurs. The little burrs on the end of the stalks fly off at the slightest disturbance and poke you, and then when you pull them out, the little barbs on the end don't want to let go.

Today we took a side track and ran smack into a patch of the damn things. Daisy got them in all four paws so I ended up carrying her out of there. I hate them, I do.

Dog fennel

Dog fennel smells so sweet out in the preserve. I could stand in the middle of it forever and not get tired of it. Such a silly name. The plants grow in great big clumps, like green and white fox tails. Steve says it smells like dill when he crushes it in his fingers. I think it smells like green.

Patience is rewarding

Daisy is watching a man with a beautiful border collie walk down the trail. I made her sit while they went by and she was doing fine until the man's dog made a move in her direction, and then she leaped towards them. After making her sit again, I decided to wait for a while before continuing.

I am trying to teach Daisy to be calm around other dogs and people. This requires a lot of patience on my part and I don't have any, so it's something I'm learning as we go.

It helps to have a camera when you're learning patience. While waiting for my dog to become resigned to the fact that we weren't going anywhere and the man with the collie wasn't coming back, I began taking pictures of what was around us.

I like this one because there are layers of color—green, lavender, brown and gold as well as layers of depth—undergrowth, tree trunks, mist and sky.

Here are a couple more, same spot, one left and one right.

What you see isn't always what you get

This happens to me a lot: I'm taking a picture or in the process of trying to get a picture when all of a sudden I notice something else, like a bonus prize, that happens as a result of my original picture taking impulse. Like these mushrooms, for instance. I stopped to take a picture of them because they're yellow (which is going to be next week's color of the week for this photography thingy that I'm doing with my siblings), and while I was focusing on them I realized that they were moving which in turn led me to focus on the bugs that were crawling around all over them. Interesting bugs, which I wouldn't have seen at all if I hadn't stopped to take the picture of the mushrooms.

This also happened last week with a tree I meant to photograph with my camera phone because I wanted something different as the wallpaper image and I nearly stepped on a pygmy rattlesnake in the process and so I took a not very good picture of that instead. Camera phones of the sort that I have are very limiting. I need to work on this, but you can see it's a snake, right? I thought so.

Effectivenessity

Sometimes I take pictures because something sticks out. Like this orange saw palmetto branch in among all the green ones. And then sometimes I get the picture on my screen and decide what's obvious to me out in the wild doesn't seem so obvious when it's digitized.

So here's another version that I made using Picasa. Very cool. Lots of fun. Almost postcard worthy.

And then here's one more version that I used Picasa's Picnik software to play with. Yow!

Duck, duck, duck, goose!

I've finally figured out what the deal is with the macro setting on this camera. It focuses only exactly in the middle of the picture frame, which is maddening for someone like me, who likes to offset her subjects according to the rule of thirds. But at last I was able to get some pictures using the macro that were in focus. Then I just cropped them to offset the flowers (and the grasshopper). The last photo is a bit indelicate. Just a heads up.

What sticks

Well, seeds. Seeds stick. This is a picture of my legs covered with grass seeds. I did try to get a picture of the grass stalks that are covered with these little black seeds, but I am still having an amazing amount of difficulty getting this camera to focus on anything in "macro" mode.

And that includes this other picture of a deer. I saw it and took a picture but forgot to take the camera off "macro" mode and so it is pretty fuzzy. Sigh. Oh well. If you squint really hard you can see an orange blur black there in the green. That's the deer. There were several. You'll have to take my word for it.

The seeds stick and sometimes I wear them for hours after I get home because I get distracted by other things, like eating breakfast and watering the garden and stopping sweating. And then I'll have to drive somewhere and it'll be while I'm waiting in line at the checkout counter or maybe while I'm pumping gas or visiting friends that I'll look down and realize my legs are covered with the detritus picked up from walking in the woods. If I walk on the beach I get legs that are covered with tiny shells. My legs are magnets for small things that long to travel. I don't mind.

The quick brown fox(es) that got away

I could kick myself today because the camera needed new batteries, and rather than wait for them to finish charging, I left without it and wouldn't you know, I saw a pair of foxes out in the preserve today! They looked up as Daisy and I were walking towards them and then turned tail and disappeared into the scrub.

There is something very cat-like about a fox, not doggish at all. Are they more closely related to cats? I'll have to look it up and get back to you on it. But the upshot is I didn't get a shot because I didn't have my camera! So, here's a shot of a corn snake that I saw a couple weeks ago. Did you know that they're constrictors? I didn't, until I looked it up to see what kind of snake it was. Isn't it beautiful? The wavy line it makes lying on the ground is typical for them.

Everything looks like a snake...

especially after you've just seen one. Walking in the preserve today I saw a pygmy rattlesnake on the trail. The dog had already gone past it, oblivious, and it was coiled up in a little ball next to a clump of grass. I wanted a picture but was afraid to alert Miss Daisy to its presence by taking too long over it. The result was that I aimed the camera and took a picture but not of the snake, darn it. And of course, every stick that I saw from then on until I got back to the car looked just like a snake to me. Minds are funny things. At least, mine is. Next time, I'll tie the dog up somewhere safe, and go back and get my shot.

Take the side track

I jumped in the car with my husband, Steve, on Memorial Day, ostensibly to go the beach for a couple of hours, but we got sidetracked after we saw a sign pointing to the Guana River State Park & Wildlife Preserve off of County Road 210 just east of the intercoastal waterway. There was a trailhead into the preserve with parking and restrooms and maps and, since we were feeling adventurous, we decided to hike the two mile loop in our flip flops. We did remember our water bottles, in case we got thirsty.

At the half way point in our hike we saw another sign that pointed to a wildlife viewing blind and we could see by the map that it was just a half inch away, so we walked out to it. At the blind we saw a flock of egrets on a pond with another sign (so many signs!) explaining that the water's ph is maintained by trained scientists so that it will be attractive to lots of wildlife. Well, it was attracting egrets anyway. We watched them for a while and then made the slog back to the car and then continued our journey to the beach to soak our feet.

I'd like to go back there one day soon, but with my shoes on.

There's stuff to eat out there

Here's a bowl full of berries, fresh picked this morning. The black berries are just starting to be ripe and you can get a few handfuls without having to venture too far from the path. I don't venture too far from the path because I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt and tennis shoes and this is definitely rattlesnake country. (Staying close to the main path probably doesn't make it any safer, but it feels better in my head, and for me, that's all that matters.) One of these days I may go back out with long pants, shin guards, boots and gloves and bring back enough for a pie. One of these days. Still, it's nice out in the preserve, if you go early enough. The deer flies are getting fierce, but I soak myself in Cutter's and give the dog's back a squirt, and it's enough to fend them off for an hour or so. There aren't too many people out there lately. It's getting hot out now, so we have the place to ourselves, even on the weekends. I've been seeing signs of incipient blueberriness as well, so I have that as a motivator as the hot weather continues. Yum.

I see something wild

My husband, Steve, came with me and the dog yesterday to go walking in the preserve. We speculated about how long it would still be available for walking in, now that Florida has an all-Republican government and there's "no money" for frivolous things, like state parks and wilderness. Better to have it all look familiar and safe. More plazas! All roads must lead to Disney! And then Steve saw an interesting lizard, different than what we get around our house, and later I spotted a great big snake sitting in a dry creek bed, and it cheered us up some. I haven't identified the lizard, but Steve said the snake was a water moccasin. No water there, poor baby. It's been a dry spring.

Update: It's actually a cottonmouth. Steve looked it up.

Day of the grasshoppers

Walking out in the preserve today I noticed all these grasshoppers clinging to grass stalks and the blades on the saw palmetto plants. They sat still very nicely for pictures. I suspect they couldn't move even if they wanted to, it was so cold out there this morning and they were covered with dew. I got to thinking about why they'd hang out like that overnight and thought maybe it had to do with where the sun hits first in the morning. Maybe the sun warms them up more quickly when they're out in the open like that, but then the obvious drawback is you're like breakfast on a stick for the birds.

Opposites attract

I took these on the same morning. I got there early enough to see the moon and stayed late enough to greet the sun. That's pretty magical. The beginning of the walk is spooky and quiet but by the end of it the trees look like they're on fire and all the birds are yakking away. Who knows what they're going on about? 

Transitions

This is how it is walking in the mornings. It's dark at the beginning, and then by the time you come around to where you started, the sun is up and you have a new perspective. You've talked yourself right out of whatever you thought was impossible when you woke up. Of course, it works the other way, too.

Running to keep up

This is progress. At least she's running along with me in this picture and not stopped somewhere behind me, sniffing at deer tracks or looking to see who's catching up. I'm running again, if you can call it that. I imagine that it looks more like shuffling in a semi-upright position. I imagine that if you saw me you'd think, "That poor woman looks like she's in a lot of pain. Why doesn't she stop?" I can't stop. I read an article in my local paper about someone who started running when she was in her sixties and was now a champion at age 93. My husband says she's probably just the only one left alive in her age group. So that just means I have to outlast everyone else to win. I can do that.

Closure…

the principle of. Isn't that what it's called? When the lines don't meet but your mind completes them for you? It wasn't what I was thinking about when I took this picture, but I looked at it again today and realized that it illustrates the principle of closure perfectly. You know the web is there, even though the lines disappear. My life is like this. I can't see my daughter, but I know she's there on the other side of the world. I am part of the web and she's the other side of it, the line that reappears between the branches. I miss her, but I know the sun shines on her the same way that it shines on me, whenever I go walking in the woods.

Tiny moon

I apologize for the dark pictures lately, but it's horsefly season and those buggers chase me right out of the preserve when they're active. I've been getting up and out by 7 in the morning when it's still cool enough that flying pests are still asleep.

Three different days

 This from two days ago. There's something very wonderful about vapor trails in the sky, especially first thing in the morning. All those people going someplace, who knows where? And here we are, me and the dog, seeing the streaks of their passing.

 Early yesterday, I was out looking for wild blackberries to dig up and take home and there's a short cut through this field of grass, all dead now, but it glows orange this time of day, and Daisy is just a ghost walking through it.

These little flowers are so pretty, tiny and delicate, strung with little bits of spider webbing. I can never resist them.

Handlebars--In the Wild!

Big Wheel scat.