Category: photography

Nature is weird

New hydrangea on the left, older “parent” on the right. June 2024.

A year ago our only ‘normal’ hydrangea–we have an oak-leaf hydrangea–popped out a volunteer shoot promising to be a new plant. A colony if you will. This year it bloomed. It did not bloom like the parent. Not even close. At first, I thought, “well, they’re a little more pink-tinged than the parent, but the parent has pink edges….” but look at this. They aren’t even close. Nature is wonderful, is it not?

An old man looks back

Things move a bit more slowly now….June 8 2024

A few hours ago I surpassed seven decades upon the planet. My first memories occur somewhere around three to four years of age; make that six and a half decades of consciousness. I rode tricycles and bicycles with playing cards clothes-pinned into the spokes for noise. I saw the first television come into our house, the advent of easily available color TV’s, and the beginnings of data processing centers (long before personal computers became a thing). I celebrated the first humans going into space. I cowered under my desk as I practiced “what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.”

I entered my teens as we kicked off the Summer of Love (“we” being a rather generous term for my inclusion in it). I protested the Vietnam War in a lukewarm manner. I wore strange clothes, even considering what teens normally do.

I campaigned with my father in 1960 for presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. I voted for the first time in 1972 for George McGovern. I watched as Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. (Imagine that, Bill. Donald.) I jump aboard the personal computing “thing” in 1982 and never looked back. I became a newshound; a teacher; a cog in corporate America; a consulting ‘expert’; and a retired, lazy bum.

So what? Every single person born before 1960 can pretty much say the same. It’s because looking back shocks one. My grandparents saw the advent of cars which radically changed society, and they knew grandparents or great-grandparents which served in America’s Civil War. My parents watched as first radio and then TV made changes almost as radical. And those of us of a certain age have witnessed computers do the same as the automobile. I cannot convey the visceral feeling of being the head of this time-worm, with a tail stretching back to days which did not know any color of T-shirt but white, which never saw a man wear hair which touched or covered his ears, which had just completed two significant wars in a little over 15 years.

You’ll have to experience it yourself. It’s a trip.

Hello in there: A rambling discourse

Sometimes I feel like a baby spider floating through the air on my gossamer web-string, wondering when this little journey will end, where it will deposit me, and in general, what does the near future hold. I’m in one of those in-between times right now. I would like to tie this up neatly by saying, “Well! I’m approaching my 70th birthday this weekend, and that explains it! Ipso facto, easy-peasy, make no buts about it.” It’s not so. I’ve never lost the summer vacation feeling we all used to get at the end of May as we eagerly anticipated the end of another school year and the beginning of a responsibility-less (or less responsibility) summer. I had barely joined the workforce at the beginning of 1978 then I returned to college in September 1981. From then until 1992 I taught in public schools–summers off! After taking a year off, working the summer of 1993 started my final move, this time to a permanent career in pharmaceutical manufacturing. But…my antsy ways caused me to move cross-country in May 1997, and we moved to a new house in May of 1998, and we moved to New York in May 2001. In May 2003 my job situation changed markedly and by August I started looking for something new. Cutting to the chase: I started many of my dozen or so consultant contracts in May, plus or minus a month. Then there’s our society’s natural predilection to mark the end of May as summer, and the end of our church choir season, and the beginning of really warm weather, and the fact I’ve always loved warm weather, and…and….and…it all seems tied up with my birthday in the beginning of June.

Turtle cannibalism

My wife and I came across an odd sight this morning. The photo below, though taken in poor lighting and into murky water, shows a snapping turtle feeding on something.

Snapping turtle eating….a turtle? Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.

I’m pretty sure that’s a snapping turtle. I estimated the shell at around 15 inches lengthwise, maybe 18. Snappers average 10-18 inches, so that’s the right ballpark. It took awhile to make out what was going on until I realized it was feeding, and the object of its meal-affection appeared to be an upside down turtle of pretty good size itself. They are omnivores and eat carrion.

Other sights during our walk around Lake Lynn:

One of two geese of this species we see frequently. This one stands one-legged up the slope from the lake near an apartment in the many buildings which ring the lake. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.
The Lake Lynn southern parking lot has a small butterfly/pollinator bed including these Bachelor Buttons. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.
In the butterfly/pollinator garden Black-eyed Susans predominate. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.

Coming home we remarked that our own surprising volunteer Black-eyed Susan plants were starting to look pretty good:

Or maybe this isn’t a Black-eyed Susan…or the others aren’t? June 2024.

Our hydrangea plant continues to weird us out by changing color just a bit every year, getting more and more pink:

Pretty sure I shared one like this last year. The blue stamen/pistils are really something. June 2024.

And this year the main hydrangea bush’s outlier, a new plant coming up beside it and presumably from the same root system, shows a new color scheme altogether, seeming to lean in to the color scheme of its parent:

New hydrangea. June 2024.

What I’m brooding on…

These lyrics by John Prine in “Hello In There” haunted me in the 1970s and do so more the older I get. “Happy” Monday to you all.

"Hello In There"

We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it's been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don't know what for,
Don't matter anymore.

You know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder every day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there. Hello."

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeat itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen.
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if he asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? 
Nothing much to do."

You know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder every day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there. Hello."

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there. Hello."