Autumn Perspectives | Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale

Close to the Ground

The weekly photo challenge on WordPress for the week is : Scale (my second try).. “Experiment with placement and scale to show how big (or small) you can feel in a photo.” I decided to do this challenge again, photographing two fallen leaves, dropped by the wind on edge in the grass. (My first response to this challenge can be found here on my The Art of Disorder blog.)

There are other photographs in this series:

Apartness

Two, Solitary

A Spread of Leaves

Leaves on Grass

Against the Wall

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End of a weekend

Plants

Cotoneaster Fruit

Coreopsis Seed Pods

California Poppy

Not Plants

The Meeting of the Murder

Morning Coffee Break

Crows in Flight

Colors

Plants in the Garden

Blue Wild Flax

Fallen Leaves (beneath the cotoneasters)

Beginning of October

Autum Flowers, Fruit and Leaves

Autumn Fruit and Leave

Cotoneaster Fruit

Black-Eyed Susans

Around the Yard

Leaf and Cobwebs

Autumn Refuse

Unwanted Vines

Shade and Sun

Just for Fun

Siberian Wallflowers

Out of the oven: Baked Chicken Breasts

The chicken breast (see previous post) is quite tasty.

Just Out of the Oven

Not feeling inventive, this morning, I believe that I will have cold chicken for breakfast.

Supper is in the oven: Baked Chicken Breasts

Our butcher posted his weekly specials, this week, on his web page. We had been forgetting to stop at that store, somehow, without specials posted, even though we did not always take advantage of them. I had been wanting to bake chicken breasts, and that was one of the three specials, so we stopped by the shop before Al went off to his volunteer work, this afternoon.

With two pounds of meat, I washed and dried the chicken breasts, rubbed them lightly with olive oil, added seasoning to top and bottom (crushed peppercorns, sea salt, and cumin), and put the baking dish into the oven for forty minutes at 350°F. Twenty minutes to go!

The strong winds, combined with heavy rain, this morning, pretty much beat down and soaked the plants in the backyard wildflower garden. The ornamental clover is still doing well, and there are some Black-eyed Susan and Siberian Wallflower plants that still have blooms, but that’s about it. The blue wild flax … may dry out. If not, I will be taking photographs of fallen leaves until the snow flies.

Clover and Raindrops

Black Eyed Susans

Leaves, Not Drifting

Wallflowers

In this morning’s rain, I saw two Northern Flickers hunting out bugs in the front yard. I’m glad that they are still around. I don’t imagine that the raptors do much hunting in the midst of thunderstorms or torrential downpours. (See Hunting Circles for background.)

Pictures of September’s Last Days

A flight of fancy …

Autumn’s Garden
(False Colors)

… and some favorite photographs from September 28, 29 and 30.

Black-eyed Susan with Painted Lady

Flower and Seed Pod

Upper and Lower Flowers

I am now in the last week of the four-week “Introduction to Japanese Poetry” workshop that I’d signed up for in at the beginning of August. This week I am to write tanka every day and read essays that I am finding quite helpful in understanding the underlying rationale (?). My understanding of haiku has changed a lot during the course of the workshop, also. Very happy that I signed up for it, and I will have a lot to carry forward after the workshop ends.
I find that my joy in writing poetry is expanding.

These weeks have been, as I had expected, quite difficult to get through. My youngest sister died on September 30 in 2014, and the anniversary of her memorial service is Tuesday. Last year, these two weeks included my mother’s transition from the family home to hospital and when a bed became available, transfer to a care facility under hospice care. The feeling of loss contests with my joy in their present joy. And yet it’s not the one against the other, but both emotions, each a legitimate recognition of reality, coexist. Life’s texture becomes deeper, more intricate. Things are settling inside me. I think that’s a good thing.

Leaf and Flower

Tree Leaf Against Fence

Leaves in Grass

Wild Flax Leaves and Flowers

Shadows of Leaves

autumn leaves fall
blown against the fence by strong winds
sharp raindrops turn to icy snow

Written in response to WP Daily Post Prompt: Leaf.

Photos and verse, Copyright © 2017, September, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.
All rights reserved.

Tuesday…

Wild Flax Art

Clover and Fallen Leaf

Dandelion

There was a strong wind throughout most of the day, but tonight the thunderstorms and tornado watches finally arrived. Very tired. Tiring day, even with this evening’s nap.

storm cells flood the valley
ahead of wild winds, bending trees—
mist, fine-sifted rain, welcome

Tomorrow, the weather should be calmer, but I will miss the rain on the grass, the fine mist on the spider’s web in the taller grass.

Wet Spider’s Web

Middle of the night

I woke up from a sound sleep, an hour or so ago, with a dream lingering in my mind. It was about my dying, alone, and breaking my promise to the dogs that I would not ever leave them. One wonders where the dreams originate. Which might be significant, and which are simply twitches from the subconscious as it rolls over in its sleep.

Taking a Nap

Sound Asleep

Blue wild flax, work day

In the midst of the day’s work on the workshop in the back yard, I took out some time to play with the dogs and take photographs in the (now fading) wildflower garden. The night temperatures are pretty low, and there’s been relatively little rain. Rain and thunderstorms figure in the forecast quite often, but actual storms and precipitation just aren’t making it to our town very often.

Thaddeus, paying attention

Only two more boards of siding to put up on Friday

Charlie, cricket hunting

I spent a lot of the day at the top of a tall ladder. There was wind, and so I have ended up with a sinus headache. The hot tea will take effect, soon, and I’ll be able to get back to sleep. (That is, soon after I heat the water and steep the tea.)

The first week of my four-week poetry workshop approaches, and I have to decide which of the haiku I’ve written, I should send to the instructor. Between my aunt Marion’s funeral and burial on Monday and acting as carpenter’s assistant, the week has been quite scattered. This coming week, I have to go in for a blood panel, and then an appointment with my doctor. Nine-month check-up on the progress with the type 2 diabetes. One needs the lab results to know for certain, but I think it’s going great.

Also, I am supposed to make appointments with eye and foot doctors. I am not ready for any new adventures, right now, and so I am not making those appointments yet. The past twelve months have held quite enough events as it is.

Now that Mother is no longer acting as gate-keeper for contacts with the broader family on my father’s side, I have gotten a couple of email addresses. I’ve gotten a response to the one email I sent out, this week, and a new-to-me cousin on the west coast is favorable to the notion of making and maintaining contact. By token of which, we are now “Friends” on Facebook. I still don’t have emails for the cousins that I met at the funeral on Monday. Hopefully, information on those will be forthcoming. Two of them are people that I met in 1969, when I stayed with the family for a week, and I also met the widow of the third cousin and their offspring, Monday. Lovely people!