For my family in California: this is what I woke up to this morning!
Category Archives: Nature
Weekly Photo Challenge: The Magic of Light
Light is magic. I’m enjoying watching the light, from sun up to sun down, at my new home in the country. Foggy dawn changes…
…to afternoon gold…
…to evening moonrise.
Then there are the more nuanced fluctuations of light dancing off cold and warm surfaces and reflective crystals.
Isn’t that what photography is all about? The Magic of Light!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Local
What a coincidence! Here I am packing up my home and home business and getting ready to move to the place where I have a part-time job with a Conservation Foundation. Why? So that I can live locally with the land that I’m working to conserve. And this week’s word is LOCAL.
Living where you work, working where you live, eating what grows on the land where you live, using your energy to shape your life — not extravagantly, not wastefully, but sustainably — is important to me. I think it makes good, common sense. So, here’s a gallery of my office, my new home, and the surrounding area that’s in the land trust.
The Office
Office Parking lot
Prairie and kame
Ski Fox Hill Kame
My driveway
My new garage
Local
Weekly Photo Challenge: Water, Water, Everywhere
“Death Valley is all about water.” So we were told by Jay Snow, the National Park Service ranger, an Okie character with an over-the-top presentation. It’s the lowest point in the country, parts of it falling below sea-level. It would make sense that gravity would bring a lot of water to that place. And it does. It’s just below the surface of the salt flat. Fascinating! Water does not behave in ways we often assume it will. It remains mysterious, a shape-shifter. It goes from warm color droplets…
…to sharp-angled crystals…
…it will eventually dissolve and transform even rock, paper, or scissors.
Water is life, practically the very definition of it. What would we “dew” without it?
It may threaten to destroy us; at the same time, we can’t live without it.
For all of these reasons, H2O commands awe, wonder, reverence. We ought to treat it with a great deal of respect and not tamper with it in its natural state unadvisedly or lightly.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Precious Few
“After a ten-fold drop in the population of the eastern monarch butterfly population over the last decade, a 2016 study predicted an 11%–57% probability that this population will go quasi-extinct over the next 20 years.” Wikipedia
Monarch butterflies used to be so plentiful. I would see them as a child living in the Midwest and study the way they emerge from their chrysalis in school. The Fall breeze was always full of milkweed seeds floating by. Their habitat was ubiquitous – all that open field land hosted several species of milkweed, the Butterfly Plant. When we moved to California where I went to High School, I would see Monarchs by the thousands at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz hanging in great clusters on the eucalyptus trees. Then I moved back to the Midwest and noticed how quickly all that open field land, the prairies, was being developed into shopping malls, parking lots and subdivisions. Here in Milwaukee, we had a Monarch Trail on the County Grounds where there was about 350 acres of open land. Then the city decided to put in a “research park” – meaning technical buildings and apartments – and reduced the Monarch habitat to 11 acres adjacent to the interstate that’s been under construction for 2 years…so far. Once a common insect, the Monarch Butterfly is becoming increasingly rare on the landscape. The life of this wonder includes the amazing feat of migration, which is also being threatened by climate change.
The age of Kings is just about over, as the modern world encroaches more and more on his kingdom. I found this one at George W. Mead State Wildlife Area during the weekend of Independence Day.
I wish you a long life and numerous progeny, Little Prince.
Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Details
I’m with Jen. I love Nature in intimate detail. So much beauty! You have to slow down to find treasures under a leaf…
…or on top of a flower.
When you take your time to look at details, you can change perspective and admire Nature from different angles.
Awareness leads to appreciation. The world is fascinatingly intricate and beautiful.
Soon appreciation becomes an attitude. You see everything for its intrinsic beauty. 
Eventually, this attitude of wonder and respect gets converted to action.
May we all act peacefully and do no harm. 
Weekly Photo Challenge: Dangerous Curves
The environmentalist in me immediately thought of the graph of carbon emissions from “An Inconvenient Truth” with Al Gore up on a scaffolding trying to get across the frightening point of our increasing threat to our planet. But I don’t have a photo of that. I do have symbols of how man-made things are eclipsing the natural. I have playground curves with a very small moon…
and outdoor art thrown up against the sky…
and wheels, which have dominated the environment for about a thousand years now.
Finally, I have a symbol of Natural grace, curvy and sharp and wild. A yucca plant.
I think the most dangerous curves are the ones we humans impose.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Pure, Pristine Wilderness
Untouched, virgin wilderness is perhaps an impossibility on Earth these days. Are there any places that haven’t been touched with acid rain, air pollution or light pollution? Not likely, even if they have never been trammelled by human footsteps. Still, wilderness is an idea worth supporting and fighting for. Pure may only exist in our imagination, but it can have an impact there. What would the silence of machines, 
the darkness of the night sky,
the solitude of a forest mean to you?
Pure delight or pure dread?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Spare Me!
“…Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these, the least of my Brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Here’s an opportunity for some deep questions: Who are “the least”? Who are “Brethren”? How do you treat them? And who is “Me”? There can be many answers to these questions, and they all help us to understand what is meant by kindness and mercy. At this stage in my life, I am trying to expand my concepts of Brethren and Me, to be more inclusive, more at One with all kinds of beings. Here are some of my new friends:
Spare
Lilac season
There is a fragrance that stays in your memory if you live in the Midwest. When late May comes around, it awakens on the warm breezes and carries pure, sweet delight to every inhaled breath. Yes, it’s here. Lilac season!
scillagrace 