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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Still-life with damselfly, greenbrier, black walnut



Much better bigger -- please do click on the image.

For those who'd like to be formally introduced:
Damselfly = Enallagma sp. (Not sure whether Novaehispaniae or not)
Greenbrier = Smilax bon-nox
Pecan = Carya illinoensis

Well, oops!

My hiking buddy told me "those aren't pecan shells, those are black walnut shells."
So the third formal introduction is:
Black walnut = Juglans nigra

5 comments:

chris miller said...

You really love Texas, don't you ?

The hills, streams, shopping malls, gun shops, native plants, birds, insects and god save us, even the Texans (especially if they hang out in seedy bars)

I admit it -- I'm a Yankee -- and the whole place frightens me.

But I have crossed the border over into Arkansas -- and by golly, I had a great time.

BTW - the photo was another great painting - though I can't recognize the school -- Japanese, I suppose, 18th C. ?

Karen McL said...

Oh...yes the little Dragon FLY fairly Jumps out an the acorns look like they spill from the cracks.

Very nice. :-)

Marly Youmans said...

That Chris... I just love the back of that man's head (the ornery brain part.)

One of the beautiful things I remember from childhood was a much-weathered, lichenous, and rutted table next to a pump and fig tree where we used to eat boiled peanuts and watermelon.

Lori Witzel said...

At last, a quiet moment -- one that didn't need me dashing off to the back of beyond to find it!

Chris: I've lived here for a mere 27 or so years. I was born in Brooklyn NY, raised in the Hudson River valley, went to high school and college in Arizona (Central and Northern AZ), worked for a couple of years in Manhattan...I do love Central Texas. But I suspect I'm the kind of person who just gets deep into a place, no matter what place. (And I agree, I think Japanese 18th C., were the artist to have had a dream of prairie sod-busters and cedar-choppers.)

Karen: Big smile! As I was setting the camera's focus and doing my photo-tai-chi (the bendy knees and back, to get the right composition) I was just hoping that lil' damselfly would not move. And it didn't.

Marly: Ditto -- and that darn avatar of his is worse than a bandit's mask!

I think my deep affection for these out-of-the-way places goes to my childhood wandering through the southern part of the Hudson River valley. Similar landscape (only moist, rich, somewhat acid soil -- different biome entirely of course) and I would have been happy to play in the woods all day, every day.

Larry said...

A very nice shot, Lori, aided by those mysterious Photo Gods who cause a subject to pause just long enough. The sharply-cut shadow mirroring the damsel-fly just makes the photo work, with the scattered walnut shells (a squirrel's work, no doubt) adding just a bit of local atmosphere.