Gone To The Beach: natural history

Showing posts with label natural history. Show all posts

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day---to everyone, whether your kids are honoring you or you're remembering your own mom. My mom's been gone for awhile now. I don't think a day has gone by when I don't think of her. I still miss her so much.

I began this blog in her memory, because I missed our letters and shared journals and phone calls. She never ''got into'' computers and the Internet but I like to think she'd enjoy my posts here, if she was able to read them and see my photos. Who knows...maybe she's up there on Heaven's deck, in her shorts and tank top, sharing a beer with my dad and shaking her head at my folly. "I don't need a machine to see you, now do I?"

May's flowering trees always make me think of my parents. My dad planted dogwood trees for my mom when each of us children were born and each year after that, on Mother's Day he'd add a new flowering shrub or tree to our yard. He wasn't being entirely altruistic, he loved his yard and garden and collection of exotic trees and greenery. We moved a few times, so he never ran out of space.

In the Midwest we had apple trees and magnolias, then later in the prairie: white peach trees and Bradford pears, in Cape Cod were azaleas and hydrangeas and so many other beautiful plantings. I hope the trees are still there.

The shadblow is blooming in the marshes verges and on the dunes this week. (beach hawthorn)

And the geese should be out with their babies tomorrow, they always appear on Mother's Day. These are brants, though, not Canadians. Brants nest in the far North, so no babies when Mo and I visited earlier.

So---love and good wishes, to all. Happy Mother's Day, mom.

Mo in the dandelions. Yum.

\What!? I didn't eat it.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Nature Journals

Hi everyone! Foggy here, a day for catching up...

I took some time earlier to update my current journal and to photograph some pages from previous years.

Autumn, to me, is the prime time for watching nature, for collecting red leaves and shiny brown acorns, for watching the evening skies for "V"s of ducks and geese.

When I was a very little girl we lived in a rather rural area, with diverse, beautiful trees and fields, creeks and ancient apple orchards. Wildflowers, mosses, and what we believed were Indian trails through the woods.

In this era of playdates and sports and structured child time, it's hard to picture how simple and quiet our lives were then. My mom, a young woman in her twenties, invented for me the after-school Nature Walk---a way to get us out of the house, my nose out of a book. We'd hike and observe and I learned a lot. It gave me a lifelong interest in natural surroundings.

My mother said the orchards were planted by Johnny Appleseed! And that fairies (Tinkerbell!?) dwelled in the mossy gnarled roots. One snowy moonlit night she bundled us up and took me out to look for animals tracks in the snow: Look! Mouse tracks! I was enchanted.

I was given my first nature guide, a Golden Guide bird book, for I think my 5th birthday. It still sits with the rest of my collection, now heavily attuned to beach and seashore, on its special shelf. A birthday wish inside, in my mom's handwriting.....

I didn't begin doing my journals til I was a young mom myself, bored with just siting on the beach with my toddlers, I wanted them to see and enjoy what creatures and plants were here with us.

I began my watercolor books at that time.

I also sometimes collect and press flowers and plants---an entry can be as simple as a pressed pansy. This deep purple baby was planted Fall of 2012; it survived a hurricane, an icy winter, and went on to reseed itself at the base of one of my palm trees. I brought it inside for the winter, and pressed just one flower, to note its hardiness.

The current book is supposed to be seaweeds.

I collected them last summer (2012) and hoped they'd be well dried by now. Ooops. I discovered that seaweeds, mostly saltwater, must be pressed on their permanent page. The paper towels I'd used had fused to the wet plants, rendering them useless.
[leaves are easier!]

Maybe I should go rescue that Yellow Pages I just put out in the recycle bin? Hmmmm.

click on photos to enlarge/ or for slideshow.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Textures of Autumn

October....

Texture...shadow, silence, emptiness. These are the ''colors'' of autumn at the beach....

We have few trees to ''show color''....just the brilliant red Virginia creeper and poison ivy.

Yellow goldenrod.

Blue, blue sky.

In search of new photo shoot locales, I went today to this deserted cabana club near my home. The small spaces are rented to locals only, by lottery, and are expensive, considering the size! [thousands of dollars]. You can see how well kept they are.

The rows of little huts have showers and maybe a toilet, I'm not sure, and room for a family's beach junk; the grill and the cooler, beach chairs, a place to change clothes. Electricity so dad can watch the game on TV.

On a summer afternoon these cabanas teem with activity...

Now they stand in lonely rows.

Waiting for next summer...

The dunes were as empty as the cabanas...just me and the tiny migrant birds....

Deep shadows, brilliant October sun...

wild mushrooms...quite large!

Mature, protected dunes with dense growth of stunted black pine, juniper, bayberry, spruce..mounds of dusty miller and heather, red creeper vines and bittersweet berries...