Once I finished posting yesterday, true to form - and your expectations, no doubt - I headed back outside, camera in hand. There were still raindrops hanging under the cranberries and covering many of the garden blossoms. And yes, I carried the dog out to the middle of the yard and set her down to finally do her thing. Since we were near the grape arbor, I decided to shoot that first, and made a discovery. The bronzing leaves were being attacked by Japanese beetles, turning each into dying lace almost matching their own colors. Single leaves had half a dozen of the beautiful pests on them, others one or two. I had seen one here and there throughout the yard this summer, but never anything like this. Seems it's mating season.
Once done in the yard, I had another errand to run, and just because, took the camera along. I needed to cut some cattails, both for myself and for a couple other people. One good thing about cutting cattails in a drought year, you can easily find dry spots to walk into the middle of a roadside patch, not risking muddy shoes. While they are visible all along highways out here, I refuse to stop along anything but low traffic country roads. The drivers along Highway 8 are insane! Plus, the shoulders are narrow. I found myself a good spot a few miles out of the next town over, and clippers in hand, waded in. As I emerged with two handfuls for the car, I noted around the edges of the marsh that the cattails are already starting to fuzz out. Not just this marsh either. I had certainly put this off till the last minute!
Taking a few different roads back home, I started noting what was blooming now along the roadsides, how colors and species were changing from my last outing, the morning of the fog. Field corn was fully tassled, goldenrod shouted for attention from the ditches. Though early August, fall was definitely arriving. I started getting acutely nostalgic. I miss Minnesota autumns. The Sonoran Desert doesn't have them. There is something special about the smell of the vegetation after the first hard frost that I miss, even better than a fresh cut hayfield or mown lawn, though they all signal dying vegetation. That late fall air signals an end to mosquitoes, changing colors in a palette that varies by the day, the return of lower humidity and bluer skies, and of course the beginning of the next school year. Every year I'd mark my birthday with the arrival of blue asters and red sumac. With all that hitting me, I changed purpose from heading home to driving around looking for more roadside things to shoot.
Last night's storm had cleared the air somewhat, leaving clouds in blue-ish skies, and there was finally a reason to head out to Crex for that last trip I'd promised myself. After a quick run to Walmart with Steve for milk and prescriptions, I headed north.
Do you know what the first red sumac leaves along a busy highway, a turtle, a doe, a large flying hawk, a sandhill crane in the road, five turkeys on a fallen tree along the highway, and hundreds of butterflies have in common? I saw every one of them and never got a shot. On the other hand, there were familiar landmarks with different colors and vegatation, new water levels giving different reflections, and a plethora of roadside flowers attracting those butterflies. A family of trumpeter swans obligingly swam within camera range, and even periodically managed to emerge from between the tall grasses in the foreground which seemed to always block their heads by the time the camera was ready. A fellow photographer pulled up behind me for the trumpeters, prompting a conversation based from his view of my license plate on the unlikely coincidence of two people from the Phoenix area (Scottsdale vs. Sun City) now back in Minnesota for the summer, and out in Wisconsin at the same time enjoying Crex. He actually knew where "good old Shafer" was, and I knew his Hopkins high school had two athletes in the Olympics right now. I did see his car later, emerging from the parking area I was entering near an osprey nest with one youngster still patiently waiting for its parents to bring its next meal.
What I thought was a distant sandhill crane in grey form turned out, upon enlargement of the shot back home, to be a blue heron. A different, actual sandhill, strode across the road as I made a turn before disappearing into the tall grasses on the other side. My now very buggy windshield prevented a shot straight on, and the grasses hid most of it from view through the open window, but it was there.
Besides all those butterflies I didn't shoot, one obligingly visited a large swath of purple liatris stalks right where I could park and roll down the driver side window for a series of shots. This one was a dark swallowtail with yellowish-tan spots, the mirror opposite of the tiger swallowtail visiting my tiger lilies a few days earlier, just a short visit, no time to get a camera so just enjoy. The butterfly I did shoot was much the worse for wear, missing one wing "tail," likely damage from the storm or similar buffeting since traffic in Crex is slow.
On my way out, I noticed two cars stopped along the road, one fellow out with his camera pointed down at the edge of the road. This was a monster camera, what looked to be an 18' long barrel lens with a saucer-wide end. I figure ten pounds? What would he be finding standing in place long enough to make all that work worth while? And the other car to stop and watch? I paused a bit as I passed, partly to avoid bothering whatever he was shooting, but mostly to figure out what the fuss was about. It was an orange butterfly, smaller than a monarch and fairly plain.
I had to chuckle as I drove on. Not only did I have a bunch of butterfly shots of my own, with my little lightweight camera, never having to get out of the car, but I'd just spent five minutes about a quarter mile away around another bend, shooting the same dead tree snag I'd shot earlier in the day from the opposite side just because of its unusual form, but this time, from about 20 feet away, I got seven shots of the bald eagle sitting on the top of it!
By the way, his head feathers looked like he'd had a bit of a rough go in the previous evening's storm as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment