Nevermore

Corvidae are pointellism-resitant

I posted this shot, unaltered, earlier, somewhere. That day, a family of crows were pecking at the Virginia piedmont clay, reddening their beaks toward some unkown end. Cranking up the saturation on this shot makes it both more magical and real. I like the way the crow holds it's form while the leaves blottify. The leaves come and go, but the crow sticks around, her young and then his perching and pecking through woods dancing from growth to decay and back.

Ravens don't like having their photos taken, so I got no nevermore. The evermore of the common crow is enough for a non-poet, dirt-digger, woods-walker.

Blue Ridge: Distant

From Spy Rock, on a clear and slightly hazy day.

Same shot, blued up a bit.

Blue to da max.

Blue Ridge: Close

Beyond time to plant corn, according to oak leaves larger than mouse ears.

The second week of April in the Blue Ridge mountains in this wild year of Winter-straight-to-Summer, buds responded to the 40's to 90's weather by exploding. I walked through woods in their last gasp of long visibility, canopy emerging.

And flowers, too. Roadside redbuds blossoming ahead of their understory kin. Other flowers I do not know on branches above the fading daffodils strewn in the woods.

Meanwhile, the less glamorous trees flicked a fleeting beauty, befire getting on with their biomassing.

 And their Virginia creeping.

Meanwhile, in civilized clearings of the foothills, imported Asian magnolias danced, tossing off petals into the heated air.

Flowers and leaves battled it out to adorn the water color sky.

The tulip poplar began it's year of display.

A grave-side hawthorn stood guard, stark against the sky in these days before flower and foliage soften its profile.

The orchard trees beckoned bees.

And ornamentals let it be.

Belle blossoms pealed.

Buckeye foliage unfurled.

And sumacs shouldered their way in.