Intimate Landscapes - April 2016

I skipped February and March for an intimate landscapes post (after Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book available online here) but am starting them again this month.

In the roots and moss on a path in Centennial Park – I saw a parallel to crossroads on a map or visualized a decision at the fork of a road that has been taken by others but not enough to wear away the moss.

Low growth thrives at the base of a tree and surrounds a stump. A Jack-in-the-Pulpit is blooming there too.

The skunk cabbage surrounds the trees along a now hidden stream and the ferns are filling in the remaining spaces under the trees.

The thick oxalis almost overwhelms the cairns when the sun is shining (the plant’s flowers close up at night and cloudy days). Other plants cover other items with their foliage. The lighter green in the background will be pink lilies later in the summer.

Here an old stump provides a dark backdrop to the pink and yellow of spring flowers.

Intimate Landscapes – January 2016

This is the fourth month for my Intimate Landscapes series (after reading Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book (available online here)) featuring images from January that are: smaller scale but not macro, multiple species, and artsy.

There is only one picture from Maryland this month – the frozen edge of a stream with pebbles showing, dark leaves caught on the surface, green and brown plants around the edge.

All the other images are from Arizona this month…I’ve saving the wintery ones for February since I had so much to share from Arizona. The colors are often subdued- the greens of saguaro and desert brush, the browns of twists of dead wood and occasional water, the whites of rocks.

And then there are sudden bursts of color that draw the eye – oranges…and yellows.

I made a slide show of the other intimate landscapes that appealed to be in Tucson – a vine growing on a purple wall, the color variation in prickly pear, a lone flower in front of a white wall, a very small cactus surrounded by black rocks and fallen leaves from its nurse tree that shades it during the hottest part of the summer, small saguaro getting big enough to show among the palo verde and cholla, groupings of cactus with colorful spines, young saguaros lined up in rows between lighter leaved plants and yellow flowers with palo verde in the background….such are the intimate landscapes around Tucson.