Whether it's because of weeks of record heat, or due to one of the worst droughts in decades—there's a brilliant patch of yellow-gold gleaming amid the clump of green water willow upstream. The color appeared about the first of the month and has been spreading daily. I find it both eye-catching and unsettling.
Could this, in fact, be a precursor to autumn?
More to the point, isn't this way too early, with July not yet ended, to ruminate on such dubious thoughts?
Maybe. On the one hand, I've had enough of this baking and thirsting to do me for a lifetime. I don't like hot weather—and I'm especially not thrilled to be sweltering day and night for weeks on end. I don't enjoy observing flowers and shrubs wither and succumbed, or the lawn turn to bedstraw. And I truly hate seeing my beloved river so desperately shriveled—like watching an old friend with a fatal disease waste away.
Yet neither do I like the notion that another summer is winding down. While summer is my least favorite of the seasons, intimations of its approaching boundary whispers a soft reminder of time's relentless passage, a subtle evocation of sand pouring through an hourglass. Which prompts the sagacious afterthought that the span of a man—like that of a season—is ultimately finite.
Meanwhile, the golden patch grows…and amid my watching, I wonder.
10 comments:
I remember seeing that when I was a lot younger. It is a vine of some sort and spreads rapidly. Sorry that I can't remember the name of it.
It is so beautiful - what is it exactly?
Helen…
You must be thinking of a different plant. This one, American water willow (Justicia americana), grows in stream shallows, and alongside such waterways, on bank edges, gravel or sandy-rock bars, mud flats, etc. Up to maybe 2 feet tall—though usually less—it has an upright stem and typical narrow willow leaves off-shooting. The flowers, which bloom here from May through September, are very orchid-like, white with purple throats. While it does form very dense stands, it isn't what I'd call viny. Cabbage white butterflies love it.
Weaver…
I guess my comment to Helen (above) pretty much answers your "what is it?" It is NOT a true willow, that is a member of the salix genus. But the leaves sure look like most willow leaves. It's quite common on streams all over this part of the country. Probably the most common stream-bordering or shallow-water plant you see—sometimes growing in huge, almost continuous stands. The flowers are really quite pretty. I'll have to see about making a shot and posting. And in the fall, the plants turn this almost glowing golden-yellow…as you can see from the photo I made a couple of evenings ago.
Interestingly, and for whatever reason, of all the clumps visible from here up and down stream, this is the only one yet showing color.
HI GRIZZ - Autumnm, my favorite time iof year, and my Mom's too. She loved the colors, golds and oranges, browns and burgandy, spice and pumpkins and cool nights. I will miss her as the seasons change - our shared delight forever in my heart.
Love to you
Gail
peace.....
Gail…
I love autumn, too…though I'm not ready for it to begin just yet. Not that I haven't had my fill of hot weather! Yet I also don't feel like I've had much of a summer—maybe because winter was too warm and then it was almost impossible to say when spring/summer began. Perhaps way back in March, or those 80-degree days of April. Anyway, I feel rather cheated by the whole business.
Bust, alas, seasons and lives change. Time is an ever-running river.
This is a lovely photo, Grizz, capturing a moment that has never been before and will never come again. Who knows whether it is a precursor of autumn? At my age, everything is beginning to feel like a precursor of autumn. In truth, however, as you recognize, these brushstrokes of nature are always occurring in the Infinite, that mysterious place in which the past, the present, and future intersect. We need only be there for the moment, as indeed you were.
George…
Where formerly it was merely something I recognized, as I grow older I now find a compelling appeal in seeking to dissect and understand the milieu of a moment. To enter time as I would a room and check out the furniture, rugs on the floor, lamps, pictures, books on shelves. To know what makes this moment given to me different…because I know always it is simultaneously making me different. And because I also know my moment apportion, though seemingly as vast and uncountable as grains of sand on a beach, are ultimately finite—and therefore piercingly important. Perhaps this is, too, in some way, why we both make our photos, read poems, why I write and you paint—to discern the message and wisdom within our moments.
lovely photo electric light-summer does in my eyes have too much green on green on green.
AfromTO…
Let me preface my reply by stating emphatically, from an Irishman's point of view, too much green is categorically impossible.
I will, however, allow to the fact that verdant summer adds its green shift into everything, including light. A fact which I have to deal with when processing my images. Believe it or not, I've removed a lot of the green shift from this photo.
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