Adam Graham Photography

I love the way that the dried up leaves and stem look like wrought iron. Well, at least they do to me.

This is a slight re-edit of a photo I took back in July. I love how with digital photography it makes it easier to revisit older images and work at improving them.

This was taken this morning on my Utata Thursday Walk. It’s a beautiful morning here. I found the decaying remains of a fallen building. It’s been down for a long time. The rotting wood has already mostly been swallowed by the ground and plants. It’s a quiet and peaceful place. It’s also a dangerous place with ankle-breaking holes in the ground made by the overlapping wood and rusty nails everywhere. I had to perch over one of these holes, moving a piece of wood to cover some broken glass, in order to kneel down and capture this little dew-soaked feather.

On the Environment Canada forecast for today, it says nothing of sun or cloud. Just ‘Smoke’. It is warm and almost sunny, but it is really hazy. Apparently what’s bad for asthmatics can be good for photographers because the light this morning, filtering through all those particulates, was perfectly soft and warm. It was a great morning for shooting around the garden. I think I might hit the beach tonight for sunset. And with the earlier sunsets as the end of summer fast approaches, I can still get home in time for the Simpsons.

Here are a few interesting excerpts from the Wikipedia article about this plant:

” Wild carrot, or Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, . . . “

“Very similar in appearance to the deadly poison hemlock”

“Like the cultivated carrot, the wild carrot root is edible while young, but quickly becomes too woody to consume.”

“A teaspoon of crushed seeds has long been used as a form of natural birth control - its use for this purpose was first described by Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago.”

“The leaves of the wild carrot can be a skin irritant, so caution should also be used when handling the plant.”

“. . . it is often known as “Queen Anne’s lace”. It is so called because the flower resembles lace; the red flower in the center represents a blood droplet where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace.”

I’m actually just kind of assuming that this is really Queen Anne’s Lace because that’s what my mom always referred to it as. Now I learn that it may be poison hemlock. A  quick Google Images search leads me to believe that it is edible rather than poisonous, but I don’t plan on taking the chance anytime soon. I do find it really interesting though how much knowledge of plant uses has been lost. When my grandmother was visiting us a couple of weeks ago, she pointed out some flowers that her mother used to use to make a tea that helped get rid of colds. The kids would go gather it in summer and it would be hung to dry until winter brought on stuffed up noses and sore throats.

I think this photo reflects the mood that watching the sun go down put me in last night. I went to take pictures but ended up mostly just sitting on the ocean floor watching the sun descend toward the water. It was really quiet and peaceful. The simplicity of this shot sums up fairly well the experience.

On the way back I managed to find a handful of blackberries despite the failing light. Mmmmmm.

I was blown away yesterday by walking through rows of fruit trees that are now absolutely covered in fruit. Such life and beauty. The majority of the farm is apples, but there are also pears, grapes, kiwi, peaches, plums, and nectarines. We have enough apples and pears now to last us quite a while. Mmmm, apple crisp. I didn’t have my camera with me to take pictures while there but these are a couple pics of some of the pears we brought home. I’d love to get back there some day to wander around, taking pictures. Such an amazing place.

This is a photo of work that I didn’t do in the garden this summer. I started off well, edging all the gardens, weeding one of the small sections. But then other aspects of life kind of got in the way. Oh well, even though unweeded, our garden still gave us lovely flowers, luscious green peaceful things to look at, and tasty raspberries and blackberries. And without failure throughout the year, I wouldn’t have anything to resolve when New Year’s Eve rolls around.