marycatelli | Entries tagged with nature

The honking comes first, though muffled by height. Geese fly across the evening sky. Two pairs are flying before the bulk of the skein, each of them flying as if the two were part of a V, but not even near each other. Behind, the geese shift and shuffling, for a time forming a line of birds flying in a file, side by side, but they sort themselves out, and even the pairs join up to form a single lengthy line. Then they file into the sunset sky, and they are dark shadows, except their breast feathers catch the sun as brilliant as foil, flashing against their dark forms as they fly onward.
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Such sunshine. The light gleams on pure yellow daylilies, and pale yellow coreopsis, and coreopsis in yellow with just the faintest tinge of orange.

July first and already the sumac is turning, the crayon-bright red and yellow and orange by the roadside.

Tiger lilies bloom thickly on the roadside, intermingling with the cattails.

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A vast flock rises up like smoke, shifting about, and divides, with the larger part soaring over the highway to settle on the trees on the other side, and the smaller sinking back to the trees that they had sprung from.

On the snowy slope, not all trees are leafless. Some are saplings still bearing leaves of yesteryear, still hanging on. Some are white as parchment, some are copper, some are shades of gold between the two, and they are all intermixed so they must be different trees, some bleaching more easily than others.

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A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
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Investigating springs. As in, reasoning that my one time seeing a spring perhaps was unrepresentative, and perhaps I should have some comparison.

It's amazing how many things are labeled as springs when they mean spring-fed.

Did find enough to ensure the unpreposing spring I was putting in was reasonable.

Ah, forests.

It's wise to go through one before you put one in the story. They can be interesting, especially when you don't have paths. . . hmm. . . maybe I should put in a false path so my heroine can cleverly note that it is not beaten down by feet, the trees just grow in a deceptive pattern.

Concluded I needed a stand of firs for some dramatic darkness.

The crabapple is all bare branches except for a confused scattering of blossoms, deeply pink, here and there.

Layers on the sky: dark and loose mist before the clearly formed clouds

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Ah, coneflowers. A brilliant pink and orange when first blossoming, but soon they shift before the sunlight and turn a more subtle shade of pink, the center turning deeper red, which has its own charms, especially in brilliant sunlight, but let the sun slacken, and they look drab and dispirited, especially when contrasted with still brilliant black-eyed susans, or with a brilliantly yellow daylily with the sunshine pouring down and in and out again through translucent petals in a way that the opaque coneflowers and black-eyed susans can not match.

A vast tree branch lies on the ground, the only visible evidence of the storm last night. The tree bears no visible mark of where it was torn off. Perhaps the wind blew it, large though it is, from the other side? Starting to walk about, though, reveals the pale, gaping break, far up on the tree, with several boughs below, and they show no sign of damage.

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In a rosy twilight, the blue flowers, the purer blue lithodoria and the paler bellflowers, seem to glow.

On a gray day, with the trees in full green, there are stands of wildflowers in white and delicate purple, for a harmony. In other places, irises, in every shade of purple, join the unity.

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In the gray daylight, the true pink of a blossoming cherry harmonizes sweetly with the deep pink of a crab apple.

Among the violas of the law, there are not only red ones, but ones that are white with yellow faces -- one with a touch of violet on the one petal.

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The Easter magnolias are all covered with buds like balls, in shades of pink, ready to burst open into blooms.

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A lone stand of daffodils has bloomed, at the bottom of the flight of stairs, in the shelter of the wall.

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The pines are warped. Not by wind, and the branches of the leafless trees about them are visible, faintly, but winter reveals how the lack of sunlight killed off the lower boughs in strange patterns.

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On the brown branches of a tree, on a gray morning, a bird sits in brown, and then it flits, unfolding its wings to reveal its fluorescent yellow in flight, and then perches again, in brown.

The sunset in a cloudless sky is a rather drab thing. The red is not full but a tomato soup red, lacking in vividness.

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Down the walkway to reach the street, and under the overhang, there's movement. I'm thinking cat when I look more closely and it's a fox, only slightly grizzled with black, half rising as if ready to bolt.

I keep on walking. The fox watches. Then it settles back down, curled up in the cold.

On return, the fox is a bit hard to pick out. The black hairs help, and that the orange isn't really a vivid shade. But on my walking back from the street, it sees me and lifts its head to track me before settling back down as soon as I am past.

A slope of gray, with spreads where deep rich orange or ruddy brown still cling to the trees, but most are utterly bare.

The fallen leaves from the canopy reveal the understory. In one forest the leaves have turned all rosy with cream edges. Another, the saplings are rich bronze. Yet another has still fiery bushes.

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The summer shadows are ceasing. The sunlight glows through trees, turning them scarlet or luminous gold or brilliant green.

Vast flock of birds rising, flitting, perching, on the trees, and on the corrugated back of signs. Dozens of birds can fit on a highway sign that way.

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The flock of small brown bird leaps up in the path of the setting sun, and the wings glow with the light that passes through the feathers of the little wings.

In the pink and pastel blue of the eastern horizon at sunset, the moon rises, also colored pink.

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A cloud towers among others, which are darkening with evening. This one shines gleaming white still. An hour later, all the rounded clouds are gleaming golden with sunset.

A house is turning feral. All around the lawn is mowed, but vines grow thickly on it, and trees nearly hide it -- trees clearly sprouted there and growing because they were too close to the house to easily mow.

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marycatelli

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Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

being chiefly about the written word

Entries tagged with nature

falling into winter

falling into fall

before spring to after

A little Madness in the Spring

spring from the earth

in the forest

autumn into winter

August to autumn

summer sights and sounds

spring the sweet

shades of spring

spring stirring

stirrings of spring

shades of winter

an encounter with a neighbor

When it's cold, the melody can be seen.

wintry beginnings

fall flourishes

soaring into the season

flowering summer