Sunday, February 07, 2010

Remains













There are catkins, blurred, behind the withered hazelnut.  Morosely, I choose to focus on dead things.  Call it a question of style.
Posted by at 12:10 pm
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22 comments:

The Crow said...

There is beauty in the remains, though, Lucy, that most of us probably wouldn't think to record. You have, and I am grateful that you did. I especially like the hydranges.

:)

1:41 pm
HKatz said...

The third photo reminds me of the scales of a fish. And the fourth... it's tarnished and brave.

3:37 pm
Catalyst said...

Stunning photos.

5:02 pm
Pam said...

Stunning indeed, but... a bit sad. I prefer to focus on the plumping buds, the thrusting shoots...

5:06 pm
Roderick Robinson said...

Dead but transfigured.

5:56 pm
marja-leena said...

Oh, there's real beauty here! I'd just been thinking that I've been posting too many pretty pictures lately.

6:00 pm
Lucy said...

Everything springlike is so late. I did take pictures of the catkins too!

There are subtle colours and beauty in decay, it's true.

The fish scales were on the very unpicturesque remains of a dead fish beside the pool, some kind of carp type thing, which had evidently been a meal for the gulls already. But the scales still gleamed and caught my eye. More moral courage and I suppose I might have featured the pecked bits.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm that morose!

6:49 pm
Zhoen said...

Not pretty. Beautiful.

6:51 pm
Michelle said...

I know I'll always find something beautiful and inspiring when I visit Box Elder.

I hope you're all well, Lucy.

8:13 pm
Crafty Green Poet said...

beautiful and melancholy

8:44 am
herhimnbryn said...

The remains of the day....

1:22 pm
Unknown said...

I notice the hazel nut. There is a row of hazel trees beside the vegetable garden. The trees are inhabited by squirrels which leave not a nut behind. And what is worse strip the trees of every nut before the nuts have ripened.

6:04 pm
Dick said...

The sere, the yellowleaf... Although you've found beautiful blues and greys and greens here

10:42 pm
Nimble said...

I'm stuck on Donne's 'bed's-feet'. Garden bed? Sleeping bed? [Googles] The commentary I found indicated the image of a dying body curled at the foot of the bed. But I'm not sure I'm convinced.

I like the patterns of these photos next to each other. And I thought those scales were pine cone seeds at first! The last image is out of focus for me (my eyes?).

Bee in England says she sees snowdrops. Lucky Brits. I have noticed buds at the tips of some of our tree branches. But February is the month I might fast forward through if given a cosmic remote control.

11:12 pm
Lucy said...

Thanks again.

Plutarch - we have very few squirrels, though E sometimes sees one in her woods. The red ones are scarce here, the woodland is mostly too thin, and the greys haven't made it. We find hazelnuts sprouting in all kinds of odd places in the garden that the mice and voles have planted though.

Dick - even yellow's in short supply now, there's a bit of gorse on the corner which is cheering.

Nimble - yes it is odd, the bed's feet. Not an image of anything that actually happens, I think, more a feeling, of being so low and wretched and withdrawn from life that you wish you could huddle right down to the bottom of the bed and disappear. Perhaps.
The photo is cropped so small it is losing sharpness, the light was low too, which contributes to the gloominess and also made the photos shakier. I still liked the colours, and wasn't averse to the fuzz, but that's why it's posted smaller.
Snowdrops don't thrive here anyway, I think the soil's wrong, we never seem to get them to grow, but then they don't do well from bulbs anyway. February can be OK, we get primroses and even some early daffodils, but not this year.

6:36 am
Bee said...

The third photograph is particularly interesting to me . . . it look like butterflies, or the scales on a fish. How do you make something so beautiful out of these dead things? I am definitely waiting for spring (as you suggested in an earlier post).

I have been fighting off the "life is shrunk" feeling for ages now. I am so tired of being and feeling dull (although one does, still, go through the motions of course). I tend to read a lot; in a retreating sort of way.

11:36 pm
apprentice said...

I'mwith youon the beauty in the remains of things, and the quote made me cry.

x

12:03 pm
tristan said...

so ... how morose were you ? ... on a scale of one to a million ?

5:02 pm
Lucy said...

Thanks again, nice to see you all.

Tristan, that rather depends on whether the scale is relative to my own moroseness, how morose I have ever been or could be, or to some universal gauge of moroseness, taking in everyone from the most consistently euphoric to the most terminally dour and lugubrious. I leave it to you to think of examples of each...

2:35 pm
ege m. said...

this photos are really nice. dead things are not good in real of course, but you got talent I can say that this photos are great again =)

5:57 pm
Granny J said...

Ah, Lucy, so many wonderful photos that you have posted in my absence! The pods...the mists...the winter shots. All lovely.

6:35 am
andrew said...

Your blog has really nice pictures, i came here by chance but am happy i did.

8:19 am

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