through the looking glass

We’re going to start out with a shot from a few days ago. Thursday. There was a bit of sun in the morning and I snuck out for all of five minutes before heading in to work. (I no longer work from home – so I gotta deal with things like “commutes” and “packing lunch”.)

Check out that milkweed tongue. Or whatever it is. Remember this, because we’re going to revisit it later.

It has been gray, gray, gray, rainy, gray, foggy, and gray lately. Hard on a girl’s spirit, these days of declining sun, coinciding with having to work in an office environment with no windows. Fortunately, what with the world ending in a less than two weeks, there isn’t much longer to deal with this nuisance. It’s all good.

This morning, hallelujah, there has been just enough sun to coax me outside. I played with the camera, going back and forth with it between manual focus, and auto focus. Together, we discovered worlds within worlds:

The surface of a rain drop...

 

...versus the world reflected in a raindrop.

 

The sumac saplings are a world of discotheque fabulousness.

 

Tell me I’m wrong.

It occurs to me that this barely-there sun is what makes these shots possible. OK...fine...it reminds me of what I used to know, but had apparently started to lose track of, which is that all days are beautiful, if you just remember to look at them...

 

Well I’ll be, a bluet. In December! These are no more than a quarter inch wide. I like the grass reflected in the top droplet.

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OK, here’s another milkweed – it’s not sticking its tongue out, though. It occurs to me I could dissect this baby to see if the seeds were able to make it out of this opening. (My theory being that the tongue thing has to get out of the way for the seeds to emerge.) But I don’t like to mess with things...I just like to look at them. These days, anyway. There was that time I performed surgery on a jewelweed gall, and filmed tiny midge larvae frantically inching along on our deck railing, wondering why the Universe had it in for them. They were orange, just like the jewelweed flowers themselves.

“ancient maps” (sugar maple bark, shelf mushroom, lichen. 2012)

hoodlums lounging against a wall. no, wait: wallflowers, hoping to be asked to dance.

“spangled” comes to mind.

OK, time to head out on a run. Seven miles, I think. Lucky seven. I hope there is at list a bit of sun wherever you are, and that you are out enjoying it!